on its south side presents the loftiest face of absolutely vertical
rock in England, is not dissimilar, though far superior in height
and grandeur, to the Winnats pass in Derbyshire. The huge chasm runs
east-north-east across the dip of the Limestone beds, which are tilted
up towards the saddle of Mendip; one of its sides, consequently, is
formed mainly of shelving rock, and the other is almost continuously
precipitous. If, as may be assumed with confidence, the original
cause of the ravine was a stream or streams flowing through a chain
of caverns, one would naturally expect to find openings on the abrupt
side through which the underground waters were successively tapped,
and followed the trend of the strata to a lower level. This view is
confirmed by observation. Except at the jaws of the defile, where
both sides are equally high and precipitous, there are no caves on
the northern side, but on the south openings both large and small
are frequent, some narrow and lofty--"slitters," they are called
locally--the others low and wide, according as they originated in a
vertical joint or a bedding plane. They occur at various levels, some
on inaccessible shelves high up in the cliffs, others along the base.
But the larger number of these openings have in the lapse of time
become silted up with clay and débris, so that the entrance is either
completely masked or it is impossible to penetrate far without toilsome
work with pick and shovel.
After exploring the Great Cavern our party of four devoted some time
to an examination of these openings, so far as could be done without
excavating. There are three important caverns in close proximity to
the Great Cavern, or Gough's. The best known is Cox's, a small but
exceedingly beautiful stalactite cavern (see frontispiece). No one
interested in caves would think of visiting Cheddar without seeing
the Great Cavern, nor would any such person dream of missing Cox's.
Each is the complement of the other as a piece of underground scenery.
The spacious vaults and vast stalagmite falls of the one fill one
with a sense of power and majesty; the other is a gem of fantastic
architecture, embellished with the most lawless and fairy-like designs
of the subterranean artificer, and unique in one respect--the wealth
and diversity of the mineral deposits that have dyed its multiform
incrustations with luminous tints. No sane man, however, would attempt
to describe Cox's Cavern in detail, and a photograph can give only
colourless glimpses of its kaleidoscopic beauties. The cavern seems,
at first sight, to be a solitary freak of nature, having no connection
with the general system of caves and streams. But since the visit just
referred to, several new passages have been opened, among them the
interesting water-tunnel with its ebb and flow corresponding to the
movements of the Cheddar Water outside, which, as already described,
flows at a higher level. Of three other good-sized fissures or ancient
channels radiating from the same large chamber, two after a while
dwindle away almost to nothing, but the third has indications of a
channel striking downwards, which it might be worth while to clear of
rubbish. All these passages were choked with clay until quite recently.
[Illustration: IN COX'S CAVERN AT CHEDDAR.
_Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth._]
[Illustration: GREAT RIFT CAVERN, CHEDDAR GORGE.
_Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth._]
The next cave also is of minor interest to the speleologist, although
it contains many curious sights. It is called "Gough's Old Cavern,"
and its entrance is close to the mouth of the Great Cavern. It is an
ascending cleft, apparently not linked at present with the other caves,
although it was once probably a sloping aven draining into the big
series of caverns that have been gradually cut back by the falling in
of the defile. Whoever likes such things may find here plenty of those
freaks and alleged similitudes that puzzle and delight the ordinary
sightseer. On a stalagmite excrescence nicknamed the "Ribs of Beef" we
had the luck to see a far more interesting phenomenon. The calcite mass
was clustered over with a number of motionless black objects, which
we found to be roosting bats, hanging head downwards by their claws.
They were not disturbed in the least by our presence, and one that
was lifted off gently just showed his teeth and claws, and clung on
again as fast as ever when replaced on the rock to resume his patient
sleep. A photograph of this curious sight was obtained by means of the
flashlight. At the head of the cave are several incrusted grottoes,
where the process of deposition is still going on, roof and walls
streaming with moisture. This part is not unlike the show places in the
Bagshawe Cavern in the Peak of Derbyshire.
In many respects the Roman Cave is much more interesting. Its mouth is
situated about 150 feet up the cliffs, almost immediately over the cave
just described. Quantities of Roman pottery, coins, bones, and other
remains, have been discovered there, showing it to be one of the places
that sheltered fugitives after the evacuation of Britain by the Roman
legions. The entrance is a broad anticlinal arch, and the main passage,
high-roofed and ascending gradually, runs east for perhaps a furlong.
