In Torquay Museum is an interesting collection of relics from Kent's Cavern. This is a cave in the limestone rocks that was first explored in 1824, when Mr. Northmore, of Cleve, near Exeter, visited it with the double object, as he stated, "of discovering organic remains, and of ascertaining the existence of a temple of Mithras," and he declared himself happy to say that he was "successful in both objects." An amusing example this of the egregious nonsense that was regarded as antiquarianism at the beginning of this century. He was followed by Mr. (afterwards Sir) W. C. Trevelyan, who was the first to have obtained any results of scientific value.
The Rev. J. MacEnery, a Roman Catholic priest, whose name must be for ever associated with the Cavern, visited it in the summer of 1825. The visit was a memorable one, for, devoting himself to what he conjectured to be a favourable spot, he found several teeth and bones; and he thus sums up his feelings on the occasion:—
"They were the first fossil teeth I had ever seen, and as I laid my hands on them, relics of extinct races and witnesses of an order of things which passed away with them, I shrank back involuntarily. Though not insensible to the excitement attending new discoveries, I am not ashamed to own that in the presence of these remains I felt more of awe than joy."
He communicated his discovery to Dr. Buckland, and from time to time dug into the deposits. At that and a long subsequent period the proper method of studying deposits of this kind was not understood, and the several layers were not distinguished. Trenches were cut that went through beds separated in age by many centuries, perhaps thousands of years, and no distinction was made between what lay near the surface and what was found in the lowermost strata. A proper examination began in March, 1866, and was continued without intermission through the summer of 1880 under the able direction of Mr. W. Pengelly, at a cost of nearly two thousand pounds.
Kent's Cavern gives evidence of a double occupation by man at a remote distance of time the one from the other. The upper beds are of cave-earth. Below that is the breccia, and in the upper alone are traces of the hyena found. In the lowest strata of crystalline breccia are rude flint and chert implements of the same type as that found elsewhere in the river-drift. In association with these were the remains of the cave-bear, and a tool was found manufactured out of an already fossilised tooth of this animal. The chert and flint employed were from the gravels that lie between Newton Abbot and Torquay.
Above the breccia is the cave-earth, in which flint implements are by far more numerous, and are of a higher form, some being carefully chipped all round. The earlier tool was fashioned by heavy blows dealt against the core of flint, detaching large flakes. But the tools of the second period are neatly trimmed. The flakes were detached, very often by pressure and a jerk, and then the edges were delicately worked with a small tool. A bone needle was also met with, and bone awls, and two harpoons of reindeer antler, the one barbed on one side and the other on both.
Rude, coarse pottery has also been found, but only quite near the surface, and this belongs to a later period.
There are other caves in the same formation, at Anstis and at Brixham, that have rendered good results when explored.
The two deposits are separated from each other by a sheet of crystalline stalagmite, in some places nearly twelve feet thick, formed after the breccia was deposited, and before the cave-earth was introduced. After the stalagmite had been formed, it was broken up by some unknown natural agency, and much of it, along with some of the breccia, was carried out by water from the cave, before the deposition of the cave-earth began.
"From these observations it is evident that the Riverdrift men inhabited the caves of Devonshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire in an early stage of the history of caverns, and that after an interval, to be measured in Kent's Hole by the above-mentioned physical changes, the Cave-men (those of the Second Period) found shelter in the same places. The former also followed the chase in the valley of the Elwy and the vale of Clwydd in North Wales, and the latter found ample food in the numerous reindeer, horses, and bisons then wandering over the plains extending from the Mendip Hills to the Quantocks, and the low, fertile tract now covered by the estuary of the Severn and the Irish Sea. When all these facts are taken into consideration, it is difficult to escape Mr. Pengelly's conclusion that the two sets of implements represent two distinct social states, of which the ruder is by far the most ancient."[38]