....and the cave passage this represents is??

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
20231222_105453.jpg

Saw this today when queuing - I bet I was the only person in that long line who saw it and thought about caving 😁

Do you have a random object that reminds you of or represents a cave, formation, feature etc?
 

Samouse1

Well-known member
There is the geological feature called a Dolly Tub in British English which I learned because in French it’s called a marmite, and we were wondering why the French were so obsessed with the brown spread! Probably named after the Dolly Tub above though.

I wonder if the Tubs in churns was the first instance of the geological feature being named that in Britain and so everywhere else got called it too, or if it was the other way round.
 

ChrisB

Well-known member
I looked up Dolly tub to find out how it differed from any other type of washing tub and discovered that, particularly relevant to this forum, apart from washing clothes, the term was also used for washing ore from mines. Wikipedia mentions a dolly tub as being used to further enrich concentrate from a buddle pit.
 
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Pitlamp

Well-known member
Probably wouldn't use a posser in those...

I remember my grandma using a posser to agitate the washing in the galvanised dolly tub in the back yard. Washing day was always a Monday and seemed to occupy much of the day. The best bit though was when she squeezed water out of the wet clothes afterwards in the mangle. It was a huge cast iron device with a great big handle, complicated gears and a pair of rollers. I remember being fascinated by this as a toddler. Happy days (when no-one was chained to some infernal electronic device and forced to press buttons all day long).

To respond to Pegasus' original post - the Cheese Press squeeze in Lower Long Churn Cave?
 

Fulk

Well-known member
My mum had one of those things, and washday (which was Friday – come on John, Friday was also fish day, so you could spend all day doing the washing and have fish and chips, without having to do any cooking) was quite a to-do, occupying much of the day as you say. Mum would get my brothers and me to operate the mangle, which was quite hard work (I seem to recall; and why weren’t we at school?).

The good old days, huh?
 

Roger W

Well-known member
Nowt to do with caving - I don't think - but does anyone remember getting their thumb or fingers caught in the mangle?
 

JAA

Active member
Marmite passage at the bottom of Brown Hill Pot is named for the appropriately sized pools in the floor of the stream before the sump
 

topcat

Active member
We had a twin-tub washing machine but did a lot by hand in the big sink, using a piece of drift wood as a posser. I used to like lending a hand on wash days. The smell was great and something you just don't get with modern front loading washing machines.
Washing day was dictated by the weather forecast.

We had a mangle too but its use fell by the wayside for some reason. Probably the rubber roller perished and we couldn't afford a new one.?
 

Fulk

Well-known member
Roger ;

but does anyone remember getting their thumb or fingers caught in the mangle?

No, but my dad once told us a horrible story about a distant relative of his who got dragged into an industrial mangle in a big laundry facility . . . the last thing she ever did.
 
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