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News: Cavers Find Prehistoric Remains Beneath Pub Car Park
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Submitted by PaulM on Friday, 19 March 2004 Page Views: 1130
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  A group of cavers who became bored during the foot-and-mouth crisis today told how they discovered a hidden network of caverns under a pub car park. With the countryside off limits, members of the Bristol Exploration Club agreed to help to clear out a drain in the car park of the Hunters Lodge Inn at Priddy in the Mendip Hills in Somerset.
But rather than blocked pipes, the group was stunned to find a vast network of previously unexplored caverns.
Although the Mendips contain some of Britain’s best-known caves, including Wookey Hole, members of the 69-year-old club had no idea that the pub was positioned on top of some of the best Ice Age relics found for 150 years.
After digging and blasting under the car park for two years, the 15-strong team’s 6-metre deep entrance hole gave way to a 30-metre cavern containing prehistoric bones and an underground world of stalagmites and stalactites.
The hundreds of bones of extinct animals, including ancestors of bison and deer, are believed to have been washed into the caves nearly 10,000 years ago.
The last significant discovery of bones in a Mendip cave was at least 150 years ago.
Tony Jarrett, 54, the cavers’ team leader, said: “We have been digging for years in the area trying to discover new caves and expand previously discovered ones.
“But during the foot-and-mouth crisis, like other cavers, we had nothing to do. So we agreed with the landlord of the pub that we would have a look at his drain.
“There was just a two-inch fissure in the rock a natural one into which the rainwater from the pub roof and the car park used to drain.
“We suspected there was something down there the water had to escape somewhere. So we went down.”
Their exploits paid off and they went on to discover what Mr Jarrett describes one of the most exciting finds he had come across in 40 years of caving.
“We popped out into a cave of stalactites and stalagmites,” he said. “We expected something a little less dramatic and were amazed. Every time we found something it was not at all what we expected. It is very rare to discover something like this and it is of huge importance.”
The cavers have named the caverns the Pewter Pot, the Barmaids’ Bedrooms and Brown Ale Boulevard, in honour of the Hunters Lodge.
But they also believe that they may be close to breaking through into a much larger underground network.
Mr Jarrett said: “There are four passages and we know of two or three other systems which run towards the same complex.” Experts at the British Museum have identified the discovered bones as belonging to animals which roamed Britain during the last Ice Age. Many of them are now on display at the nearby Wells Museum in Somerset.
Source: The Scotsman 19/03/2004
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| "Cavers Find Prehistoric Remains Beneath Pub Car Park" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment |
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Re: Cave discovery (Score: 1)
by Spindrift on Friday, 19 March 2004
(User Info | Send a Message) | | Just goes to prove the old cavers adage - "caves is where you find 'em" | [ Reply to This ]
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