Does anyone know anything about this little cave?

I remember poking about in it a long time ago while on holiday in Perranporth - it's a sea cave, accessible at low tide, but with fresh (?) water flowing into it producing a series of gour pools.

My explorations were limited by lack of equipment and a young family (Come on, Dad! We wanna play on the beach!) but I managed to get some way in before being dragged out to build sandcastles.

Found a page about it on the Internet, but unfortunately it's in German.

http://www.lochstein.de/hoehlen/Gb/holy/holy.htm

The mechanically translated page is interesting, but not very helpful:

"In the Holywell Cave immediately that there are there correct dripping fancies also once, “flow clay/tone” are there called the stones are noticeable. The “holy source” fit naturally the sinter basins, which give it at one time there. Full waters are they. You can in-dip, to something take your hand out, you wash with it. Hilfts which? Perhaps. Anyhow does it surely also nothing harms. "

Does anyone know any more about the place?

Roger

I know quite a bit about it. It's on the east side of the beach, accessible at low tide, and has a triangular entrance with the beehive stal flow up one side leading into a little chamber. The practice has now been abandoned, but up until quite recently locals used to hold a church service in there with candles on the flowstone. The cave is in Devonian shales and the stal flow is derived from a thin calcareous bed which has also deposited tufa at other points in the bay.

On the other side of the bay there is a sea cave about 40ft high but quite narrow with a waterfall entering from the roof. This is East Wheal Golden, an unsuccessful lead mine. I scaled the waterfall to find about 500ft of adit ending at a choked shaft.

It's possible to also get into Wheal Golden by abseiling down crumbling cliffs near the headland and then doing a pendulum into a level which can't be seen from above. This gives access to about half a mile of horrifically loose stopes which I'm not inclined to revisit.

And there's another holy well in the bay, in the shallow valley leading inland from the beach. It's a typical medieval stone structure built over a spring.

Thanks, Gus.

I was really wondering about the stal in the cave; as far as I could remember the rock wasn't limestone and I've been wondering for years where that calcite came from!

Your death-defying pendulum swing into the tunnel of loose rocks sounds interesting :? but - as you say - not one I would fancy repeating.

Just out of interest - why is it that if I'm in an old mine I always think the roof is liable to come crashing down on me at any moment, but if I'm in natural cave, I have no such worries?

Heaven knows, I've seen enough big boulders lying on (natural) cave floors...

Roger W said:

Just out of interest - why is it that if I'm in an old mine I always think the roof is liable to come crashing down on me at any moment, but if I'm in natural cave, I have no such worries?

Heaven knows, I've seen enough big boulders lying on (natural) cave floors...

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Roger

Big boulders in caves tend to have fallen a long time ago, become calcited together and aren't supported by rotting timbers that you can take apart with your bare hands. That's not to say that some aren't a bit unstable.

There's a good sea cave at Porth (same area as Holywell) which is a through trip of about 250ft, reached by an easy scramble down ledges to reach a rift which descends about 50ft to a traverse above the water and an impressive exit which involves a scary ascent. The most interesting thing about it is that if the tide is coming in it turns into a cannon and is likely to blow you to the other side of the bay! Fantastic experience but terminal, I should think.

[quote="gus horsley

Big boulders in caves tend to have fallen a long time ago...[/quote]

Hmm, yes... That's what everybody says. Especially the guides in show caves. I don't recall ever hearing one tell his tour group "That one fell last Thursday." Bad for morale...

I was looking at the UK mine exploring website the other day - http://www.mine-explorer.co.uk/ -
they suggest that you are in more danger of having a false floor collapse under your feet than the roof come down on your head. :roll:

That Porth cave looks well worth a visit, if I ever get the chance. I presume you would need to consult the tide tables, though. Being shot up out of a blowhole should be an unforgettable experience , but - as you suggest - probably terminal

Roger W said:

I was looking at the UK mine exploring website the other day - http://www.mine-explorer.co.uk/ -
they suggest that you are in more danger of having a false floor collapse under your feet than the roof come down on your head. :roll:
(

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Quite true, although there is a significant risk of both in mines. I would advise anyone intending to explore old mines to do as much research as possible into mining techniques. Then they might realise that the boulder floor they're walking along is held up by next to nothing, or the puddle in the floor is extremely deep, or the pretty wooden roof has hundreds of tons of lethal rocks above it.