Then the floor, which has been covered with earth and stones, becomes
rugged and rock-strewn, and suddenly we creep through a lowly portal
into a high and gloomy chamber, the shadowy corners of whose roof
our lights are too feeble to explore. To all appearances this was the
end of the cavern; but we had been told that the passage takes a turn
here and goes on nearly a quarter of a mile farther. We scanned every
part of the walls as far up as we could see, but no accessible opening
disclosed itself. In a recess on one side a number of fallen rocks
were piled up and wedged between the converging walls. To examine the
cavity from a vantage spot, we climbed with a good deal of difficulty
to the top of these, and there, to our astonishment, a wide passage
sloped up at right angles to the one we had entered by. A curious slit
in the wall opened into a perpendicular fissure that was situated right
in the roof of the latter, and through the hole we caught a glimpse of
our friends following us up. Three men now pushed on up the new passage
and entered a chamber whose sole exit was a small and uninviting hole.
We crawled and scraped through, and on over sharp stones till at last
we could get no farther. We had evidently doubled back over the main
cavern, and that we could not be far from the open air was shown by
the presence of a bewildered bat, who flew to and fro in the confined
space and hit us in the face several times. And in the extreme recess
of this narrow branch a steady draught of air blew in through a crevice
and nearly put the lights out. Through an oversight we found ourselves
at this point reduced to two tapers and a bit, and to economise we
kept only one alight at a time, so as to have enough for the return
journey. All went well, however, and the sole difficulty we met with
was in getting down over the wedged blocks in the big chamber, a climb
that proved extremely awkward when taken the reverse way. In many
parts of this cavern we noticed prodigious quantities of moths on the
walls, as well as many huge spiders. But a more interesting thing was
the vegetation naturalised in the caves, examples of which we found
in other Mendip caverns as well. It will be advisable to have them
examined by a botanical specialist. All I can say about them now is
that they consist of extremely slender branching tendrils, some white
and translucent, others brownish, thin as cotton.
It was late in the afternoon when we entered the Roman Cavern; it
was dark now, and the stars were out. Returning in advance of the
others, I sat down just within the majestic gateway of the cavern, a
flattened arch about 100 feet wide resting on enormous rocky jambs, and
looked out across the deep wooded abyss where Cheddar lay, its lights
reflected here and there by the dark waters of the mere, towards the
craggy heights of Mendip opposite, just sinking down towards Sedgemoor.
The Great Bear was shining brightly right in front--it almost spanned
the breadth of the cave mouth; and the solemnity of the place and
the hour could not but bring to mind the miserable fugitives who sat
in this forlorn asylum, hemmed in by foes, and looked out on the
same giant constellation thrice five hundred years ago. The place is
admirably adapted for defence. A rear attack was of course impossible,
whilst a frontal attack by way of the cliffs would be easily repelled;
and a tolerable water-supply was to be found inside the cavern. The
huge natural glacis of the fortress is covered to-day with a dense
tangle of ivy and other climbers, through which we made our way
heedfully, for a slip would have been easy in the dark, and a terrible
fall the consequence.
Next morning we strolled up the defile and looked at the mouths of
several caves that are now choked up. Two furlongs above its entrance
the ravine makes a double curve like a gigantic figure three. The
two crescents of beetling Limestone, with their jutting horns, that
appear to the astonished beholder underneath like towering pyramids
and slim aiguilles, rise to a vertical height of 430 feet, and,
being absolutely unassailable, they fill a crag climber's mind with
admiration tempered by regret. What enhances their grandeur, while it
softens the savage aspect of the sheer and ledgeless precipice, is the
bountiful vegetation clinging wherever it can find a hold, dark shrouds
of ivy and darker masses of yew standing out against the grey rock in
beautiful relief. Would the indomitable scramblers who haunt Lakeland
at Easter, we asked ourselves, have forced a way up these tremendous
"chimneys" if the Cheddar cliffs had been pitched somewhere in the
latitude of Wastdale? We went so far as to reconnoitre one alluring
fissure, 200 feet or more in length, but the gap between its base and
the first feasible lodgment was insuperable. Not far away a long talus
of scree marks the foot of an easy though rather sensational way to
the cliff top. Passing it by, we stopped at the mouth of a vertical
fissure that opens on to the roadway. It expands slightly inside, and
the roof soars higher and higher; then the floor breaks away, and the
two men who descended the next 80 feet had to be steadied by the rope.
