Still piloted by our kind host, we walked across Burrington Ham and saw the brook which we had heard babbling amid the silence of Goatchurch Cavern flowing out, a strong body of water, at Rickford Rising, after a subterranean course of about two miles from its sources high up on Black Down.
Rickford Rising is in the Secondary beds, but a short mile up the beautiful Combe at whose outlet it lies, a Limestone ridge comes down to the road. Hard by the extremity is a hole in the rocky ground, now almost entirely choked with stones, but not so many years ago an open pit. It is known as the "Squire's Well." Here, in times of continuous rain, a body of water issues forth, often flooding the road. It seems to be connected with the water-channels that feed Rickford Rising, to which it acts as a safety valve. To open it would not be a very serious affair, and might discover something interesting.
At the back of Mendip Lodge, on the hill immediately west of Burrington Combe, the hilltop is cut up by innumerable ravines ending in swallets, the water of which comes to light again in a large stream in the Yeo valley near Upper Langford, about a mile away. Several of these swallets look as if they would repay the trouble of a little excavation; and the size of the stream at the point of issue indicates the existence of large cavities in the line of its subterranean course.
E. A. B.
[THE CORAL CAVE AT COMPTON BISHOP]
A cave just discovered near Compton Bishop, on the skirts of Mendip, furnishes valuable evidence in corroboration of the theory that the Limestone caverns of this region were formed at a period enormously anterior to that generally accepted. It is situated a little way up the slope of Wavering Down, only a short distance above the upper limit of the red marl laid down in the Triassic age, unconformably on the denuded edges of the Carboniferous Limestone.
We had been engaged in some exploring work in the Cheddar caves, the results of which were of a negative kind, but none the less important, as modifying the lines of costly excavation. Accompanied by the Messrs. Gough, the proprietors of the great cave at Cheddar, we proceeded late in the day to Axbridge, where Mr. Balch joined the party. Our goal was a certain cavern, explored about a century ago, and described by the antiquary Phelps, but now little known. This purpose was, however, not carried out that day, for in making inquiries about the cave as we passed through the village of Cross, we got wind of a cavern that had never yet been explored, and was therefore treasure-trove to such ardent cave workers. Two years ago, in blasting for stone to line a drinking-place for cattle, a farmer had blown a hole into the top of a subterranean cavity. Two 30-rung ladders were lashed together, so we learned, and a bold countryman, secured by a cart-rope, descended into the mysterious hollow, alighting on a slope of shifting stones and earth, whence he could see a second chasm, black as Tophet and of unknown profundity, yawning beneath him. No one would venture on this further descent; a rock was rolled against the opening to prevent sheep or incautious persons from tumbling in, and there for the time being was an end of the matter.