Britain is a small country with a big history so it’s no surprise that there are many historic places hidden below ground. From creepy passages and prehistoric caverns to relics of the industrial revolution, abandoned underground stations and wartime bunkers, we dig down to discover some of the most intriguing subterranean places. Far from gloomy, they shine a light on the country’s rich heritage and offer a different perspective on the past.

Wartime history feels incredibly recent at these underground headquarters hidden beneath the streets of Westminster, where Winston Churchill and his government sheltered during the Blitz. Now part of the Imperial War Museums, a tour of the original Cabinet War Rooms, where he and his inner circle planned wartime strategies and led the Allies to victory, is absolutely fascinating.

Many rooms, such as the map room, were left just as they were when the lights were switched off in 1945. It’s easy to imagine the tense atmosphere in which the workers were operating down here, and there's an intriguing level of detail thanks to the original objects that remain. Look out for the small storeroom, next to the map room, which was secretly converted to the Transatlantic Telephone Room after the US joined the war so Churchill could chat in secret to the US president. For more London inspiration, check out our guide here.

What do you do with a disused Victorian slate mine? You turn it into a vast trampoline-and-neon-light-filled subterranean playground of course. Some of the network of enormous caverns in the Llechwedd Slate Caverns in Blaenau Ffestiniog, north Wales, have been transformed by Zip World with four huge slides (the height of two double decker buses) and six levels of trampolines to suit a range of ages. 

After bouncing your way around the various levels of Zip World’s Bounce Below, you can also join exhilarating tours of the mine too – traversing more of the underground cavern network on a range of zip lines, rope bridges, via ferrata and tunnels. The thrilling adventure ends with a zoom down the steepest zip wire in the UK.

The seaside city has always had an edgy underground scene, but not many people have literally explored its underground scenery via its subterranean passageways. If you've been to the beach, played on the pier and explored the pavilion, why not try something different and delve into its labyrinthine Victorian sewers?

Organised by Southern Water, the surprisingly fascinating guided tours unravel secrets of Brighton's past as you explore a small part of the 30-mile network. Starting from the Brighton Pier and emerging through a manhole in the middle of Old Steine Gardens, tours only take place between May and September and bookings are essential. 

Don a hard hat, grab a battery lamp and descend 140 metres in a cage down into one of Britain's oldest working mines for an absorbing exploration of the UK’s industrial past. Led by ex-miners, the hugely popular underground tours in this museum just outside Wakefield tell the story of mining throughout the years. 

The interactive underground exhibition includes demonstrations of working mine machinery and tools, stories about the lives of the pit ponies and tales from miners of the past. Only over-fives are allowed on the underground tours, but above ground little ones will be appeased at the Little Diggers play area, meeting real pit ponies and peering down the glass-topped historic furnace shaft for a peek at the mine below.

This magnificent cathedral’s cavernous crypts are the largest in Europe and the resting place of some of Britain's most revered heroes, poets and scientists including the building’s architect Sir Christopher Wren, Admiral Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington. They’re an intriguing place to wander and soak up the significant history housed in this immense church.

Worked up an appetite with your subterranean wanderings? Happily the cathedral’s crypts are also a lovely spot for a bite to eat – the Wren’s Tea Rooms does a range of afternoon teas where you can nibble dainty sandwiches, warm scones and pretty pastries along with a glass of Greyfriars British sparkling wine. For more London inspiration, check out our guide here. 

Explore covert Second World War tunnels that were dug into the hillside at Porthcurno telegraph station in 1940. This communications centre in the small Cornish village near Land’s End was of such importance, handling top-secret messages during the war, that operations were moved underground when war broke out. Tin miners were recruited to dig the tunnels, but locals were told that they were creating a short cut to the local pub.

Hear tales like this and more at the interesting museum in pretty Porthcurno and enter the two Grade II-listed tunnels through the huge bomb-proof steel doors that guard them. Inside there's a telegrapher’s workshop, fully working automated relay station and a replica wireless room. While a hidden door leads to the escape route, 120 steps hewn through the solid granite bedrock where workers could hotfoot it in the event of an attack.

Find out about life at the coalface at this brilliant attraction within the Blaenavon World Heritage Site in south Wales. Housed in a former Big Pit Colliery, which was sunk in around 1860 and closed in 1980, you can take a multi-media tour below ground as part of a visit to the museum. Descending 300 feet into the old colliery, a former coal miner will tell you all about what life was like for workers in the mine.

As you descend in the cage and explore the gloomy passageways you gather a moving portrait of Wales’ lost mining industry. The story of the coal mining communities here and Wales’s industrial heritage in general is told evocatively through stories that are vividly brought to life both underground and elsewhere in the interactive space.

