From two to three miles north of Wookey Hole, on the top of the Mendip tableland, is a broad, shallow valley, surrounded on every side by higher ground. It is a grey, desolate tract, with few trees dotted over its surface, but a thick belt of wood on the south, the dark green of which in summer, and the black stems in winter, make the grey landscape seem the more arid, gaunt, and desolate. The ruined engine house of a deserted lead mine does not add to the attractiveness of the scenery. But that is soon lost to sight in the vastness of the rolling tableland, which swells up in the distance to 1000 feet above the sea on Pen Hill to the east, and again to the same height at Priddy Nine Barrows on North Hill, the general brown tints of the heather and bracken showing that the Old Red Sandstone comes to the surface on these and the other saliences of the plateau. Within this shallow basin the rock is Limestone, and the causes of the existence of a valley without any visible outlet for its drainage are at once manifest. In many places the surface of the ground is scored and pitted by innumerable depressions of diverse shapes and sizes; roundish basins, steep funnels, craggy troughs with streams running in and disappearing, and mere dimples, grass-lined and perfectly dry. Through these swallets, or swallow holes, the whole of the drainage finds a vent, and all the material excavated by the forces of nature in the process of hollowing out this valley, has been carried off in the same way. The work is still going on. At Eastwater a little stream, flowing down a long ravine, suddenly comes against a Limestone cliff, and begins to burrow. Less than a mile away, another stream, big enough to be called a brook, pours into a cleft in the ground and is seen no more. This second swallow is known as Swildon's Hole, Swildon being a corruption of Swithin. Years ago, in the course of a lawsuit, it was proved that the waters about the village of Priddy, which stands on the edge of this upland valley, find their way into the Axe, uniting their streams somewhere in the heart of the hill between this point and Wookey Hole. When there were storms on the hilltop, or the upland waters were fouled artificially, the Axe came out turbid. That the area drained by the underground Axe is a large one is proved by the size of the river, which must be formed by the junction of a good many streams of the volume of Eastwater and the Swildon brook. Probably that area extends as far east as Hillgrove, where a series of swallets in a woodland ravine are now being enlarged by Mr. Balch, with a view to an exploration of the underlying caverns.

In 1901 Mr. Balch's party made a descent into Swildon's Hole, and got to a depth of 300 feet below the point of absorption, which is at the same level as the Eastwater Swallet and that at Hillgrove—that is, 780 feet above the sea. Difficulties having been put in the way of a more complete exploration by the owner of the field in which the swallet is situated, he turned his attention to the neighbouring stream of Eastwater, which, unfortunately, runs away through holes impenetrable to man, and therefore had not promised so easy a route into the unknown. Undeterred by the obvious difficulties, Mr. Balch set to work early in 1902, and, as he describes, made his way at last into the open passages underneath the swallet. In the course of two or three visits he reached a point nearly 500 feet below the cave mouth, and distant about 2000 feet in horizontal measurement.

ENTRANCE TO GREAT CAVERN OF EASTWATER.

Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth.

SECTION OF EASTWATER CAVERN.

(Click on map to see a larger version. Not available on all devices.)

He invited a large party to descend with him on March 18th, 1903, for a more elaborate exploration. Besides the leader, Mr. Balch, experienced cave explorers came from Oxford, Derby, Holmfirth, Glastonbury, and Wells. Driving up from Wells early in the morning, we donned our overalls at the mouth of the swallet. Everything was in readiness for the adventure, and at eleven o'clock or thereabouts the first man descended the artificial hole, 20 feet deep, into the enormous accumulation of loose rocks that extends for more than 100 feet into the head of the cavern. The blocks forming the sides of this shaft, and many of those beyond its foot, had been carefully underpinned with timber. Everything bore witness to the labour and perseverance spent in engineering an entrance. The baggage having been let down by a rope, we pushed on through the confusion of rocks by a maze of passages resembling the intricacies of the well-known Goatchurch Cavern, at Burrington, although the rocks, instead of being huge rectangular masses, were shattered into the most irregular forms and sizes, leaving holes between scarce big enough for a human body to squeeze through. The first explorers were two hours in finding a way through this bewildering labyrinth. Some of our men went head foremost, others crawled on their backs with feet in front. The rocks were water-worn and jagged, and often so rotten with the action of water laden with carbonic acid, that a finger could be thrust in up to the hilt, as into clay. We formed ourselves into a chain to hand on the luggage; this was a trying business, for we were taking down more than 500 feet of rope, besides a pick, a shovel, a bucket, various steel pulleys, an ample stock of candles, and provisions for three meals, to humour which through these unaccommodating passages was worse than coaxing one's own body along. Both horizontal and vertical openings occurred here and there, and had to be avoided carefully, one of the most important of these being a flood-way formed by the stream entering the swallet. It was curious to find a withy stick making desperate efforts to put forth leaves in the darkness, and succeeding in producing a long white sprout.

