Museums

Chislehurst Caves

Twenty-two miles of chalk mine under Chislehurst, seen by lamplight on a guided tour: a Blitz shelter for fifteen thousand people with its own chapel and hospital, and a rock venue where Bowie and Hendrix played.

The chalk under Chislehurst was dug for lime and flint from the Middle Ages until the 1860s, leaving thirty-five kilometres of galleries that an Edwardian antiquary named Druid, Roman and Saxon on a theory nobody has since been able to prove. The First World War filled them with Woolwich ammunition and the 1930s with mushrooms. Then, from September 1940, they became the largest air-raid shelter outside central London: electric light, bunks in numbered streets, a chapel, a hospital, a cinema, a penny a night and up to fifteen thousand people sleeping underground, among them a baby born down here and christened Cavena. In the 1960s the caves were a music venue, and Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, David Bowie and the Rolling Stones all played in the dark. The tour is led by hurricane lamp, lasts about forty-five minutes and keeps to a fraction of the workings; the café is at the entrance.

Where

Old Hill, Chislehurst, BR7 5NL

Nearest station

Chislehurst · 3 min walk

Hours

Hours from the page that lists them, checked 8 September 2026.

Tours leave on the hour, the first at 10:00 and the last at 16:00; open every day in local school holidays. Adults £10, children £8.

NearbyMuseums

• Crofton Roman Villa54 min walk
• Eltham Palace56 min walk
• Bethlem Museum of the Mind1 hr 24 min walk

NearbyOther Categories

• Scadbury Moated ManorMonuments & Ruins34 min walk
• Peter KropotkinThe World in London37 min walk

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