Hi DP, sorry for the delay in replying - I've been busy...
Peter Burgess suggested a while back that during the winter period we should run a few working parties into the Far East of the Chaldon workings to restore parts of the passage that are cluttered with spoil from abortive digs. The otherwise pristine Far East Passage is littered with small 'scrapes' into the sides with the spoil simply dumped on the floor, very untidy and it ruins the look of the place. The idea was accepted as a good one but other commitments always get in the way; realising this Peter chose a weekend date at fairly short notice so that we could at least make a start. The response from our members was limited, only two people responded to say that they were interested but unfortunately could not make that particular date. So I suggested to him that he might advertise it on the UK Caving forum where it would get a wider audience, and sure enough it prompted a response. Sadly one person who responded also couldn't make it on the day but we were joined by DarkPlaces who had travelled up from Wiltshire for the afternoon.
It didn't take us long to get in and be on our way. DP is more used to the general loftiness of the Box Quarries and we constantly reassured him with the common Surrey refrain of "it gets (slightly) higher further in". We had a spade and a shovel with us, at first DP carried one but by the time we got to Mouldy Glove I took it off him as it was slowing him down, although we weren't going that fast he was lagging behind a bit. Through StPauls and onwards into the Chaldon Bottom workings, as promised the headroom does increase slightly and there is a lot less crawling.
We didn't really have time for any tourist stuff, although we did pause briefly to look at a few examples of working bays and cut stones in various places along the route. Our first significant detour was in the 1609 Passage; having come this far into the system it seems a shame not to show it to visitors as it is one of our most prized dating features of this quarry. Peter and I also had a secondary mission if we had time to fit it in, to look down-dip just past the 1609 Passage at an area which apparently has a sand floor. This is one of the very few parts of the quarry that I have never visited. Peter suggested that we leave it for the journey out when we would have a clearer idea of the time available, otherwise we would inevitably get side-tracked and lose a lot of valuable working time.
An interesting debate ensued between Peter and I as to just where it was relative to our route through, I had noted its position relative to a particular landmark (a wooden candle-holder), but as we had apparently taken a slightly different route through the galleries I had missed this point. Later, when we got the survey out Peter was pleased to show me that there was only one route through there and I had to concede that I was completely wrong - must've been too busy debating to notice the landmark which I must have passed by unseen.
We finally arrived through 'Potato-Bag Eye' into the Far East Passage, a quick time check told us it had taken and hour and a half from the cars which wasn't bad going considering the occasional semi-tourist diversions. We had a couple of hours to play with so Peter started off westwards back towards the old entrance looking for the place to tidy up. DP meanwhile was clearly pleased to have arrived, I think he'd had enough of the stooping and crawling - he spent five minutes "photographing the roof". Rather than leave him there alone I made my way very slowly up the passage looking at the various prints in the mud. This route is very seldom visited, most people head the other way to the Far East and rarely have time to visit this other fairly extensive series. Once DP had recovered he joined me and we wandered up to find Peter contemplating a huge spoil tip spread right across the passage. This had all been raked out of a very low crawl dug from the left wall heading southwards. It twisted around a bit and went a little further than we could see. However, I hadn't realised that this went back so far and could see that we would have a problem with the tools we had, the dig was too long to shovel the spoil in this far, and we had no spade small enough to wield in this tight space. What we needed were trugs and perhaps rakes to be able to drag or push this material all the way in.
I suggested to Peter that we left this one for the next session when we can bring in some more appropriate tools and instead concentrate our efforts on some of the smaller but equally messy 'scrapes' all along this passage. We didn't have to go very far to find another, the wall had simply been pulled down and a rough hole dug out reaching in about 4-5 ft. This we could easily fill back in so we set to it. All the larger rocks were pulled out to one side and stacked for walling and we shovelled the rest back in. We had to be careful not to cut too far into the original wall; all along the passage the deads are coated with a thick layer of mud which has been shovelled up from the floor and thrown aside. Close inspection of this mud shows a wealth of features, from the spade marks to occasional footprints which have been lifted intact from the floor and thrown aside.
As the hole was gradually filled Peter left me to do the walling, with all the practice I had over the summer in GMS this was a doddle as this wall didn't have to support anything. And fairly soon we were done, DP and Peter moved on to the next scrape whilst I added the finishing touches. Standing back to admire my handiwork I was amused to note that the original wall was made up of large angular pieces and was quite rough; the section I had repaired stood out as I had faced all the stones up and got them flush, without actually intending to I had made a neater job of it. I tried not to do this on the next one we filled but it's actually quite hard to wall something up solidly but untidily!
We put in about an hour's work and made a positive change on this short section of passage. With plenty of opportunity to carry this work on in the future we felt obliged to show our guest a more favourable impression of the site, some of the more interesting features of the Far East. So far all he had done was stoop and grovel and hump some rocks around, there's more to Bedlams than that - honest!