The walls were wet and soft, being incrusted with a sticky calcareous
substance. At the bottom of the precipitous slope the magnesium ribbon
revealed the enormously lofty walls of a narrow chamber, whose farther
extent was blocked up by an accumulation of rocks and débris.
Returning to the open air, we ascended to the cliff top, and, skirting
each promontory and rounding the edge of every bay, proceeded towards
the mouth of the defile on the lookout for openings. Not far from the
highest point we had noticed from the road a series of dark cavities.
One man scrambled along a ledge to the uppermost of these, and found
that it was merely a shallow niche, and another, on a ledge some 50
feet lower, proved to be only 20 feet deep. He made a determined effort
to reach another fissure on the same level as the last but sundered
from it by a wide space of cliff which was covered with dense brambles.
Holding on to the prickly stems, and fighting his way through, he got
near enough to see into the fissure, but was quite unable to enter
it for a closer examination. An opening in the cliffs at a lower
point, but still some 200 feet above the road, led a long way into the
recesses of the Limestone strata, making two wide curves to the right,
but maintaining a generally easterly direction. The passages were very
low, narrow, and awkwardly shaped, involving a great deal of unpleasant
crawling; and when we reached the stalagmite grotto at the end we
found that it had been pillaged of every bit of calcite that could be
removed. This cavern, the "Long Hole," must have been the channel of a
stream that once flowed from somewhere on the other side of the gorge,
through the mass of rock that has now been swept away by the forces of
disintegration. Though several hundred feet long, it is but the tail
end of the cavern that once existed.
The remainder of our time was devoted to two of the Burrington caverns,
on the opposite side of the Mendip Hills, and to a fruitless search
for a large chasm or swallet hole into which the drainage from the now
abandoned lead mines on the top of Mendip used to fall and ultimately
find its way to Cheddar, where it poisoned the trout stream. A score
or more of years ago I saw these mines, still in working order; but
now the dried-up pools and the wilderness of refuse, with fragments of
ruined buildings, look as old almost as the remains of the Roman mines.
Of the important opening that we sought there is now no trace; it may
have been filled up intentionally and the stream allowed to revert
to its old channel, whence it had been turned artificially. Hard by,
in the Long Wood near Charterhouse, and elsewhere, there are smaller
swallets that we were already acquainted with; and there are others at
Priddy, the waters of which find an exit farther to the east.
The ground we were on is well known to readers of Walter Raymond's
romances, and we were much interested when it was pointed out that the
lonely house facing us was the actual Ubley Farm that figures in _Two
Men o' Mendip_.
E. A. B.
THE BURRINGTON CAVERNS
Burrington Combe is a smaller Limestone defile on the north side of
Mendip--that is to say, the opposite side to that of Cheddar. It is
smaller, and because of its proximity to Cheddar it has to suffer
disadvantageous comparisons. Anywhere else the grandeur of Burrington
Combe, the magnificence of its crags, with dark, heather-clad Black
Down lowering behind them, and the beauty of the copses that lurk in
its corners and clamber up its precipices, would excite the admiration
of guide-books and attract crowds of tourists. Like the Cheddar defile,
Burrington Combe was doubtless formed by the gradual destruction of a
series of caverns, and there remains of that series a number of caves
or openings of blocked-up caves on either side of the ravine. Of these
the most important and the only one well known to speleologists is
Goatchurch Cavern, which was explored by Professor Boyd Dawkins in
1864. The next in importance is Aveline's Hole, discovered in 1796,
but not explored till 1820, when about fifty human skeletons were
found lying side by side with their weapons, a stalagmitic crust
sealing bones and implements to the floor. This cavern has since had
its mouth silted up by drainage from the road, so that troublesome
excavation will have to be undertaken before it can be entered again.
