From Myseries of Mercia - a book and facebook page....
A mysterious cave on the Malvern hills and an enormous lump of stone in a nearby village...what connects them?
This is Clutters Cave, an apparently man-made grotto within a volcanic basalt outcrop. Very little is known about it, not least who on earth "Clutter" was, but it's been mentioned in connection with various points in history going back to the medieval age.
Folklore claims that Owain Glyndwr, the legendary Welsh hero, hid in Clutters Cave after his abortive attempt to invade England and retreat from North Worcestershire. He was never seen again so it's as good a story as any. I've also been told that a hermit once lived in the cave, dispensing blessings and wisdom to those who climbed up the hills to see him.
Alfred Watkins, author of The Old Straight Track and father of the ley line concept, reckoned he had found a "door" to the cave a few yards away in a nearby gulley which was used as a "sacrificial stone" by "druids". He even got his assistant McKaig to lie on it as a "victim" to prove his point. Unfortunately for Watkins, we know that at least part of his theory was wide of the mark as his cave door is of a completely different type of rock.
So what about the big rock? This lies at the centre of the village of Colwall and folklore gives us a reason for its presence. Another name for Clutters Cave is "Giant's Cave" and the story goes that this giant lived on the Malvern Hills with his human wife.
One day he saw a man flirting with his good lady down in the valley where Colwall now lies. Erupting with rage as he watched the two of them giggling, he dug his hands into the rock and scooped out an enormous lump which he hurled at the pair down below, crushing them both. It was said that they lay under the rock for centuries until someone dragged it away to clear the obstruction, whereupon the giant put it back into place the next night!
Strangely, there is a record of a payment made to a local man to drag the current stone into position to replace "the stone that once stood there".
Some say that Clutters Cave is actually a Victorian folly, but nobody has any idea when it appeared. I find this unlikely as although Alfred Watkins did misidentify a few sites he surely would have been aware of something being just a few decades old. I've also seen a reference to it in a novel from 1883 and in the journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute from 1881, neither of which dismiss it as a folly.