So while just trying to find some information about a local building I came across a facebook page which, if you believe every post on it my entire town is criss crossed with secret underground tunnels, linking every where to either/and the church, the gaol, ye olde castle (destroyed in the civil war!) or ye olde out of town castle!
Although quite industrial now, until pretty much post ww2 this was a small market town serving farming and the wool trade.
So, as there are 27 pages in this thread and I can't be bothered to read them all (sorry!) , does this seem likely?
I can easily believe lots of the older buildings have cellars, and maybe even some linking tunnels to next door, which I can also see why people think 'tunnels' when doing building work they come up against a bricked up cellar, it much be terribly exciting and spooky!
But why would anywhere need tunnels? Some of the suggestions I saw said 'transporting prisoners'. From where to where? Even back in castle days wouldn't they have just used, ooh a cart?
Some of the much older buildings may have had priest holes. One place, now a hotel, does have a lot of nooks and crannys, and also legit cellars. That building could plausibly have a tunnel to the church over the road, although its too modern a building , but I think there was an older church.
All my life there was stories, again linked to the english civil war, about tunnels running from a quarried area on the edge of town leading to a tudor era castle 3 miles away. But thats a long old tunnel.
Another on the fb post suggested
..There is a tunnel which used to run from out of town to the underbelly of the town hall.. I believe they used to use it for running ammunition in and out of the town during the war...
eh? this was not a centre for 'the war' which I've taken to mean ww2. wouldn't you use the road? If the post meant the civil war then well ok except for the fact the town hall wasn't built until centuries later!
So anyway, as I said without reading this whole thread, does any of this seem remotely likely?