SPECULATION is mounting that there could be a network of secret tunnels beneath Cirencester, after more people came forward with potential evidence.

It has long been suggested that there are tunnels linking the now demolished abbey with the parish church and town centre businesses.

Legend has it that the tunnels were used by monks and priests to escape danger during the Reformation of the church in the 1500s, when many Catholic establishments were attacked.

Last month, the Standard reported that members of staff at Barclays bank and the Edinburgh Woollen Mill believe there are bricked up tunnel entrances in the cellars of the Cirencester stores.

And now more people have come forward with similar stories.

Chantal Taylor, who used to work at Next in the town centre, before the site became a Cafe Nero, said there is a tunnel in the cellar of the building that leads to the site of the now demolished abbey in the Abbey Grounds.

Her claims were backed up by Sophie Lewis, the current assistant manager at Cafe Nero, who explained that the basement the coffee shop shares with the Market Place Dental Practice contains a blocked off tunnel.

She added: “I have heard that there are all tunnels underneath business that connect across the street.”

The former manager of Cafe Nero, Kim Harris, corroborated this, and said that there is also a blocked off passageway in the cellar of East clothes shop, where she is now in charge.

Mrs Harris said the bricked up passageway faces the parish church and she believes it is the entrance to a tunnel.

However, Toby Catchpole, heritage team leader at Gloucestershire County Council, dismissed stories of the tunnels as just a myth.

He said: “We’ve checked Gloucestershire’s Historic Environment Record (HER) and no tunnels have been previously recorded in Cirencester Market Place. The HER is an electronic index of Gloucestershire’s heritage and we encourage people to access up to 42,000 records which span human history from the Palaeolithic to the 20th century.

“Rumours of monks’ tunnels are common across the UK in towns and cities with a former monastery but to my knowledge the tunnels have never been found to be anything but mythical."

Below the Parish Church there are two crypts. One contains members of the Bathurst family while the other was cleared out in 1870 to be converted into a now defunct boiler room, and warden Simon Smith said there is no evidence of tunnels.

Of course, the only way to know for certain whether there are tunnels beneath the town is to investigate what is on the other side of these bricked up passageways.

And the Gloucester Speleological Society, a caving club, has offered to help.

Club member Jonathan Maisey said: “We’d be more than happy to investigate and record and document any underground sites and which need exploration.”

Businesses in the Market Place willing to allow the experts to safely investigate blocked passageways in their cellar should email bmc@wiltsglosstandard.co.uk