And as an added word of warning. Watch out when you pass below shafts leading up to daylight. I was doing a trip into West Wheal Kitty once when a fridge crashed down Wheal Pink shaft just after I'd crossed it. It used to be a good trip but now it's blocked by a collapse not far inside.

Roger W said:

Just out of interest - why is it that if I'm in an old mine I always think the roof is liable to come crashing down on me at any moment, but if I'm in natural cave, I have no such worries?

Heaven knows, I've seen enough big boulders lying on (natural) cave floors...

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A mine is a recent & large intrusion into the bedrock. That means that the stresses set up by the removal of the rock have yet to "settle down" and adjust to the changed circumstances. Such adjustments include necessary changes in profile acheived by dropping newly unsupported lumps on to the floor.

In a cave, the void tends to have been formed more slowly & the surrounding bedrock has adjusted to the changing stresses over time. I seem to remember reading somewhere that many rock falls in caves probably date to shortly after a change from phreatic to above water table conditions which are accompanied by a significant and possibly more sudden change in stresses.

That is not to say that girt lumps never fall out of cave roofs, mind. :wink:

graham said:

A mine is a recent & large intrusion into the bedrock. That means that the stresses set up by the removal of the rock have yet to "settle down" and adjust to the changed circumstances. Such adjustments include necessary changes in profile acheived by dropping newly unsupported lumps on to the floor.

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Exactly. There is an account of a spectacular example of this from Cook's Kitchen Mine (Camborne), where the floor of a level which had just been driven exploded with such force that it killed three miners and prevented work in that section for several weeks. "Heaves" as they were known, were fairly commonplace in the mines of Camborne.

I've also been in a mine where about 5 tons of rock suddenly spalled off the walls of a stope about 50ft away with a loud bang. So it can take many years before the rock "settles down". It wasn't my fault, honest, I just happened to be there at the time.

Aye, it always suprises me how freshers assume caves are far more dangerous than mines, i mean, people made mines to work in so they must be safe... right?

I just like it when the coin drops as you explain that caves are mostly being eroded and getting bigger, wheras mines are trying to return to their natural state (i.e. not there!).

tt.

Browsing over lunch, found this at

http://www.answers.com/topic/derbyshire-lead-mining-history

"Wirksworth Wapentake March 26th 1761. We, whose names are under written, being this day summoned by Mr. Edward Ashton, Bar-Master for the Liberty of Brassington, to a groove called by the name of Throstle Nest on Brassington Pasture; to enquire into the cause of the death of T.W. now lying before us; accordingly we have been down the shaft to the Foot thereof, and down one sump or turn to the foot thereof, and on a gate North-wardly about sixteen yards to the Forefield, where the deceased had been at work; and by the information of William Briddon who was working near him; it appears that a large stone fell upon him out of the roof, and it is our opinions the said stone was the cause of his death.”

It just shows how dangerous mines were to work in and how gung-ho the attitudes were in those days. When I was a miner we had to comply to masses of health and safety regulations. I long for the days when we could do what they did at Wheal Bassett in the 1870s and let off 5 tons (yes tons) of dynamite underground to see what would happen. The results were spectacular: it apparently brought down an estimated 8,000 tons of rock, rendered the mine totally unworkable for 6 months and demolished a house on the surface, unfortunately killing the occupant.

it apparently brought down an estimated 8,000 tons of rock, rendered the mine totally unworkable for 6 months and demolished a house on the surface, unfortunately killing the occupant.

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:shock:

I think that might be why H&S regs were added to the Statute Book!!!

Peter Burgess said:

I think that might be why H&S regs were added to the Statute Book!!!

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Maybe, but it's taken all the fun out of the occupation.