It would well repay a thorough exploration, for it is reported that
a natural pit, covered by a slab, has never yet been descended, and
leads probably into important cavities. Foxe's Hole is interesting for
its curious bosses of tufaceous stalactite. A nearly vertical cave,
Plumley's Den, has been stopped up with a plug of timber and stones
at the depth of 80 feet, in consequence of a fatal accident to a man
who tried to descend it in 1875. At a level probably a few feet below
that of the caves whose destruction was the origin of the Combe, a good
road with a grassy margin now ascends towards the top of Mendip, where
it joins the old Roman road that runs from "Severn Sea" to Old Sarum,
along the crown of the ridge.
Our waggonette when we left the Bath Arms at Cheddar was piled up with
ropes, cameras, gas cylinders, condensers for the searchlight, and an
incredible amount of needful and superfluous things, for we were quite
unable to say what would be wanted. Climbing to the miniature mountain
pass across Mendip at Shipham was hard work for the horse, and we
walked up the hill. Dr. Sheldon and Mr. Bamforth were my companions.
Our clothes, still richly daubed with the clay and mire of the Cheddar
caverns, made our appearance both business-like and picturesque. The
north side of the Mendips is very different from the bleak and craggy
slopes on the south. From the broad bare top of the hills down to the
valley stretches, almost continuously, a deep mass of trees that looks
in the distance like a wall of dusky verdure. We drove between orchards
where great bushes of mistletoe grew on nearly every tree, till we
were within a few hundred yards of Burrington village; then, turning
towards Mendip, we drove through more orchards, till suddenly the rocky
entrance of the Combe appeared and we heard the clink of pick and
crowbar in the Limestone quarry not far from Plumley's Den. Half-way up
the gorge makes a sudden bend towards the east, a little below which
point a shallower ravine comes in on the other side. About 120 feet
above the bed of this dry ravine is the entrance to Goatchurch Cavern.
We coaxed the horse over the stony turf and up the ravine till the
roughness of the ground and the thickness of the bramble bushes stopped
him. At this point we were met by the lord of the manor, Mr. James
Gibson of Langford, who is the owner of the Burrington caves. His men
assisted us to get our apparatus up to the cave mouth, and afterwards
convoyed us and the luggage throughout the less difficult parts of the
cavern.
A few years ago the entrance to Goatchurch Cavern was an insignificant
hole, through which adventurous boys used to crawl as far as the
first considerable chamber, where Professor Boyd Dawkins found a few
remains of extinct animals. Owing to the depredations which were made
by neighbouring villagers in search of specimens of calcite, Mr.
Gibson recently had the entrance enlarged and closed with a padlocked
gate, the public being admitted only on certain days of the week or
by appointment. It is a pity this step was not taken before many of
the finer stalactites had been carried away. In this long chamber,
the floor of which is covered with sheets and bosses of dripstone, we
entered some of the funnel-shaped openings in the roof by means of a
ladder, but soon perceived that no discoveries were to be made that
way. At the end of the chamber a precipitous hole goes down to the
left, and fixed ropes are used for getting into the lower galleries.
We found ourselves at once entering on a maze of passages, where
the presence of our guides saved valuable time. So intricate and
bewildering are these ramifications that Mr. Balch tells me that he
discovered a passage some years ago that led him eventually to a much
deeper part of the cavern than had ever been reached before, but every
attempt to rediscover the passage since has failed. In spite of our
efforts to examine every branch of the various passages, we also missed
this important link. It would seem that the solid mass of the hill has
been shivered here into vast, roughly cubical fragments, between which
lie the irregular passages and narrow chambers of the cavern. Many
tempting galleries lead the explorer on and on till they dwindle to a
mere rabbit hole, or till he finds himself wedged in the cleft between
two enormous surfaces of rock. Disorderly accumulations of boulders
and splinters cover the floor; there is hardly a level spot anywhere,
and it is desirable to explore every yard carefully with a taper or a
lantern to avoid the consequences of a rash step. We crawled on hands
and knees and wormed along through insignificant holes, making our way
into spots that had probably not been inspected before; but we always
came back to the main channel, where our guides were waiting, having
made no noteworthy find.
