Wookey Hole Caves () are a series of limestone caverns, a show cave and tourist attraction in the village of Wookey Hole on the southern edge of the Mendip Hills near Wells in Somerset, England. The River Axe flows through the cave. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) for both biological and geological reasons. Wookey Hole cave is a "solutional cave", one that is formed by a process of weathering in which the natural acid in groundwater dissolves the rocks. Some water originates as rain that flows into streams on impervious rocks on the plateau before sinking at the limestone boundary into cave systems such as Swildon's Hole, Eastwater Cavern and St Cuthbert's Swallet; the rest is rain that percolates directly through the limestone. The temperature in the caves is an annually average .
The caves were used as dens by cave hyenas. The caves have been used by both modern humans and Neanderthals over a period spanning around 45,000 years, demonstrated by the discovery of tools from the Palaeolithic period, along with butchered animal remains. Evidence of Stone and Iron Age occupation continued into Roman Britain. A corn-grinding mill operated on the resurgent waters of the River Axe as early as the Domesday survey of 1086. The waters of the river are used in a handmade paper mill, the oldest extant in Britain, which began operations circa 1610. The low, constant temperature of the caves means that they can be used for maturing Cheddar cheese.
The caves were the site of the first cave dives in Britain, undertaken by Jack Sheppard, Graham Balcombe and Penelope Powell in the 1930s. Since then, divers have explored the extensive network of chambers developing breathing apparatus and novel techniques in the process. The full extent of the cave system is still unknown with approximately , including 25 chambers, having been explored. Part of the cave system opened as a show cave in 1927 following exploratory work by Herbert E. Balch. As a tourist attraction it has been owned by Madame Tussauds and, most recently, the circus owner Gerry Cottle. The cave is notable for the Witch of Wookey Hole, a roughly human-shaped stalagmite that legend says is a witch turned to stone by a monk from Glastonbury. It has also been used as a location for film and television productions, including the Doctor Who serial Revenge of the Cybermen.
Description The original show cave consisted of a dry gallery connecting three large chambers, the first of which contains the Witch of Wookey formation. There are various high-level passages leading off from these chambers, with two small exits above the tourist entrance. The River Axe is formed by the water entering the cave systems and flows through the third and first chambers, from which it flows to the resurgence, through two sumps long, where it leaves the cave and enters the open air.
The river is maintained at an artificially high level and falls a couple of metres when a sluice is lowered to allow access to the fourth and fifth chambers, two small air spaces. Normally, however, these are only accessible by cave diving. Beyond the fifth chamber a roomy submerged route may be followed for a further , passing under three large rifts with air spaces, to surface in the ninth chamber – a roomy chamber over long and the same high. High-level passages here lead to a former resurgence, now blocked, some above the current resurgence.
Since 1974 a man-made tunnel leading off from the third chamber allows show cave visitors to cross the seventh and eighth chambers on bridges, and skirt around the ninth chamber on a walkway, before exiting near the resurgence. A second excavated tunnel, blasted in 2015, from the ninth chamber allows visitors to visit the 20th chamber.
From the ninth chamber, a dive of about passes almost immediately from the Dolomitic Conglomerate into the limestone, and descends steadily for to a depth of under a couple of high rifts with airbells (enclosed air spaces between water and roof) before reaching air space in the 19th chamber. The 20th chamber is at the top of a large boulder slope – long, wide, and high. From here a roomy passage some long ascends towards a now-blocked fossil resurgence in the Ebbor Gorge. The total length of passages in this area is about . A passage near the end connects with Chamber 24 near Sting Corner.
The continuation is found in the 19th chamber, where of passage descending to a depth of surfaces in the 22nd chamber – of dry passages at various levels with a static pool. The way on is within this pool at a depth of where of passage ascends to surface in the 23rd chamber – of large passage, followed by four short sumps that arrive in the 24th chamber. This is of what is described in the guidebook as "magnificent" river passage, high and wide, which finishes at a cascade falling from a long lake. There are also more than of high-level passages above the river. The way on continues underwater for some reaching a depth of before surfacing in the 25th chamber – called the Lake of Gloom because of its thick mud deposits. The sump at the end of this has been dived for to a maximum depth of before gravel chokes prevented further progress. The end is about northeast of the entrance.
Hydrology and geology Wookey Hole is on the southern escarpment of the Mendip Hills, and is the resurgence that drains the southern flanks of North Hill and Pen Hill. It is the second-largest resurgence on Mendip, with an estimated catchment area of , and an average discharge of per second. Some of the water is allogenic in origin i.e. drained off non-limestone rocks, collecting as streams on the surface before sinking at or near the Lower Limestone Shale — Black Rock Limestone boundary, often through swallets such as Plantation Swallet near St Cuthbert's lead works between the Hunter's Lodge Inn and Priddy Pools. It then passes through major cave systems such as Swildon's Hole, Eastwater Cavern and St Cuthbert's Swallet, around Priddy, but 95% is autogenic water that has percolated directly into the limestone.
