Caving Phil Hendy

Celebrating discovery

EACH year, cavers give an award to the team which has discovered and surveyed the most cave passage on Mendip or in Scotland. This is in memory of the late Tony Jarratt, a charismatic caver who seemed to live for the sole purpose of digging in caves. Last year, due to Covid lockdowns, the ceremony was brief and was videoed and shown on YouTube.

The 2021 event, the 13th, held on November 20th, was in contrast a crowded affair, held at the Hunters’ Lodge Inn as usual. Conviviality was assured as a subsidised barrel of beer was laid on, thanks to our hosts, Roger and Jackie Dors, and the group previously rescued from Eastwater Cavern.

The meeting was chaired by Mendip Cave Rescue chairman, Martin Grass, who started by making the award to Trevor Hughes and the Cainhillites for finding 173 metres of new passage in Stock Hill Mine Cave. This team had already won the award in 2019, for the discovery of 638 metres of passage in this cave.

In plan, the cave can be likened to the skeleton of a squashed frog. Two streams enter from the north and meet to disappear in the Diving Board Sump, which is too tight to dive. However, digging down into a side passage led to another sump five metres lower. The stream then heads west before vanishing.

Further up the cave, a muddy dig led to a large chamber, with a tight passage to the south where running water can be heard. This presumably is the main stream and is where future efforts will be concentrated.

Interestingly, an upstream rift passage has been found. It is high but narrow and lived in by bats, which cannot have come in via the cavers’ entrance. This means that there is a surface connection nearby, but only accessible to bats, otherwise it would have been located and dug.

The runner-up was Andy Watson and a Mendip Nature Research Committee team for their dig at Carrion Slocker, on Green Farm at Downhead, courtesy of F. and S. Brittan and their son Daniel, who now runs the farm. This dig in a rubbish-filled depression was started in 2016. After clearing and recycling the rubbish, a six metre pit was excavated in a wet shaft.

The water was led down in a pipe and digging continued. Most

With PHILIP

HENDY of the dig is in unstable conglomerate and there are many loose boulders. In 2021, the team extended the cave to a depth of 44 metres, with a length of 130 metres. They appear to have reached limestone at last and the cave is probably linked to the nearby Heale Farm Sink and Heale Farm Cave, which seem to drain towards Merehead Quarry. There was no entry from Scotland this year, as cavers in Assynt have been concentrating on stabilising cave entrances, and prospecting. After a short break to refresh our tankards, we settled back down to learn of progress in various other digs. Most interesting was a resume by Antony Butcher of the Shepton Mallet Caving Club of work at Gibbets Brow Shaft. This old mineshaft lies by the roadside in a field opposite Lamb Leer Cavern and is close to where in August 1957 Professor Palmer of Bristol University predicted the presence of a large chamber, similar in size to the Main Chamber in Lamb Leer, using georesistivity probes. A 50 metre entrance shaft leads to phreatic tubes. These meander tantalisingly close to the Main Chamber and a breakthrough is the chief object of the dig. At present, a six metre shaft has been dug to a solid floor, with a large phreatic passage leading off. This is mud-filled, and prone to flooding, so the dig is squalid and wet. It appears to be five to ten metres above St. Valentine’s Series in Lamb Leer, where many years ago a Wessex Cave Club team dug briefly in a very tight passage leading west from December Chamber. Antony has access to gravimetric and magnetometry equipment and has been trying to replicate Palmer’s findings. Gravity readings from the surface clearly show the position of Main Chamber, but although there are some anomalies, nothing indicates the presence of Palmer’s Chamber, which many cavers believe to be a fallacy anyway. Young members of the Cave Diving Group have been active in Rickford Rising, one of the main springs rising from the north side of the Mendips. Diving in clear water against a strong current, a gap was seen behind a boulder. This took some ingenuity to remove, but it revealed a descending rift filled with gravel. This is slowly being removed, and the divers have achieved a depth of five metres. In conclusion, Pete Glanvil described some digs he is involved with on the Quantocks. Most of these are shelters exposed in the past by small-scale quarrying. One “lost” cave turned out to be surprisingly open, and visited relatively recently! Efforts are also being made to reopen a disused copper mine, which is believed to have entered natural cave. Overall, a lot of digging is taking place on and under Mendip, which shows that small groups of determined cavers can overcome the Covid lockdown restrictions to continue their journey into the unknown.

Some of the winners The audience