Jeremy Clarke, who sadly died too young this year, and Matthew Parris, both columnists in The Spectator, bought cave houses in France and Spain respectively.
In the closing decade of the last century this might have appeared eccentric – a fad for only occasional occupancy. Now it seems so sensible for year-round living. The interiors are cool in the hot, southern European summers and only minimal heating is needed in the winter. The construction cost has a carbon footprint the size of a Mini Cheddar and they are cheap to buy – from less than €50,000 to under €100,000 for Wilma Flintstone’s dream cave. Each cave is unique and they have all mod cons – mains water, electricity, wifi – everything except valet parking, swimming pools and tennis courts.
Norman Lewis, in Spain with his brother-in-law in 1934, makes these observations in The Tomb in Seville.
”We had already seen examples of humans living in caves within a few miles of San Sebastián, but it was here that we encountered the first of the true cave-dwellers of our days. These could have been villagers in cottages which through an earthquake of exceptional violence had toppled into holes in the earth from which roofs, chimneys, and even a window sometimes appeared. But on second glance they were obviously still too tidy to have survived a catastrophe. It was merely a matter of caves being rent-free and cool in summer as these were. And that, we were told, was the reason why in this area of Spain carefully planned and constructed caves were multiplying more rapidly than houses in many small villages.”
The most fascinating example of “cave dwellers” is the City of Matera in Basilicata where people craved their “homes” out of the mountainside not only for their families but also for their animals. How would we 21st century urbanites like to share our drawing rooms and kitchens with donkeys and chickens?