Deep inside a limestone gorge on the border between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, the walls of several caves carry a strange record of fear.
They are covered with hundreds of symbols.
Some are simple crossed lines. Others resemble letters, initials, circles, boxes and intricate mazes. Many were scratched directly into the limestone around dark openings, cracks and hollows.
For years, some of these markings were dismissed as little more than old graffiti. Then archaeologists and heritage specialists realised they were looking at something very different.
These were apotropaic marks — symbols intended to turn away evil, misfortune or supernatural forces.
The discovery at Creswell Crags revealed what is believed to be the largest concentration of protective marks ever found in British caves.
And their location makes the discovery particularly intriguing.
The same caves that contain some of Britain's oldest known prehistoric artwork were later revisited by people who apparently feared what might be lurking in the darkness.
A landscape with a very long memory
Creswell Crags is a limestone gorge cutting through the landscape between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
Its caves have an extraordinary archaeological history. People occupied or used the caves over a vast span of time, including Neanderthals and later modern humans. The site is also famous for its Palaeolithic cave art, including engravings dating back thousands of years.
But the witches' marks belong to a much more recent chapter.
They were probably created centuries ago, during a period when belief in witchcraft, spirits and supernatural dangers was still deeply embedded in everyday life.
The remarkable thing is that the people who made them left their marks in the very same landscape where humans had been leaving traces for tens of thousands of years.
The discovery hiding in plain sight
The markings were not exactly unknown.
People had seen them. The problem was that they had been interpreted as something mundane: graffiti left by visitors before the caves were protected and access restricted.
In 2018, two members of the Subterranea Britannica group, Hayley Clark and Ed Waters, noticed that some of the apparently random scratches looked distinctly different.
What initially appeared to be a handful of markings turned into something much larger.
As the cave was examined more closely, hundreds of examples were identified. Later investigation found protective marks in all the major caves at Creswell Crags.
The scale of the discovery changed the interpretation completely. These weren't simply bored visitors scratching their initials into a cave wall.
They appeared to represent a sustained tradition of ritual protection.
What does "apotropaic" mean?
The word sounds mysterious, but its meaning is relatively straightforward.
Apotropaic comes from the Greek apotrepein, meaning essentially to turn away. An apotropaic object, gesture or symbol was intended to repel something harmful.
In Britain, such marks are found in many historic buildings.
They can occur beside doors and windows, around fireplaces, on beams and in other locations considered vulnerable to supernatural intrusion. Historic England has documented them in houses, churches, barns and caves.
The idea was not necessarily to attack an evil force. Instead, the mark could act as a barrier. A warning. A protective charm. Or, perhaps, a symbolic trap.
The mysterious double V
One of the most recognisable symbols at Creswell Crags consists of two overlapping or adjoining V shapes.
The design is commonly interpreted as an abbreviation or invocation connected with the Virgin Mary — specifically "Virgin of Virgins". The overlapping Vs can also form an M-like shape, reinforcing the association with Mary.
Similar protective marks occur elsewhere in Britain.
Another recurring marking is PM, generally interpreted as Pace Maria. Christian symbolism therefore appears to have played an important role in at least some of the protection.
This is significant because the marks are sometimes described simply as "witch marks", which can give the impression that they were associated exclusively with witchcraft.
The reality is more complicated. Many were Christian symbols intended to protect against supernatural danger.
Symbols designed to trap evil
Other markings are stranger. Some consist of lines, boxes and maze-like patterns.
Researchers believe these may have been intended symbolically to confuse, contain or trap evil forces.
Imagine a person approaching a dark cave entrance in an age before electric lighting, modern medicine or scientific explanations for many natural phenomena.
The cave would have been an inherently intimidating place. Darkness concealed what was inside. Unexplained sounds could echo through the passages.
Sudden illness or death might have supernatural explanations. And folklore could transform particular places into locations associated with spirits, witches or other dangerous beings.
A maze scratched into the stone may therefore have had a purpose beyond decoration.
It could represent an attempt to ensure that whatever was believed to inhabit the darkness could not find its way out.
Why were the caves considered dangerous?
We cannot know exactly what every person who carved a mark at Creswell feared.
There is no surviving diary explaining why an individual entered a cave and scratched a symbol into the wall.
