Light at the end of the tunnel

A retired policeman has given a lead on an underground network of tunnels under Newark.

Experts have been trying to work out whether a subterranean network exists beneath the town.

Trent and Peak Archaeology examined a forgotten cellar in the Curtain Mill shop, Cartergate. They lifted carpet and chipboard behind the shop counter to reveal a trap-door that hadn’t been opened for 40 years.

When it was opened the group discovered the cellar had been partly filled with renovation waste, and what is believed to be access to a tunnel.

Breeze blocks sealed what was thought to be the tunnel entrance, but the group was able to explore the cellar.

A copy of the Newark Advertiser from February 2, 1974 and a gas meter reading from November 1973 were found, which may give a clue as to when the tunnel was sealed.

While the group couldn’t enter the tunnel, it established that its position matched the account of retired police constable, Geoff Greaves.

Mr Greaves, 83, used to live at the New White Hart pub — now Curtain Mill — at 7 Cartergate, when his father, Harry Stanley Greaves, was landlord.

“My childhood memory is of playing in the cellar as a boy and helping my father fill bottles down there,” said Mr Greaves. “There was an archway and a darkness beyond it. I used to imagine that something would walk out of there.

“I never dared to venture down there myself but one day my father, mother, a family friend and I were in the cellar and my father, armed with a torch, went inside.

“We shouted back and forth to make sure he was ok, but he didn’t reappear for ten minutes.

“He said he had reached a point where he could not go any further because of a collapse.

“I was a boy at the time and didn’t realise there would be any significance attached to it, but now I’m convinced that if a man was gone for ten minutes there must be a tunnel.”

The tunnel is believed to extend across Cartergate and up The Arcade, towards the Market Place.

Mr Greaves, now of Worksop, said the walk down the tunnel became the talk of the New White Hart. It was suggested it had been dug during the Civil War for people to pass between the pub and Newark Castle.

Mr Greaves is among people who have shared stories of tunnels with Newark and Sherwood District Council, which is leading the project.

The owner of the Curtain Mill, Theresa Miller, said: “We knew there was a pub here previously and assumed it led to the beer cellar.

“No-one had dared to lift the trapdoor over concerns about what might have been there.”

The results of a ground-penetrating radar survey of the Market Place could be revealed tomorrow.