In the ‘Golden Age’ of geology and Romanticism in Britain, the cave was constructed as a cultural space that served the young science as territory for new insights into prehistory and as icon of scientific enlightenment. However, British caves had a history in folklore that predated the onset of geological exploration, and some had long been inhabited by monsters or fairies. Moreover, antiquaries, fossil hunters, and even tourists shared the established geologists’ interest in the underground. Conceiving of the cave as a many-layered political space, this article argues that several groups competed in the quest for this ‘new’ territory, among them those who strove for the power to read the past. The Romantic poets, building on literary, religious, and folkloristic traditions, turned the cave into a source for individual as well as societal change, exploring it as the realm of the ‘subconscious’. Questioning whether such an object as the Romantic cave existed, this article is interested in how different visitors experienced the underground—whether they shared the aesthetics of the sublime—and in how caves were constructed to serve alternative purposes.

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