Stolen from ....
Elm Cave, Great Elm, Fordbury Bottom.
aka Fordbury Bottom Cave, Great Elm Cave
NGR ST 74637 48741 A 96 m L 39 m D 10 m
?400 yards upstream from the Mells River, 30 feet up the left bank in a rocky recess. A small entrance just below the Jurassic unconformity opens out into large phreatic tunnel descending to a boulder choke, This transects great geodes, whose big calcite crystals seem to have been unaffected by cave formation, if indeed they are earlier. Cf Bypass Geode, Cross Quarry Geode Crystal Pot etc. MCG excavated the boulder choke in 1956 finding a pool varying in level with the stream outside. Charles Moore, an early geologist, is said to have become stuck in this cave, having to be rescued by miners, and dying soon afterwards.? MCC p 70
Cope C J T et all page 13 The Final Years.
?In 1873 Moore lectured on his experiences in Mentone, France, where he had an enforced recuperation from a bad accident during field work in a cave on the Mendips. He was trapped by a rock fall in a cave in Murder Combe, and was a long time before he was rescued. This said Winwood (1892) was the cause of a long illness to which Moore eventually succumbed.
Winwood H H 1892 Charles Moore FGS and his work with a list of fossils types and described specimens in Bath Museum by Edward Wilson FGS Proceeding of the Bath Natural History Society and Antiquity Field Club 7 232 292 [ also published as a booklet by Bath Herald, Bath]
References:
Anon 1892 Bath Natural History Proceedings. Charles Moore FGS and his work: with a list of fossil types and described specimens in Bath Museum 233-269
Fossil types in Bath Museum 270-292
List of papers and communications fron Charles Moore FGS 270-292
No mention of cave accident.
Cope C J T, Taylor M A, and Tackray J C 1997 Charles Moore (1814-1881) Proc SANHCS (140) 1-3c6 [for 1996]
Log Entry Vol 37 No 101015 Cave not found, undergrowth impenetrable.
MCC p 70
Mitchell, David 1962 Caves and Swallets of Eastern Mendip by MCC Jl (3) 31-33
MU4 p 70