Researchers have suggested that the markings could have been associated with fears of witches, demons, spirits or other supernatural forces. The dark openings and deep crevices of the caves may have seemed particularly threatening.
The fact that many marks occur around holes and cracks is therefore especially interesting.
The cave itself may have been perceived as a boundary between the familiar world outside and something unknown beneath it.
Fear left in the stone
The marks also provide a rare glimpse into the beliefs of ordinary people. Historical records often tell us about kings, wars, religious institutions and wealthy landowners.
They tell us much less about the private fears of ordinary people.
An apotropaic mark can be different.
It is a direct physical action. Someone believed that a particular place required protection, picked up a sharp object and physically altered the stone.
The mark was therefore an expression of belief made permanent.
Historic England has described such markings as an important source of information about how people understood and responded to the world around them.
Why so many marks?
One of the most fascinating questions is why Creswell Crags contains such an extraordinary concentration.
The marks do not appear to have been created during a single event. Instead, evidence suggests that they accumulated over time.
That raises several possibilities.
Perhaps successive generations continued an established tradition. Perhaps people added new marks whenever they believed the existing protection was insufficient.
Or perhaps particular events — illness, death, crop failure or other misfortune — encouraged people to strengthen the supernatural defences.
We cannot establish which explanation is correct. But the sheer density of the markings suggests that the caves held a particular significance.
A much older world beneath their feet
There is an almost surreal contrast at Creswell Crags. On one part of the cave walls are traces left by people living during the Ice Age.
Thousands of years later, other people entered the same spaces and carved Christian protective symbols into the limestone.
The two groups were separated by an enormous gulf of time. Yet both left evidence of their presence on the same rock.
The prehistoric inhabitants were recording elements of the world around them. The later visitors were apparently trying to protect themselves from a world they could not see.
The cave became a kind of archaeological palimpsest — one landscape carrying evidence of radically different human experiences across immense stretches of time.
The strange case of the missing marks
There may actually have been even more witches' marks than archaeologists can see today.
The caves were excavated during the nineteenth century, and some areas were widened during archaeological work. That means sections of the original cave surfaces may have been removed or altered.
It is therefore impossible to know precisely how extensive the markings once were. The surviving examples are simply what remained for modern researchers to discover.
And because some marks were hidden in areas inaccessible to ordinary visitors, their significance remained overlooked for years.
A hidden chamber
One of the most remarkable collections was located in a chamber that is unsafe for visitors to enter.
Rather than opening the area to the public, Creswell Crags worked with Sheffield Hallam University to create a detailed digital representation using 3D scanning and animation technology.
The approach allows researchers and visitors to examine the markings without physically entering the fragile and hazardous chamber.
In a strange way, technology has allowed the modern world to look back into a place that previous generations considered dangerous.
Were they really "witches' marks"?
The popular term is useful, but it can also be misleading. There is no evidence that the people who carved these particular symbols were witches.
Quite the opposite.
The markings are generally interpreted as protective. They were intended to defend people or places against perceived supernatural threats.
"Protective marks" is therefore often a more accurate description than "witches' marks". The association with witches comes from the supernatural dangers against which such marks were believed to offer protection.
What happened to the people who made them?
We will probably never know.
The marks were not signed in the modern sense. There are no names attached to most of them. No personal stories survive.
The people who carved them have been dead for centuries.
Yet their fears remain visible.
A double V. A cross. A maze. A series of intersecting lines. Each mark represents a moment when somebody decided that the stone needed protection.
Britain's underground history of fear
Creswell Crags is often celebrated for its Ice Age archaeology. But the witches' marks reveal another, very different story.
They demonstrate that the caves remained meaningful long after the prehistoric artists and hunters had disappeared.
For later inhabitants of the surrounding countryside, the caves may have represented places where the boundaries between the ordinary world and the supernatural seemed dangerously thin.
So they left behind their defences. Not walls. Not gates. Not weapons.
Symbols.
And those symbols have survived.
Today, visitors can stand in the same caves and see markings made centuries ago by people who believed they were protecting themselves from forces that could not be seen.
The marks cannot tell us exactly what those people encountered. They can, however, tell us something about what they feared.
And sometimes that is just as revealing.
Deep beneath the English countryside, the stone still carries the fingerprints of an older world — and the fears of the people who lived in it.
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