E. A. B.
[STRENUOUS DAYS IN THE EASTWATER
SWALLET]
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.