Nottingham sits upon a soft sandstone ridge which can easily be dug with simple hand tools to create artificial cave dwellings.

[6] Construction of the Broadmarsh Shopping Centre began in the late 1960s, but the opening up of the caves to vandals and plans to fill them in with concrete caused a public outcry.

The caves were cleared by volunteers from the 2418 Sherwood Squadron Air Training Corps and Rushcliffe School and opened to public tours by the Friends of Nottingham Museum in 1978.

[9] The basement walls here are all that remains of the buildings of Drury Hill, once a wealthy neighborhood in the medieval city that by the 19th century had degenerated into one of the worst slums in Britain.

[10] Some of the caves here were joined and expanded to house one of 86 public air raid shelters that were found in the sandstone beneath the city by February 1941 to protect its inhabitants during the bombing attacks of World War II, including a particularly severe one on 8 May 1941 that is recreated as part of the tour.