UBSS Monthly Newsletter

Welcome to the July edition of our monthly newsletter! Despite the summer hiatus, a lot has been going on, and do please keep the content coming. Contributions can be as short or long as you like, so if you have anything for future newsletters, please let me know. And don't forget to send us some Memories for the 100 Memories project! Any recollections of club life, caving or socialising will be very welcome!

Back issues of this newsletter can be found here.

Linda Wilson

FAREWELL TO SHEILA WATKINS

Sheila outside the hut with her leg in plaster.

I'm very sorry to report the death of Sheila Watkins on 12th July in Yeovil Hospital. During her time in Bristol in the mid-late 50s, Sheila served as museum curator. During a recent visit to interview her husband Angus for our Travels Beneath the Earth oral history project, Angus told the hair-raising story of how Sheila broke her leg in Rod's Pot. Geoff Fuller kindly tells the tale here. A full obituary of Sheila will appear in the next issue of Proceedings.

One Sunday, in 1954 (or was it 1955 ?) , a number of members were socialising in the Hut.

A suggestion was made to why not go and take a quick trip down Rod’s Pot and back; a small group concurred and set off with a 20 foot ladder.

For those who may not be familiar with it, Rod’s Pot is a small cave, the entrance situated at the bottom of a swallet along the track past the Hut. The first part of the cave is along a very narrow tunnel, complicated by a sharp right angle turn half way along, before entering a small chamber. From the chamber is a pitch about 18 ft deep, descending into another small terminal chamber.

The group, including Sheila, Harding Jenkins, Geoff Fuller and one or two others, entered the cave, laddered the pitch and descended to the terminal chamber (always leaving one at the top!).

The ascent went smoothly until Sheila’s turn came, Geoff remaining at the foot of the ladder. Sheila was near the top when she lost her hand-hold and fell. Geoff attempted to break her fall, but she hit the ground anyway.

Sheila was conscious but clearly hurt and in pain. The Mendip Cave Rescue organization were alerted and Dr Bertie Crook attended. A broken leg was diagnosed. A temporary plaster was applied to support the leg during the difficult task of extracting the casualty through the tortuous cave. The extraction was accomplished and Sheila was handed over to the waiting ambulance to take her the BRI in Bristol.

Visiting the following day, Sheila, leg plastered, was sitting up comfortably in bed. The local press got wind of the incident which then made headlines in the local newspaper, “----injured in a Burrington cave accident----“.

In Bertie Crook’s obituary in Proceedings, Tratman recalls that this was the first use of plaster underground for immobilising a fractured limb, in this case a compound fracture of a tibia and fibula

To everyone’s relief, Sheila made a full and uncomplicated recovery.

Sheila at the Freshers' Fair in 1955, together with Struan Robertson who was Hon, Sec. at the time.

CAREFUL WITH THAT AXE, EUGENE....

The usual scene of chaos on a hut weekend.

On the weekend of 13^th – 14^th July, a group of cavers indulged in the traditional UBSS pastimes of gathering wood, playing with axes, and having a barbecue and bonfire. There was even some caving done…

The weekend proved great for gathering some more interviews for our oral history project, with intern Nick Stromberg in the question master’s chair. First up was Isabel Buckingham, followed by Brian Collingridge (at the hut for the first time in 60 years!) and David Savage.

Brian Collingridge (left) and David Savage (right)

With all that was going on, Chris Pepper was pressed into service with his chainsaw to deal with some of the fallen wood around the hut. The trusty wheelbarrows trundled the cut wood down the hill, and Haydon Saunders promptly set about the chunks with an axe, doing a very impressive impersonation of the Incredible Hulk as chunks of wood flew everywhere, before being gathered up and neatly stacked in the store. Si Hadfield proved a master of turning large chunks of wood into kindling. The woodburning stove provided lots of hot water, making washing up immeasurably easier during the day!

Many thanks to Mark Tringham for his excellent barbecue skills! Large quantities of beef burgers and sausages were consumed, with Colin Rogers chopping down some nettles for his wild food specialities.

The caving party consisted of Haydon, Lauren, Si and Mark, with everyone else continuing to stock the woodstore. Also along for the evening were Helen and Richard Rossington, Dick Willis and Jan Walker.

Haydon and Si relaxing with a friend.

The wood store is now well set up for the winter, and there is still a lot of fallen wood in the vicinity, so another day of hunting and gathering would be good in the near future.

As many of you will know, UBSS member Dick Willis is one of the organisers of the Wilderness Lecture series, which every year brings together some of the biggest names in the outdoor world for a series of lectures in Bristol.

