The netherworld of Mendip : $b explorations in the great caverns of Somerset, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and elsewhereBaker, Ernest A. (Ernest Albert)
Science
The netherworld of Mendip : $b explorations in the great caverns of Somerset, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and elsewhere
Baker, Ernest A. (Ernest Albert)
Caves; Mendip Hills (England)
any known to exist elsewhere, and it requires a special explanation
to account for it. Only one explanation is possible. The Conglomerate
is here filling in some great pre-existing valley in the Mountain
Limestone. That is just what I should expect.
The great Limestone cavern formed by the action of the swallet streams
in early Triassic times collapsed, and formed a Limestone ravine, into
which was rolled a great accumulation of fragments of the Limestone
derived from the slopes and crags above. With the whole of this part of
England these beds were subsequently submerged, remaining so during the
deposit of the whole of the Secondary beds; and on their emerging once
more from beneath the sea the lines of drainage were re-established
along the old courses, where these had not been choked with sedimentary
material. Forcing a way through the Conglomerate which then impeded its
flow, the river formed those cavities which we see. Indeed, it may well
be that the successive levels cut by the Axe through the Conglomerate
may represent stages in the uplifting of the land, the lowest channel
being the last and largest, as it has been formed during an extended
period of stability. But we are not without evidences of another
sort as to the existence of some of our swallet ways at that remote
period. The cavities found in the Holwell quarries, near Frome, filled
in with Rhaetic material containing bones and teeth of fishes; those
of Gurney-Slade, near Radstock; and numbers which from time to time
are laid bare in the Limestone quarries, all filled in with Triassic
sediment, show that penetrating waterways of considerable size then
existed. There was, too, at Charterhouse-on-Mendip, north of Cheddar, a
fissure, possibly a swallet, which, being open, received an infilling
of Liassic material that is known to extend to a depth of 300 feet. Had
these channels been closed by a narrow aperture temporarily blocked,
no infilling but by water would have taken place when the land sank
beneath the waters of the Triassic and Liassic seas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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