The Tunnels of Hertford -
If you were to type ‘Knights Templar, tunnels, Hertford’ in Google or your favourite search engine all results will lead you back to Raymond Brown’s article in the Hertfordshire Mercury of October 8th 2004.
If I were to sit down with all the knowledge I have gained from researching this article I could construct the same theory that was proposed to Raymond Brown. Consider the ingredients – members of the Knights Templar imprisoned in Hertford Castle, buried treasure, tunnels, secret passages, secret societies – and mix them all up.
You have the makings of a good story that would have intrigued Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and a nation brought up on tales of smugglers caves, castle sieges, King Arthur, his Round Table and the quest for the Grail.
The Myth
Raymond Brown
The Hoax
Raymond Brown was a good friend of mine. He left the Hertfordshire Mercury in 2007 to work on the Cambridge Evening News and lives outside the area so I don’t see him now. He helped start and run the Stanstead Abbotts River Festival and was a campaigner for more Government funding for our local rivers. He brought children over from Chernobyl and gave them a holiday on the river on his own house boat.
He was however a controversial journalist. In some ways he is greatly missed. When I was Town Centre Manager he would ring me every Monday morning and ask what was going on. ‘Why don’t you print some good news Raymond’ I would usually ask and he would laugh back at me in his distinctive Scottish accent.
The problem with Raymond was that he liked a good story even if sometimes he couldn’t always substantiate any necessary underlying facts. After the passing of time I am not so sure that even he believed the Achesons’ account; but it was exciting and interesting and different and it got them, Hertford, the Mercury and himself world attention.
He once rang a local councillor for their views on the Templars and the Grail and was told it was a lot of nonsense. His reply was something along the lines of: ‘There is no monster in Loch Ness, but it hasn’t done their tourist trade any harm’.
I believe that Tim and Ben Acheson have constructed a damn good hoax and Hertford and the world have fallen for it. It came at a good time – the publication of the Da Vinci Code and just in time for the 700 year anniversary of the Pope’s elimination of the order.
They achieved world wide publicity and it could have done no harm for their own publication The Insider, which must have garnered millions of hits from around the globe.
Various journalists have asked to meet the twins but they have never appeared together; sometimes not even one of them will turn up for an arranged meeting. Until such time as they are prepared to take an independent film crew into the tunnels of Hertford or produce identifiable photographs of the passageways beneath Hertford’s streets then it is difficult to believe in secret societies meeting in tunnels and chambers beneath this historic market town; or of ever uncovering the last resting place of the Holy Grail.
The Freemasons
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