[0xADEADBEE]

How strange to see this atop Hacker News! I used to live in the nearby city and have been to these caves many times since being shown them around 2014 (I'm not sure why they're saying it was sealed up - it has been perfectly accessible via the 'rabbit hole' in the picture since that time at least, if you didn't mind a few spiders!).

I would conjecture that very few locals know about it - it really isn't something you'd find unless you knew what you were looking for and the few conversations I have had about it with people in the surrounding towns and villages frequently yield blank looks; the creation of a Wikipedia page for the caves only yesterday [1] also supports this hypothesis. That said, the inside is littered with cigarette butts and tea lights, so I am far from alone in knowing of its existence.

As for its purpose, I've always assumed it was some priest hole [2] variant, but have no evidence to support that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caynton_Caves&act...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_hole