Belfry Bulletin BRISTOL EXPLORATION CLUB Vol. 3 No. 25
July 1949
IMPORTANT NOTICE 'TO MEMBERS IN THE BRISTOL AREA. As from Thursday July 7th. we are no longer holding our usual weekly meeting at 74, Redcatch Road. The great increase of popularity of these meetings has increased to an impossible number those who wish to attend with the result that the accommodation has now become inadequate. We hope to include with this BB a note stating that a room has been obtained, where we can carry on. As this room will cost a small sum each week those attending will be charged a small levy to cover this charge. The immense success of the club in the last few years has been in no small measure due to those Thursday meetings, and the club will always be in debt to the generosity of Mrs. Iris Stanbury who so willingly put up with hordes of cavers trampling over her carpets, dropping cigarette ash, and generally making themselves at home in her dining room. These meetings started in 1943, and have continued without break, except during illness or holidays until the present time. The business transacted on Thursdays with the Hon. Sec. can be arranged by phone until a new hall or room is obtained. Members are asked to use the Belfry as a meeting place and are reminded that all those things that, for a very short time, they will miss on Thursdays will return as soon as can fix it up. Subs, when due, can be paid either to Hon. Sec. or any committee man, and those who want helmets, lamps, or anything in that line can still get them as usual. ********************************** MORE STOKE LANE PHOTOS HAVE ARRIVED, SEND IN YOUR ORDERS. Price 6d. each these is a set of six of these really fine photographs available to each of the first 6 applicants. If you applied when out of stock, please apply again, as your order may have been mislaid. ********************************** Belfry fees. As no one objected to the proposed Levy of 3d. all belfry charges ass from 1st. July are subject to this extra charge. ********************************** Can You Find A Better Hole? By S.G. Treasure Stoke St. Michael or Stoke Lane, is a village situated on East Mendip mid-way between Wells and Frome. A Somerset guide book has described it as ‘compact but uninteresting’ – that being true up to a point. In this case, however, it is what cannot be seen is what matters. A geologist, for instance, would be in his element, as he would find coal, quartzite, limestone, firestone, sandstone and basalt. A pretty feature is the mill stream which runs through the village and enters a swallet in limestone rock about 800 yards from the village centre, reappearing at a spot known as St. Dunstans Well, some 1,000 yards away. For many years past boys of all ages have been going in and out of the cave without discovering anything worth while, and it was not until June 1947, that some members of the Bristol Exploration Club made a grand assault and pursued the passage through a water trap, finally coming upon what have been described as the most beautiful caves in Britain. After meeting these people and hearing their wonderful stories I felt, as Wilfred Pickles would say, that I wanted to ‘have a go’, so in July 1947, I joined a party led by Mr. Don Coase, including two doctors and a professor, and we entered the cave at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. We wriggled and squirmed for about 1,500 feet through narrow passages full of jagged rocks, and sometimes the crevices were so tight that we had to breathe out to squirm through.