langcliffe
Well-known member
I am delighted that after a year of it being in limbo, we have at long last published the Jack Myers collection on the BCRA Online Archive.
Jack Osborne Myers (1925-2008) will be for ever remembered by northern cavers for the book "Underground Adventure" that he co-authored with Arthur Gemmel, and which was published in 1952, widely considered to be one of the best British caving books. The late 1940s were a 'golden age' of potholing, and many major new systems were being entered, including Notts Pot, Ireby Fell Cavern, Lancaster Hole, Simpson Pot, Penyghent Pot and Ease Gill Caverns. Gemmel and Myers were at the centre of many of these explorations, and their accounts communicate vividly the excitement of exploration. Much of his earlier caving was done with the British Speleological Association, but as a result of the shenanigans that pervaded the caving community in the post-war years, he joined the Northern Pennine Club in 1948.
Jack was a keen photographer, and keeper of notes, and he effectively documented the whole of his caving career. He left his collection to the Northern Pennine Club, and it has a permanent home at Greenclose, the Northern Pennine Club's base. However, his executor generously gave permission for it to be digitised so it could be enjoyed by the whole caving community. Alan Jeffreys and John Manchip from the Grampian Speleological Group undertook the task of photographing and processing the bulk of the material in Edinburgh using equipment supplied by the British Geological Survey. This was a hugely time-consuming task, and we are deeply indebted to them for their efforts.
On a slightly more technical note, this is the first of the published collections that, because of their size, is stored somewhere on a cloud somewhere in cyberspace. This has a couple of implications. Firstly, if part of a document has not been displayed before, there may be a few seconds delay whilst thumbnails are generated. Secondly, a direct link to an image in the collection will result in a dummy image being displayed with an invitation to "View the image" - this is to stop web scrapers and similar software from sucking up our bandwidth.
Enjoy, and let me know of any problems. https://archives.bcra.org.uk/myers.html
Jack Osborne Myers (1925-2008) will be for ever remembered by northern cavers for the book "Underground Adventure" that he co-authored with Arthur Gemmel, and which was published in 1952, widely considered to be one of the best British caving books. The late 1940s were a 'golden age' of potholing, and many major new systems were being entered, including Notts Pot, Ireby Fell Cavern, Lancaster Hole, Simpson Pot, Penyghent Pot and Ease Gill Caverns. Gemmel and Myers were at the centre of many of these explorations, and their accounts communicate vividly the excitement of exploration. Much of his earlier caving was done with the British Speleological Association, but as a result of the shenanigans that pervaded the caving community in the post-war years, he joined the Northern Pennine Club in 1948.
Jack was a keen photographer, and keeper of notes, and he effectively documented the whole of his caving career. He left his collection to the Northern Pennine Club, and it has a permanent home at Greenclose, the Northern Pennine Club's base. However, his executor generously gave permission for it to be digitised so it could be enjoyed by the whole caving community. Alan Jeffreys and John Manchip from the Grampian Speleological Group undertook the task of photographing and processing the bulk of the material in Edinburgh using equipment supplied by the British Geological Survey. This was a hugely time-consuming task, and we are deeply indebted to them for their efforts.
On a slightly more technical note, this is the first of the published collections that, because of their size, is stored somewhere on a cloud somewhere in cyberspace. This has a couple of implications. Firstly, if part of a document has not been displayed before, there may be a few seconds delay whilst thumbnails are generated. Secondly, a direct link to an image in the collection will result in a dummy image being displayed with an invitation to "View the image" - this is to stop web scrapers and similar software from sucking up our bandwidth.
Enjoy, and let me know of any problems. https://archives.bcra.org.uk/myers.html