Suddenly the noise of falling water was heard, and the leading men called for the rope ladder. The masses of loose rock end abruptly. To the right a steep tunnel, called the 380-foot way, carries a small stream down; to the left is a large, irregular chamber; and beyond it, the main passages of the cavern. The ladder being secured, each man resigned himself to the inevitable drenching, and descended into the rugged cave at the head of the 380-foot way. A camera was got down so far, but most of the apparatus was left at the parting of the ways. Our road was now decidedly easier. The water-channel was rugged, but the roof rose fairly high, and there were few boulders. A large tunnel, cut in the solid rock, brought down a tributary stream on the right; on the other side, a horizontal tunnel was marked down for further investigation. The real termination of the 380-foot way has not been discovered. At present there is no passing beyond a choke of stones and gravel that fills it nearly to the roof; but Mr. Balch proposes to remove this.

We returned to the horizontal tunnel. It led into an extensive sloping chamber whose shape is peculiarly characteristic of this cavern. Roof and floor, roughly parallel, are inclined at an angle of fifty degrees. For a long distance there was space to creep along under the roof, then the space grew less, and at length the leading men shouted that they could get no farther. Being rather slighter in build than those who were in front, I made an effort to pass them, and succeeded by clambering along at a higher level. A hole between some choke-stones and a stalactite gave me admittance to a continuation of this extraordinary chamber. Then, dropping into a dry water-channel, I wriggled downward and downward, following the noise of some dislodged stones that rattled away to a considerable depth. At last I found it impossible to get any farther, though two more feet would have led me into a sudden widening that looked rather promising. The next man behind was unable to get within 50 feet of this point.

THE DESCENT OF EASTWATER CAVERN, THE SECOND
VERTICAL DROP.

From Sketch by H. E. Balch.

THE GREAT CANYON, EASTWATER CAVERN.

From Sketch by H. E. Balch.

After an exceedingly painful journey back to the mouth of the tunnel, we sat down to lunch, before re-ascending the rope ladder, and carrying our baggage through a series of awkward holes and pits, all deluged with water, into the big chamber at the head of the main passages. In this chamber, whose walls, floor, and roof are formed of gigantic blocks seemingly on the point of collapsing, is an opening in the roof, through which a stream comes tumbling in. At the farthest corner therefrom a large opening leads to the bottom of a chimney or aven. Great quantities of clay on walls and roof show that this cavern has frequently been filled with water through the choking up of the lower exit. The stream runs away into the rocky floor at the lower end of the cave, and a few feet above it is a flood-way, a short, low tunnel, through which we crawled. Then begins one of the most interesting portions of the cavern. In one of those broad, low-roofed fissures, inclined at the same angle of fifty degrees as the general dip of the strata, and formed, in fact, by the widening of a bedding-plane in the Limestone strata, a deep, winding channel has been cut by the stream we have just passed. It has been called, from its likeness, the Canyon. For a considerable distance our path lies down the Canyon, and with our heavy burdens we find the passage far from easy. As far as possible, we keep near the top of the ravine, straddling across. Sometimes, however, there is no help for it but to drop right to the bottom. Before we reach its termination, we have to climb out on the smooth, sloping floor of the main fissure, and wriggle forwards lying on our sides or on our backs. Foot-hold and hand-hold being singularly scarce hereabouts, we shall find this one of the most troublesome places in returning. On the right, we have a glimpse through a hole here and there of another great low-roofed fissure sloping at the same angle; then there are cross roads, with a tunnel on the left admitting to a stalactite chamber, and a passage on the right leading to the lower end of the Canyon.

We now reached the most constricted portion of the main channel. It is a low, roundish tunnel, with an S curve at the distant end. A good deal of our locomotion might be likened to crawling through drain-pipes; we were now coming to a sort of trap. The S bend has to be taken with the body lying on its right side. Once in it, the explorer cannot turn round, since the diameter every way only just admits a human body, and the three curves are close together. My candle went out half-way through, and to unjam my arm and get it down for the waterproof matches was a difficult and protracted operation. Moving the luggage through was a very severe task, the width of the hole at one spot being only nine and a half inches.

We issued into a good-sized passage. Immediately on the left a twisting fissure went down to the head of the first perpendicular drop; but, leaving this for a while, we spent nearly an hour exploring the lofty chamber straight ahead of us. It rises to an unknown height in a vertical fissure, narrowing gradually. At the bottom is a deep cutting, which some of us passed by back and knee work, at a height above the floor. On the left, that is the eastern, wall are openings into a parallel tunnel with good stalactites. At the far end both this tunnel and the passage itself are blocked with clay and gravel.[3] On our second visit, a day or two later, I explored a tunnel in the other wall 10 feet from the floor. It led into another of the vast sloping fissures already described, which I was too much exhausted to explore very far. These fissures, all inclined at the same angle, and either parallel or else lying in one plane, are most impressive features of the Eastwater Cavern; their extent is evidently enormous, and it seems as if only a few frail pillars of jammed stones served to prevent the great mass of the hill from settling down and crushing roof and floor together. On a more minute survey it may turn out that these are all portions of one huge fissure, merely partitioned off by different chokes.

