Recent researches in Bench Cavern, Brixham, Devon

Abstract

About the end of March 1861, nearly two years after I had completed the exploration of the famous Brixham Cavern, more correctly known as ‶Windmill Hill Cavern, Brixham,″ information was brought to me that ‶another bone cave″ had just been discovered very near that town. I at once proceeded thither, and ascertained that the new ‶find″ was in the northern or Torbay slope of Furzeham Hill, between which and Windmill Hill the town of Lower Brixham mainly stands. Considerable limestone quarries have from time to time been worked in this slope, and one of them, known as Bench Quarry, had been all but abandoned as long ago as 1839; but quarrying had been resumed there in 1861, and had led to the discovery about which I had gone to inquire. The workmen had laid bare a vertical wall-like mass or dyke, composed of red earth, angular pieces of limestone, and bones, all cemented firmly together and to the back wall of the quarry. The base of the dyke was 96 feet above spring-tide low water, and its summit 123 feet above the same level. The dyke itself was 27 feet high, 12 feet long, and from 2 feet to 3 inches thick. It was obvious that the materials composing it had from time to time fallen into a narrow fissure in the limestone hill. Mr Wolston, the proprietor, informed me that, as early as 1839, the whole of the outer surface of the dyke was laid bare, with the exception