Location: Somerset Map
Human habitation: 50,000 years ago
Age of limestone: 400 million years
Known cave vandals: Alexander Pope
Wookey Hole Caves are limestone caves in the village of Wookey
Hole on the southern edge of the Mendip Hills near Wells,
Somerset, England. The River Ax flows through the caves.
It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) for
biological and geological reasons. The Wookey Hole cave is a
karst cave (English Solution cave), which is formed by
weathering processes in which limestone is dissolved in the
water. Rainwater also formed the cave systems of Eastwater
Cavern, St Cuthbert's Swallet and Swildon's Hole. The
temperature in the caves is constant at 11 °C. Part of the cave
system was opened in 1927 as a show cave. The caves have also
been used as a filming location for film and television
productions.
The discovery of tools and fossilized animal
remains from the Palaeolithic shows that the caves have been
used by humans for around 45,000 years. Stone and Iron Age use
continues in Roman Britain.
A flour mill was already in
operation from 1086 on the Axe. Around 1610 the oldest paper
mill in Great Britain started its work. Due to the caves'
consistently low temperature, they were also used for aging
cheddar cheese.
William Boyd Dawkins (1837–1929) began
excavating a hyena in the caves in 1859. Wookey Hole Caves and
Cheddar Gorge, ten kilometers away, are now inhabited by
colonies of the greater and lesser horseshoe bat, two rare bat
species.
The caves are the site of the first cave dives
in Britain by Jack Sheppard and Graham Balcombe. Since the
1930s, divers have explored the network of chambers, developing
breathing apparatus and novel techniques. The full extent of the
cave system is still unknown, although around 4000 meters (and
25 chambers) have been explored. The cave is known for the Witch
of Wookey Hole - an anthropomorphic stalagmite which legend has
it the witch was turned to stone by a Glastonbury monk.