Mendipshire How many Swallow Holes

[whitelackington]

Mendipshire,
how many swallow holes does it have?

 

[whitelackington]

Swildons Hole  number one :alien:

 

[whitelackington]

Try and only add one each,
Martinr  & to not be too greedy :blink:

 

[Peter Burgess]

The Hunters is a hole where people swallow beer. Does that make is a swallow hole?

 

[whitelackington]

Not really,
I belive the terms "Swallow Hole or Swallet"
means takes water 
or H2O

 

[Elaine]

Eastwater and St Cuthberts (I am allowed two as I am doing Hughie's as well!)

 

[Tree Monkey]

I better mention Upperflood then!

 

[graham]

Whitelackington - how many stupid questions?

 

[Peter Burgess]

Mornington Crescent. Oops, sorry, wrong game.

 

[Sid Weighells Dog]

Tsk. You were above the diagonal too.

 

[cap n chris]

Acacia Avenue?

 

[Dep]

Interesting to note when driving about the general area that there are so many apparent swallets in the fields, but choked up and grass covered.

Whilst I am no expert I suspect that the known swallets are just a small fraction of the potential total.

 

[Les W]

A lot of those "swallets" are actually mines.

The gruffy field on the right at the Miners arms crossroads is a classic example. All the depressions are very old mine shafts t'owd man used to dig down and throw the spoil around the top in a circle. once he had gone as deep as he could (20' or so) he would start a new one next to it. Net result is a field full of circular depressions.

You can see the same at Charterhouse in the field above GB (Largest chamber in Britain  ) and also along side velvet bottom on the East side (above Stainsby's shaft)

Any real swallet worth a look has been dug to death 

although there are a few large depressions near Lamb Leer that might be worth a look ( there is a line of them from Swallet Farm across the field towards St lukes, It may be a geological feature though (Neptunian dyke, or something))

 

[Peter Burgess]

No, Dep, they be alien bomb craters, they be. Can Oi zee your purrmit, sonny?

 

[Dep]

A lot of those "swallets" are actually mines.

The gruffy field on the right at the Miners arms crossroads is a classic example. All the depressions are very old mine shafts t'owd man used to dig down and throw the spoil around the top in a circle. once he had gone as deep as he could (20' or so) he would start a new one next to it. Net result is a field full of circular depressions.

You can see the same at Charterhouse in the field above GB (Largest chamber in Britain  ) and also along side velvet bottom on the East side (above Stainsby's shaft)

Any real swallet worth a look has been dug to death 

although there are a few large depressions near Lamb Leer that might be worth a look ( there is a line of them from Swallet Farm across the field towards St lukes, It may be a geological feature though (Neptunian dyke, or something))

Thanks Les.
Actually it was the area near the Miners I was thinking of in particular.
I had wondered why a cave area like this had so many apparently undisturbed swallets - but with your explanation it all makes sense now. Thanks.
What were they mining? Lime or lead?

Re: bomb craters...
Actually the high ground between Manor Farm to Tynings and Burrington to the north (Blackdown?) may have few bomb-craters, this was the 'decoy Bristol' in WW2.

 

[graham]

This paper:

Stanton,W.I., 1986. Archaeological Notes - Natural sinkholes affecting the Priddy Circles. Proc. U. Bristol Spel. Soc., 17(3), pp 355-358.

discusses the concept that some natural sinkholes have been misidentified as mine shafts.

There are certainly bomb craters on Blackdown. I think there are eyewitness accounts of them being "formed" in some of the UBSS logbooks.

 

[cap n chris]

For more on digging, and why swallow holes are generally not very promising, check out a superb article by Dr. Stanton, from Studies in Speleology, Vol. IV, September 1983, 77: titled "Digging for Mendip Caves".

 

[Les W]

Thanks.
What were they mining? Lime or lead?

Lead and/or associated silver (But mostly lead, I seem to recall that the silver content of the lead was less than 2% (but I could be wrong (again))) 

 

[whitelackington]

I think it has been said and repeated many times,
that there were more than a thousand swallow holes on Mendip
before man started messing with them, miners / farmers / landowners etc.

Probably most swallow holes only take noticeable volumes of water in fairly extreme conditions.

 

[whitelackington]

Cow Hole