Dare to duck down beneath Edinburgh's Old Town and into the spooky subterranean passages of the Blair Street Underground vaults, once the haunt of the city’s most despicable inhabitants. The largest system of underground caverns in Edinburgh, they were built in the 18th century beneath South Bridge, but filled in with rubble in the 19th century and only rediscovered in the 1980s.

 

Mercat Tours has exclusive access to these atmospheric vaults and runs regular tours to regale wide-eyed tourists with creepy tales and fascinating insights into their murky past. Groups are limited to 30 people to ensure an intimate atmosphere. After-dark, adults-only ghost tours delve deeper into the tales of murderers, vagrants, and torturers who inflicted suffering in what it is one of Edinburgh’s most spooky sites.

Enter a magical lair with dragons, kings and giants as you’re led on a mystical journey by a cloaked boatman past a waterfall, along winding tunnels and into vast underground caverns. Kids will love this entertaining underground story-telling attraction in Snowdonia that brings to life Welsh myths and legends including tales of King Arthur and wizard Merlin. Based at Corris Craft Centre, the tour takes you into a disused slate mine in the Snowdonia.

Did you know there's a maze of over 500 sandstone caves underneath the streets of historic Nottingham that back to the dark ages? You can book a tour of these amazing secret underground spaces through the City of Caves, part of the National Justice Museum. You'll see a medieval underground tannery, an air raid shelter where thousands of people sought refuge during WWI and the remnants of Drury Hill Victorian slums.

Beneath the city’s castle lie many more manmade tunnels and caves which you can also descend into on a tour. You'll clamber down steep steps from the castle and into secret passageways to discover King David’s legendary dungeon, the Duke of Newcastle’s wine cellar and Mortimer’s Hole (pictured), a spooky passageway that is carved into the sandstone outcrop on which the castle stands. 

This spectacular space lies hidden underneath the A212 at Crystal Palace Parade in south London. The ornately designed relic of Victorian construction would have been left in a state of neglect if not for volunteer group Friends of Crystal Palace Subway. After reinstating safe pedestrian access to the site, the subway opens to the public at special events, such as Open House London – check the website for details.

Take a tour around disused tube stations and poke around the city’s secret tunnels on one of the London Transport Museum’s massively popular subterranean tours. You can discover a deep-level World War II shelter in Clapham, the disused Down Street station in Mayfair where Churchill sheltered during the Blitz, and a navigate network of tunnels below Euston. It will give you a totally new perspective on the multi-layered city. We've got tonnes more tips in our London guide.

Seek out hidden chambers, stunning stalactite caverns formed in the Ice Age, and prehistoric dwellings within Britain’s biggest gorge, a 400-foot-deep and three-mile long natural formation set within Somerset's scenic Mendip Hills. One of the most notable is Gough’s cave, where Cheddar man was discovered in 1903 – the oldest complete skeleton ever found in Britain.

Active types can join caving expeditions into the heart of the gorge’s cave system to clamber, climb and squeeze your way deep inside the Mendip Hills for an adrenalin-packed underground adventure. Looking to up the ante? Try the gorge's new Black Cat Free Fall experience, a 30-foot plummet down into the Black Cat Chamber (strapped to safety ropes, of course).

You may have seen the white cliffs of Dover as you set sail to France, but have you ventured into them? At English Heritage’s Dover Castle you can do just that by exploring the secret underground tunnels that are hidden beneath this 12th-century stronghold. First dug during the Napoleonic wars, the historic passages became the mission centre for the evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkirk. 

Some of the tunnels and rooms were converted into an underground hospital for injured troops in 1941. Venture down into the castle’s interesting exhibition which recreates the sounds, smells and atmosphere of the hospital with great effect. The tunnels continued to play a vital role in the war effort after Dunkirk. From 1943, they served as a combined headquarters for all three services – the army, navy and air force.

This spectacular sea cave on the uninhabited Isle of Staffa in Scotland's southern Hebrides looks so startlingly symmetrical with its neat hexagonal columns of basalt that it could be fake. But it’s completely natural attraction. You can walk overland to the cave's large arched entrance and explore the extraordinary basalt formation up close by following a passageway that leads in above water level. Alternatively take a boat trip to pass by the gaping mouth of the vast cavern.

Craggy caverns and beautiful cave formations are one of the many highlights of a hike through Derbyshire’s rugged Peak District National Park. Some of the most impressive can be found in the Castleton caves (home to Peak Cavern, Speedwell Cavern, Blue John Cavern and Treak Cliff Cavern), Heights of Abraham in Matlock and Poole’s Cavern in Buxton. 

Also in Derbyshire, near the border with Nottinghamshire, you’ll find Creswell Crags archaeological site, which is home to Britain's only known Ice Age cave art. The limestone gorge is laced with a network of caves and little fissures including some where stone tools and remains of animals were found by archaeologists.