We continued westwards back to the old entrance at Rockshaw Lodge looking at the various mud features. There is a large side-passage to the left (southwards) which also lead out to another entrance in the same depression. Here the dry-stone walling had been beautifully laid with clear evidence of the wall-face having been dressed with a pick after construction. On to the main entrance itself, on one side was an old mass of tin-foil, marked up as U2CRE+CSS radio-location equipment. Peter told me that this is a bygone relic of an attempt to radio-locate the quarries from the surface. A small crawl lead off to the terminal collapse, I wriggled in to see where it goes but there was nothing of interest there. Making my way out into the passage again something caught my eye, carved into the wall on my left (north) was the date 1756, a nice find.
From here we carried on all the way from the old entrance into the Far East. This is a very long passage and as we walked we discussed a quote from a late 17thC author, John Aubrey who said; "...from whose meanders the country people pretend they draw stone with their oxen and hurdles for above half a mile". This is no idle boast, as the crow flies it's 540m from the entrance to the far end, and as the passage snakes about the true distance (scaled from the survey) is 660m, 0.4 miles. From the graffiti we can see that this passage existed in his time and it is likely that it is here specifically that he refers to.
We covered all of the Far East workings giving DP time to take some pictures and look at the various features. I had read an account from the Croydon 'Pelobates' archives about a "triangular stone with very rounded corners that had apparently been rolled from one face to another and used by the quarrymen to sit on as they dressed the low faces". I mentioned this to Peter, we were both a little sceptical of this interpretation but kept our eyes open for such an object as we progressed through. In fact we found three or four stones like this, these had certainly been moved around and may well have been used as suggested.
Peter was also interested in the two stone troughs, he has found evidence of similar boxes used in quarries elsewhere both as candle-boxes (containing candles, flint, steel and tinder) and also as clay-boxes containing sticky clay that the quarrymen would use to daub the candles to the walls with. There is no real shortage of clay here but the candle box theory makes sense, especially taking into account the third box near the 1609 Passage which also has its lid. There are also several piles of ochre in this section, and both troughs are smeared with it. This seems to be a mixture of clay from the quarry and ochre from the roof, in the past I have found one or two roof joints containing this ochreous clay and think that it was either collected from here or at least used in some way to make this fine orange clay. Peter suggested that this may have been used to produce flat stone faces by smearing a flat rock with it and rubbing it over the working face; any high-spots would be smeared with orange clay thus indicating which bits needed to be dressed away. Exactly the same idea as engineer's blue. Certainly there are few other conceivable reasons for the presence of this ochre. Interestingly we also see this material splashed on the walls in GMS, especially in the area around the Northern Haulage Route.
One other unusual feature in the Far East is a hole in the floor. A large hole has been cut down following a natural joint in the rock. Interestingly this obstruction makes haulage from the far end of the quarry impossible suggesting that the extreme eastern end is not actually the most recently worked section. The exact purpose of this hole is unclear, it may have been a trial to see if the floor-stone was worth having, but its most likely function is as a well. Elsewhere in the quarry (by the 'Amphitheatre' near Aladdins) there is a hole in the floor which breaks through the floor-stone bed. In wet conditions a flow of water can clearly be seen running through the bedding plane some two feet below. As the Far East is a long way in from the entrance this may well have been a water supply either for the draught animals or for tool sharpening. It is choked with rubble and may be worth excavating carefully in the future as this is a good location to find objects such as clay pipes and bottles.
Having made it to the far end we looped back and started the long walk out. Exiting the far east proper into the passage we stopped for a moment and Peter pointed out some soot graffiti - the initials RB and the date 1699 written very clearly in large soot letters. I was very surprised not to have seen this before, but as DP later commented he seemed to spend most of his trip looking at the floor and indeed that is the main effect of the low roof (that and a stiff neck!) which keeps your head down the whole time, we rarely look at the roof.
Arriving back at the eye out we checked the time, enough for a gentle trot out. It is hard going in there though and if you're not used to the low roof it's quite knackering. When we reached Croydon Chamber after several brief rest-stops we had about 10 minutes in hand. We could go down and look at the sandy floored passage down-dip from here but we would then have to trot out very quickly. Realising that DP might not want to do this we gave him the choice and he opted for the gentle trot out. We'll save the sand passage for another day. We made fairly good time though with just three of us and were soon back at StPauls. Peter and I had a brief chat about the passage just beyond it heading outwards. He mentioned that this passage was once known as the Far East.
Be that as it may this particular section of passage is one of my least favourite, it is very low, narrow and the floor is littered with rocks, I never linger in here but tend to scoot through as quickly as possible concentrating only on not tripping over. I scooted on ahead and waited up-dip from Mouldy Glove where it comes out. When Peter caught up he told me that many years ago himself and others had cleared this passage of loose rocks on the floor as it had been much worse than it is now. With the newly created ease of passage (and the then popularity of science-fiction) they had christened it the 'Hyperspace-Freeway'. The name hadn't really stuck but it's a good one and perfectly describes the wormhole nature of this twisty-turny route taken at speed. In fact it wouldn't take much effort to clear the floor again one evening as it is pretty cluttered in there with rocks that people have knocked down from the sides.
Once we got past Mouldy Glove I shot on ahead to get the gate open and lifeline rigged for DP, we were all out pretty quickly and packed away. Of to the Railway Arms for a pint (thanks DP) and a look at the full-size survey which Peter had brought along. A really enjoyable afternoon, some useful objectives achieved, more 'new' features found or re-located, and a chance to put another face to a name.
