Archaeologists have discovered a 1,000th cave beneath Nottingham.

The city has the UK’s largest network of caves, offering researchers a window into everything from the medieval world of work to the lives of wealthy Victorians.

Nottingham is built on soft sandstone, which meant caves were relatively easy to carve out.

The chambers are known to have been in use since 893, when a Welsh monk named Asser documented their existence, describing the city as a “place of caves”.

They were used for a variety of reasons in the medieval period, including as prisons, secret passageways, storage cellars, maltings and tanneries.

Victorians used them to brew beer and grow mushrooms, while more recently the caves provided shelter to the city’s population during wartime air raids.

‘1,000 years of history’

Scott Lomax, the city council’s archaeologist, said: “Reaching 1,000 recorded caves is a significant moment for Nottingham. It highlights both the scale of what survives beneath the city and the importance of continuing to document and understand this remarkable resource.

“What makes Nottingham unique is not just the number of caves, but the continuity of their use over hundreds of years. There are 1,000 caves representing approximately 1,000 years of history.”

Mr Lomax began researching the city’s caves and maintaining an official database of cave sites in 2008. At this time, it was thought only 425 caves lay beneath the city.

Since then, he has helped to discover hundreds of new caves by trawling through property records dating back hundreds of years.

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