The southern slopes of the Mendip Hills largely follow the flanks of an anticline, a fold in the rock that is convex upwards and has its oldest beds at its core. On the Mendips the crest of the anticline is truncated by erosion, forming a plateau. The rock strata here dip 10–15 degrees to the southwest. The outer slopes are mainly of Carboniferous Limestone, with Devonian age Old Red Sandstone exposed as an inlier at the centre. Wookey Hole is a solutional cave, mainly formed in the limestone by chemical weathering whereby naturally acidic groundwater dissolves the carbonate rocks, but it is unique in that the first part of the cave is formed in Triassic Dolomitic Conglomerate, a well-cemented fossil limestone scree representing the infill of a Triassic valley.
The cave was formed under phreatic conditions i.e. below the local water table, but lowering base levels to which the subterranean drainage was flowing resulted in some passages being abandoned by the river, and there is evidence of a number of abandoned resurgences. In particular, the passages in the 20th chamber are interpreted as a former Vauclusian spring, the waters of which once surfaced in the Ebbor Gorge. It is uncertain whether that was the original rising or whether it formed when the main rising at Wookey was blocked.
The current resurgence is located close to the base of the Dolomitic Conglomerate at the head of a short gorge formed by headward erosion with subsequent cavern collapse. The morphology of the passages is determined by the rock strata in which they are formed. The streamway in the outer part of the cave system that is formed within the Dolomitic Conglomerate is characterised by shallow loops linking low bedding chambers, or tall narrow passages, known as 'rifts', developed by phreatic solutional enlargement of fractured rifts. The streamway in the inner part of the system formed within the limestone is characterised by deep phreatic loops reaching depths as much as , with the water flowing down-dip along bedding planes and rising up enlarged joints. In the far reaches of the cave the passages descend to below sea level.
Prehistory Fossils of a range of Late Pleistocene animals have been found at Wookey Hole, including cave lion, cave hyena, Arctic fox, woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, Irish elk, brown bear, red deer, reindeer, wild horse, and probably steppe bison.Currant A., D. C. Schreve, The Quaternary mammal collections at the Sommerset Country Museum Taunton, The Quaternary Mammals of Southern and Eastern England, Field Guide, 2004, 101–109. During the Last Glacial Period, cave hyenas are thought to have used Wookey Hole as a den, particularly the eponymous "Hyaena Den", and were responsible for the accumulation of many of the animal remains found in the cavern.Tratman E.K., Donovan D. T., and Campbell J. B., The hyena den (Wookey Hole) Mendip Hills, Somerset, Proceedings of the University Bristol Spelaeological Society. (1971) 12, no. 3, 245–279. "Badger Hole", as its name would suggest, has been extensively used by badgers, who have disturbed its sediments.
Wookey Hole displays evidence of human activity extending back to the Lower Palaeolithic, as evidenced by a handaxe production-related flake in Badger Hole. Middle Paleolithic tools thought to have been created by Neanderthals been found in the caverns. These are thought to date to Marine Isotope Stage 3 (around 57-29,000 years ago). Most Neanderthal artifacts at Wookey Hole have been found in the Hyena Den, generally near the entrance, which shows evidence of on-site knapping.White, M., & Pettitt, P. (2011). The British Late Middle Palaeolithic: An Interpretative Synthesis of Neanderthal Occupation at the Northwestern Edge of the Pleistocene World. Journal of World Prehistory, 24(1), 25-97. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-011-9043-9 An incised red deer tooth found in association with these tools has a calibrated radiocarbon age of around 45,626–43,188 years Before Present (BP).
The Hyaena Den and Badger Hole have yielded stone leaf-shaped "blade points" of the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) technocomplex of the Initial Upper Palaeolithic,Piprani, J. (2016). Penetrating the “Transitional” Category: an Emic Approach to Lincombian Early Upper Palaeolithic Technology in Britain. (Ph.D. thesis) University of Manchester, Manchester. which have been dated based on associated remains in Badger Hole to 40-42,000 years ago. These stone points are now thought to have been produced by some of the earliest modern humans in Europe. A bone or antler projectile point fragment from the Hyaena Den has been considered of early Upper Palaeolithic Aurignacian type, and radiocarbon dated to around 36,578–34,964 years cal BP. Badger Hole has also yielded late Upper Palaeolithic Magdalenian-type artifacts from the Creswellian culture.Jacobi RM. 2000. The Late Pleistocene archaeology of Somerset. In Somerset Archaeology. Papers to Mark 150 Years of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, Webster CJ (ed.). Somerset County Council: Taunton; 45–52 Human remains dating to the Mesolithic have been excavated from Badger Hole, dating to around 8000-8500 BC.C. Meiklejohn, A.T. Chamberlain, R.J. Schulting "Radiocarbon dating of Mesolithic human remains in Great Britain "Mesolithic Miscellany, 21 (2011), pp. 24. Neolithic stone tools have also been found in Badger Hole. Wookey Hole was occupied by humans in the Iron Age, possibly around 250–300 BC.
History