Assembling again in a more roomy chamber, about 140 feet below the
entrance, we all proceeded along a tunnel that showed evident traces of
the action of a stream to another chamber, where the sound of running
water came up from a grim-looking chasm. Only two of us went beyond
this point. The rest secured the rope, whilst we climbed down the
steep hole into a large cavern through which the stream runs from the
swallet hole in the ravine outside on its way to Rickford Rising, where
it issues in considerable volume. The stream has a somewhat puzzling
course after leaving the cavern, for it runs underground athwart
Burrington Combe and through the solid hill opposite, Burrington Ham.
This stream, as Professor Boyd Dawkins pointed out, was doubtless the
originating cause of Goatchurch Cavern, running in at the present
mouth, which is now dry. The ravine outside has since been hollowed
out to a further depth of 120 feet, and the stream finds its way in at
a lower level. The Professor also describes a very pretty experiment.
Having taken the temperature of the stream before it enters the cave,
he tested it again after it had run some distance underground, finding
that it was here several degrees cooler. It is obvious that a colder
stream must have joined it at some unknown point midway.
The nethermost series of chambers and passages are not very different
from those above, their shape rugged and irregular, and their floor
heaped up with fragments of all sizes. We reached no lower point than
that attained by previous explorers--that is, 220 feet below the
entrance, as measured by aneroid. Squeezing with difficulty through
the deepest fissure, I found myself in a small cave, whence, turning
round, I only perceived one exit. It looked and felt so small that I
despaired of pushing through and turned to go back, when it suddenly
occurred to me that this was the hole I had come in by, and there was
no other way out. Such little incidents often happen in cave work,
but most often in such a complicated network of tunnels and fissures
as the Goatchurch Cavern, where we were quite convinced that an
important passage ran due east until the compass assured us that the
direction was west. Clambering up a steep bank of stiff clay out of the
lowest cave, we reached a vaulted grotto with a cascade of stalagmite
flowing down one side. On the edge of this a sloping passage disclosed
itself, lined with stalagmite, and we ascended it in the expectation
of finding something new. It brought us by an easy scramble back to
the upper cave, whence we had descended on the rope; and with little
more deviation from the main passages we made our way back to the cave
mouth, where a well-earned lunch was waiting.
But little time was wasted in examining the silted-up entrance to
Aveline's Hole and another cave mouth, and the next halt was made at
Plumley's Den. Tying two Alpine ropes together, a pair of us descended
this ancient pothole as far as the artificial pile of débris that
blocks it up. One man was hit rather severely by a dislodged stone--a
serious danger in caves of this sort--and in returning he dropped and
smashed his acetylene lamp. The hole is effectually plugged, a tree and
a quantity of stone having been flung in after Plumley's fatal mishap;
and until Mr. Gibson carries out his proposal to remove the stones that
block it, the 200 feet which are said, on doubtful authority, to lie
beyond can never be explored. Mr. Gibson also proposes to bore a new
entrance from the Combe into the lower series of caves at Goatchurch.
Above Plumley's Den a magnificent rib of Limestone, like those at
Matlock, springs nearly to the hilltop; and over the way a picturesque
pile of crag comes out to meet it, and is known as the "Rock of Ages,"
from the tradition that Toplady, the divine, taking shelter under it
from a storm, composed his famous hymn there.
Still piloted by our kind host, we walked across Burrington Ham and saw
the brook which we had heard babbling amid the silence of Goatchurch
Cavern flowing out, a strong body of water, at Rickford Rising, after
a subterranean course of about two miles from its sources high up on
Black Down.
Rickford Rising is in the Secondary beds, but a short mile up the
beautiful Combe at whose outlet it lies, a Limestone ridge comes down
to the road. Hard by the extremity is a hole in the rocky ground, now
almost entirely choked with stones, but not so many years ago an open
pit. It is known as the "Squire's Well." Here, in times of continuous
rain, a body of water issues forth, often flooding the road. It seems
to be connected with the water-channels that feed Rickford Rising, to
which it acts as a safety valve. To open it would not be a very serious
affair, and might discover something interesting.