The latest programme of talks has now been announced. including caver and diver Andy Torbet, climber Peter Habeler and astronaut Helen Sharman. Check out the line up and get some dates in your diary now!

DISPATCHES FROM AUSTRIA

The view from the entrance of Top Camp. Photo by Pete Talling.

This summer saw various UBSS members joining the annual Cambridge University Caving Club expedition to Austria. Pete Talling reports...

Our top camp bivvi under the stone arch had to be dug out, as it was mainly plugged full of snow. But now there are big going leads at the north of main system (Balcony Hohle) and also major new caves further west (Homecoming and Fishgeschichte)- which are in the gap between our system (120km) and the nearby 220km one. There will be a 500km long cave there one day.

Outside Orgenhohle. Photo by Pete Talling.

We also de-rigged and pulled back the Orgenhohle mini camp, as there were too many fronts to work. We blew a 'last post' on a hosepipe that had been left that Orgenhohle camp, along with other odd items such as Haydon's body building powder.

Other UBSS members on the expo included Dickon Morris, Dan Heins and Andrew Atkinson.

Pete Talling

SAVE THE DATE!

Elaine Oliver in Clearwater Cave, Mulu, photo and image courtesy of Chris Howes.

On the weekend of 9th and 10th November, UBSS will be celebrating its centenary with a day of talks from members of the society and friends, followed by a day of field trips. Dr Rick Schulting is giving the keynote lecture, talking about bones from Charterhouse Warren Farm Swallet, first written up in Proceedings in 1988, that have now been found to have evidence of cannibalism. Rick's talk, entitled The darker angels of our nature: a butchered prehistoric human assemblage from Charterhouse Warren, will be the first presentation of the recent work on the bones. Cannibalism on Mendip is bound to be a crowd pleaser!

Other speakers include Andy Flack, Linda Wilson, Rhiannon Stevens, Ashley Gregg, Dick Willis, Elaine Oliver, Pete Smart, Dave Drew and Tim Atkinson. In addition, poster presentations are welcome from students, members and friends on research, speleological and archaeological, and exploration topics of relevance to the UBSS story and its place in the wider caving and archaeological community.

The symposium is kindly being hosted by the Geography Department on University Road and will be held in the same rooms we had for the AGM. Keep an eye on our website for further details.

IT'S AN HONOUR!

Graham and Linda at the alumni weekend showing off their medals. Linda received what was then known as the Convocation medal three years ago, making them the only couple to have both been honoured in this way.

At the university's reunion weekend in July, UBSS treasurer Graham Mullan was awarded the Alumni Association medal for long and outstanding service to the alumni community.

In addition to his work for the society as both treasurer and editor of Proceedings, Graham helped provide the nucleus of what has expanded to form a vast network of alumni who are now in contact with the university. This is the first time a non-graduate has received the prestigious medal and it's particularly fitting that this has been awarded during the Society's centenary year. Graham received the medal from Vice Chancellor Hugh Brady at the celebration lunch in the Wills Memorial Building.

THEY DON'T MAKE 'EM LIKE THEY USED TO!

Marjorie Crook's helmet.

Anyone who has been in our current rooms in The Stables will be familiar with the sight of Tratman's helmet and carbide lamp on one of the cabinets in the library. This is now about to gain a companion ...

Thanks to the generosity of the Manton/Crook family, Marjorie Crook's helmet has now been donated to the museum and will be joining Trat's helmet on display. Marjorie, the great-grandmother of current committee member Lauren Manton, wore this during her caving career in the 1930s and 40s.

Sophie (left) and Lauren Manton. Sophie started her caving career with Cardiff University.

The helmet is an unusual design and if anyone can shed any light on the type and the manufacturer, that would be great!

GRIMES GRAVES, NORFOLK

Grimes Graves, horizontal gallery. Photo by Graham Mullan.

Norfolk isn't the first pace anyone would think of when caving regions are mentioned, but that doesn't mean the county is without underground interest, as Graham Mullan explains....

For a few days in July, Linda and I took the campervan over to East Anglia. Linda wanted to investigate the medieval graffiti in some churches, and we took the opportunity to visit old friends, one of whom now runs a caravan site at the end of the runway at RAF Mildenhall (don’t ask!).

Not all our time was spent in churches; our hosts wondered what on earth cavers might find to do in the Fens and came up with the same answer that we had done. Grimes Graves, the only publicly accessible Neolithic flint mine in Britain.

The surface earthworks of the mines have long been recognised as ‘old’, Grime, or Grim being another name of the Saxon god Woden, but it was not until one of the shafts was excavated in 1870 by that both their age and function were discovered.