It was four in the afternoon when we entered the twisting fissure leading to the first vertical descent, and two of the party had now to return. Through an oversight in not bringing a short rope for harnessing the pulley, nearly two hours were spent in rigging up the tackle, the situation being awkward for letting men down safely. We were ensconced in a little chamber, the boulder floor of which opened into the top of a narrow rift widening downwards, where, about 60 feet beneath, the walls funnelled into a yawning pit 60 feet deep. This pit had been explored previously, and was found to be choked at the bottom; it formed a safe and certain receptacle for anything lost or dislodged by persons descending the cliff above it. The configuration of our hole was such that only one man at a time could get a steady pull on the life-line, which ran over a pulley. A manilla rope was therefore let down from the same belaying-pin, for a man to climb up and down by, so far as he was able, the life-line being used merely as a safeguard. One by one the explorers dropped over into the abyss. The last three or four had the best of it, since, with a hauling party below, full use could be made of the pulley.

We were now drawing nigh to the final tug of war. A quarter of an hour of indescribable wriggling brought us to a narrow and lofty rift, into which as many of the party as it would accommodate wedged themselves, right over the second vertical drop. Much the same tactics were resorted to here, save that, instead of a fixed pulley, each man in turn had a large steel pulley belted to him, through which ran 200 feet of rope, one end fixed to a wedged boulder beneath us, the other end in the hands of the hauling party. A 90-foot manilla was, as before, allowed to hang free, as a guide-rope, over the crags, and enabled each man to do something for himself and assist those above. Only four men essayed this last descent.

The gigantic cavity into which we now dropped is one of the most savage and impressive things it has ever been my lot to see. At the top, over the heads of the hauling party, it runs up into the rocky mass of the hill as a vertical chimney, under the mouth of which lay what appeared to be a deep black pit. We alighted, one by one, on a sloping shelf that traversed the side of the cavity at a considerable height. Creeping along this ledge, we saw at the end of it a huge cavernous opening descending into darkness, with a mighty rock wedged across it like a bridge. The black, gaunt walls on each side of us were craggy and rifted; their surfaces glistened with streaming water. Our ledge ending abruptly, we dropped, hand over hand, on the rope, to the edge of a large pothole, into which a stream was rushing. At this point a tunnel goes off to the left, and, as it had not been explored, I was asked by Mr. Balch to proceed down it. Two of us crept and clambered and slid down a very dirty watercourse, till, at a distance of perhaps 50 yards, we found ourselves atop of a high clay bank, closely overhung by rocks, with a stream rumbling along to the south-south-west. I got within 10 feet of the water, but without a rope to get us up again we would not venture farther. We had now been in the cave nine and a half hours, and were too much fatigued to undertake new work. It was ascertained, beyond reasonable doubt, that a fine series of potholes that exist in the continuation of the great cavity must drain into the stream just discovered. Beyond those potholes, to pass which involves much hard work, is another cavity, and beyond that what?—at present no one can tell. All we know is, that the water finds its way ultimately into the vast reservoirs inside Wookey Hole; but whether there are other vast cavities, or merely narrow crevices and impassable clefts between, is a question that will require labours almost Herculean to solve.

In scrambling back along the ledge in the big cavity I gave the final shove to a dangerous loose rock weighing something like six hundredweight. It fell into the ravine beneath, and hurtled onwards toward the chain of potholes, making the whole grim place ring with a crash of echoes. It took us two hours and a half to return to the cave mouth, although we were unencumbered with apparatus, for we had left the ropes and pulleys in place for another descent. Getting seven men up the higher of the two vertical pitches was a tough undertaking at the end of an arduous day, and when we returned through the famous S tunnel more than one explorer seemed disposed to snatch a sleep on its procrustean bed. We had been twelve hours underground when we revisited the glimpses of the moon.

It had been proposed to continue the exploration next day, but no one was fit for such a repetition of exhausting labours. The day following, a party of three was mustered to recover the apparatus that had been left in the depths. Two of us reached the head of the nethermost pitch, and after hours of severe work got everything up to the mouth of the swallet. Once more we drove back over Mendip in the dark. All around us on the desolate plateau was impenetrable gloom, but in the northern sky, and it seemed but a few miles away, the lights of Bath and Bristol flared across the heavens like two immense conflagrations. Never does one feel the sublimity of the open, windy earth, the starry sky, and the free sense of space, so profoundly as after striving for a long day to break through the barriers that shut us out from the regions of mystery under the hills.

E. A. B.