Saturday 4th August, 2012
Through a post on facebook diggers group, we obtained information regarding Cutler's Green Sinkholes via Phil Hendy, which is over at Chewton Mendip. http://goo.gl/maps/oBHHL shows the google maps view, which was taken at the point (2006) where he had cleared the surface of the land, the gorge and much of the area now is grassed over. The history of the place is that 12 years ago a large carp pond was swallowed overnight by one of the shafts and the landowner Kevin, has been trying to get interested parties (mainly geologists and archaeologists via museums/universities) to come and dig it. After spotting an article on digging in the Mendip Times, he got in contact with Phil Hendy who passed the information out as 'diggers wanted'.
Trevor Hughes, Stu Lindsay, Stu Gardiner, James Begley and myself visited the site yesterday afternoon and had a chat with the landowner about digging the site. He showed us the shafts and talked at length about the history of the area and that some of the shafts have been dug reasonably deep with a digger and there was a gorge there as well at one point, and that the biggest and deepest of the shafts he had to fill in before it swallowed the fence and upset his neighbour! He has removed a number of finds of bones, fossils, petrified wood, coral and interesting rocks and has quite a large collection and is clearly quite passionate about his holes in the ground! There is at least 6 shafts looking worth attacking, although chances are they would potentially all meet up underground, which makes this the ideal project for any number of people wishing to be involved. Kevin has said he will deal with spoil removal with his digger, so we don't have to worry about that, we just need to get digging basically!
We are proposing to take over an A frame and winch on Wednesday night to get the ball rolling and also install a log book at the site so all digging at the site can be recorded. This blog will also be used for recording information and linking images and planning digging evenings/days. We would like this to become a nice project for anyone interested in digging and leaving the politics at home within any of the caving clubs, so if anyone is interested, point them in the direction of the diggers. I have given the regular White Pit diggers plus Stu, James and Trev rights to post here and will add anyone else as they join in.
With regards to photos, there are a number of free upload sites available, so any taken, please upload somewhere and post a link or pass to someone with more technical nous if you aren't sure how to!
I'm intending on using my google account for my photos and the ones taken yesterday by me of the site and some of Kevin's finds are to be found here - https://plus.google.com/photos/104708662744792505290/albums/5773157977179467425
Through a post on facebook diggers group, we obtained information regarding Cutler's Green Sinkholes via Phil Hendy, which is over at Chewton Mendip. http://goo.gl/maps/oBHHL shows the google maps view, which was taken at the point (2006) where he had cleared the surface of the land, the gorge and much of the area now is grassed over. The history of the place is that 12 years ago a large carp pond was swallowed overnight by one of the shafts and the landowner Kevin, has been trying to get interested parties (mainly geologists and archaeologists via museums/universities) to come and dig it. After spotting an article on digging in the Mendip Times, he got in contact with Phil Hendy who passed the information out as 'diggers wanted'.
Trevor Hughes, Stu Lindsay, Stu Gardiner, James Begley and myself visited the site yesterday afternoon and had a chat with the landowner about digging the site. He showed us the shafts and talked at length about the history of the area and that some of the shafts have been dug reasonably deep with a digger and there was a gorge there as well at one point, and that the biggest and deepest of the shafts he had to fill in before it swallowed the fence and upset his neighbour! He has removed a number of finds of bones, fossils, petrified wood, coral and interesting rocks and has quite a large collection and is clearly quite passionate about his holes in the ground! There is at least 6 shafts looking worth attacking, although chances are they would potentially all meet up underground, which makes this the ideal project for any number of people wishing to be involved. Kevin has said he will deal with spoil removal with his digger, so we don't have to worry about that, we just need to get digging basically!
We are proposing to take over an A frame and winch on Wednesday night to get the ball rolling and also install a log book at the site so all digging at the site can be recorded. This blog will also be used for recording information and linking images and planning digging evenings/days. We would like this to become a nice project for anyone interested in digging and leaving the politics at home within any of the caving clubs, so if anyone is interested, point them in the direction of the diggers. I have given the regular White Pit diggers plus Stu, James and Trev rights to post here and will add anyone else as they join in.
With regards to photos, there are a number of free upload sites available, so any taken, please upload somewhere and post a link or pass to someone with more technical nous if you aren't sure how to!
I'm intending on using my google account for my photos and the ones taken yesterday by me of the site and some of Kevin's finds are to be found here - https://plus.google.com/photos/104708662744792505290/albums/5773157977179467425
Some info on Mendip Motor Co:
ReplyDeletehttp://mikek.org.uk/friendsrlm/03_chewton_mendip.pdf
Seems Dennings were also the local butchers...
MCRA has the grid ref one square above, should be ST5977 5214