Several of the 400 and more identified shafts have been excavated and one of them has been kept open for visitors by English Heritage. “Shaft 1” is 9 m deep and is accessed by a fixed ladder – having first signed a form to promise EN that you won’t fall off it! This leads down into a roomy circular chamber from which a number of horizontal galleries radiate. These are illuminated but are grilled off to prevent access. They are quite low, less than 1 metre in height, and partially backfilled with chalk rubble.

To reach this depth, the Neolithic miners had excavated through thick layers of chalk and two beds of flint, before reaching the ‘floorstone’ seam which interested them the most.

The mines were worked between about 2,200 and 2,500 BC. Probably no more than one or two pits were in use at any one time but in total about 60 tons of flint were removed which could, in turn, have produced 10,000 polished stone axe heads.

One thing of particular interest is that abstract engravings attributed to the Neolithic have been identified in some of the shafts and I was hopeful of seeing some and comparing them to the Aveline’s Hole engravings now that the window in which they might have been made has been extended to at least the early Neolithic. Unfortunately, the engravings are not in the open shaft and annoyingly, none of the Neolithic flint mines that contain identified engravings seem to be accessible anywhere in the country, but a useful summary can be found in “Interpreting hidden chalk art in southern British Neolithic flint mines” by AnneTeather

So, if you do find yourself in the flatter part of the country, you now have no excuse for not getting underground. And remember, Grimes Graves is a much better place for this than on a bus in Norwich...

Graham Mullan

NORMAL FOR NORFOLK - 100 MEMORIES

Once upon a time on a Friday afternoon, Linda Wilson was whiling away the time before being able to disappear home, when a phone call disturbed the peace and provided an unusual alternative to conveyancing for the rest of the day...

In 1988, I received a rather bizarre phone call from a caver in Norwich, who informed me that a double decker bus had fallen into an old chalk pit, and he was concerned that the city council were just going to fill all the tunnels with concrete.

I got the call as, for my sins, I was then chair of the Council of Southern Caving Clubs. In response to my weak response that I didn’t really think our area went that far, he briskly pointed out that Norwich certainly wasn’t ‘Ooop North’. I then suggested he tried the Derbyshire Caving Council as they were probably geographically closer. His rejoinder: ‘They told me to ring you!’ rather put an end to my attempts to pass the buck.

I then spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone to the planning department, trying to convince them of the historic value of the mines. I think the wholesale deployment of concrete was at least temporarily foiled by my frequent mention of bats being protected species! I had no idea whether there were bats there or not, but neither did they, so the argument carried some weight. Fortunately, my boss at the time was caver and cave diver Mike Thompson who saw nothing in the slightest bit odd about me spending all afternoon, when I should have been working, talking to people about a bus down a hole on the other side of the country.

This incident, which even made the BBC news, makes an appearance in fiction as well, in The Chalk Pit by Elly Griffiths, a crime novel set in Norfolk starring archaeologist Ruth Galloway.

Linda Wilson

A MONTH IN THE MUSEUM

Adele Bricking sampling specimens from Backwell Bone Cave.

It’s been a busy month in the museum, with researchers from three different institutions paying visits.

July started with a visit from Rhiannon Stevens from UCL on the hunt for humans, as reported in the last newsletter. This was followed by three days spent with Tim Pearson and Olivia Loizides, both MA students from Royal Holloway, working on their dissertations. Olivia is looking to reconstruct the body mass of red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) through time (roughly over the last 120,000 years) by measuring fox bones and teeth and Tim is studying the bones from Rhinoceros Hole at Wookey, as well as the material from the nearby Badger Hole (held in Wells and Mendip Museum).

In addition, Adele Bricking, doing a PhD at Cardiff University on Iron Age Mortuary sites, came along to take some samples for dating and isotope work from Backwell Bone Cave, a site that is crying out for more work. More detail on all these visits will follow in future newsletters.

2019 CALENDAR

Don't forget to get these dates in your diary!

21st/22nd September, South Wales leader training weekend for current students in how to lead/second trips.

27th September, University of Bristol Students' Union Welcome Fair

25th-27th October, SUICRO Symposium in Carrick, Co Leitrim including the Irish launch for Caves of Mid-West Ireland.

12th-13th October, Freshers' Weekend at White Walls (or elsewhere).

19th-20th October, Freshers' Weekend at SWCC.

2nd-3rd November, Bonfire Weekend at the Hut.

9th - 10th November, UBSS Centenary Symposium in the School of Geographical Science. There will be a programme of talks on Saturday 9th November including the Bristol book launch for Caves of Mid-West Ireland, the successor to all the society's previous guidebooks to Clare and the surrounding areas , On Sunday there will be various field trips.