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Caves of Great Britain: King Arthur's Cave Gallery King Arthur's Cave reprinted from Tony Oldham, Keith Jones (2003): Caves of the South Eastern Outcrop, Available from: by kind permission of the authors. WARNING: Beware of used hypodermic syringe needles. Risk of infection. Tony Oldham in King Arturs Cave, view out of the cave entrance.© Anne Oldham, with kind permission. The cave is situated at the foot of a low cliff at the north-western end of Lord's Wood on the hill of Great Doward at Whitchurch near the River Wye. It consists of a broad entrance platform, a double interconnected entrance and two main chambers. The platform entrance lies 300 feet above the Wye and faces the north west commanding a good view of the saddle-back of Great Doward Hill. All of the deposits that have filled this cave seem to be either Late Pleistocene or more recent. [Mr] Cave, B V refers to a skeleton discovered in 1695. In that year a woman herding goats went into the cave and found a skeleton apparently with the remains of a spear. The skeleton was reported as being of gigantic proportions. The bones were collected and given to a surgeon in Bristol called Mr Pye. Extraordinarily though it seems he took them with him on a sea voyage to Jamaica, but the ship sank and the bones were lost. Tony Oldham in front of the two big cave entrances.© Anne Oldham, with kind permission. The discovery has been linked by some with the early legend of Vortigern, a British prince who fought the advancing Anglo Saxon armies, whilst others say they are the bones of King Arthur. This appears to be the reason that the cave is so named. King Arthur's Cave was partly excavated by the Revd W S Symond in 1871 after some miners had removed some of the deposits the year before (Symonds 1871). He found considerable portions had been disturbed, there were two "cave earths" an upper and a lower separated by a thick stalagmite layer. Finds included, hyaena, lion, cave and brown bear, urus, red deer, giant Irish Elk, reindeer,, and a horse, a typical Late Pleistocene fauna. Many of the bones had been gnawed by hyaenas. Symonds also obtained some flint implements that were later assigned to the Upper Palaeolithic culture. In the upper layers were coarse pottery of Neolithic type and some flint implements. Garrod (1926) has assigned his finds from the upper cave earth to the Upper Palaeolithic; those from the lower cave earth might be Middle Palaeolithic. Tony Oldham in King Arturs Cave, view out of the cave entrance.© Anne Oldham, with kind permission. From 1925 to 1927 members of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society excavated the entrance platform and the passage connecting two entrances (Hewer 1926, Tratman 1928). They found earlier Upper Palaeolithic (or developed Aurignacian) assemblages followed by a Mesolithic assemblage in the platform deposit. Their diagrammatic section (Taylor 1928 Fig 1) shows how the intervening deposits removed by Symonds in 1871 may have been related. They correlate the upper "Cave earth" of this and Symond's excavation with the exterior basal red-yellow clayey silt on the basis of a very similar fauna and matrix. If their correlation is correct, then the interior earlier Upper Palaeolithic assemblage would be stratigraphically lower than the Later Upper Palaeolithic assemblages. In 1955 the UBSS resumed work at King Arthur's Cave for a season. They found nothing new and so did not publish the field work (Masterman, personal communication). In conclusion, this cave was originally one of the richest and most clearly stratified sites in Britain with all phases from Upper Aurignacian to Roman being represented. Regretfully the haphazard digging has caused much valuable information to be lost for ever. nb This cave is scheduled as an Ancient Monument. Digging strictly forbidden. References: ACG&S N/L 1964 Feb 19 Anon 1898 Coldwell Rock, Symond's Yat, The Caves and Doward. Trans Woolhope Club 1898-9 p 113 - 117 Arch Camb 1872 pp 74-75, 274-275 A M ApSimon, P L Smart, R Macphail, Scott K, H Taylor✝ 1992 King Arthur's Cave, Whitchurch, Herefordshire: Reassessment of a Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Beaker Site. Proc UBSS 19 (2) 183-249 S Useful bibliography. A P ApSimon, 1994 Arch Note King Arthur's Cave, King Arthur's Hall, giant skeleton. Proc UBSS 20 75-76 A P ApSimon, 2003 Getting it Right: No Middle Palaeolithic at King Arthur's Cave! Proc UBSS 23 (1) 17-26 R N E Barton. 1993 An Interim Report on the Survey and Excavation in the Wye Valley. 1993. Proc UBSS 19 (3) 337-346 R N E Barton. 1994 Second Interim Report on the Survey and Excavation in the Wye Valley, 1994. Proc UBSS 20 (1) 63-67 R N E Barton. 1995 Third Interim Report on the Survey and Excavation in the Wye Valley, 1995. Proc UBSS 20 (2) 153-159 R N E Barton et al, 1995 Wye Valley Caves Project: investigations at King Arthur's Caveand Madawg Rock Shelter. [in] Lewis, G S, and Maddy, D, (eds) The Quaternary of the South Midlands and the Welsh Marches. Field Guide. London, Quaternary Research Association. R N E Barton. 1996 Fourth Interim Report on the Survey and and Excavation in the Wye Valley, 1996. Proc UBSS 20 (3) 263-273 R N E Barton. 1997 Fifth Interim Report on the Survey and Excavation in the Wye Valley, 1997 and New AMS Radiocarbon Dating Results from Madawg Rockshelter Proc UBSS 20 (2) 153-159 R N E Barton, C Price, & C Proctor. 1997 Wye Valley CavesProject: recent investigations at King Arthur's Cave and Madawg rock shelter [in] Lewis, S G, & Maddy, D, (Eds) 1997 The Quaternary of the South Midlands and the Welsh Marches: Field Guide, London: Quaternary Research Association. 63-73 BC 22 50; 111 1-7 S A good detailed historical account. John Bellows [publisher] A Week's Holiday in the Forest of Dean / a series of original sketches with seven photo views, many illustrations and a map. Third edition 1905 88 pp. pp 35 & 75 King Arthur's Cave. Bryson, Bill 1995 Notes from a Small Island 352 pp, map, photo, Black Swan, London. p 150 visit "I had a pleasing sense of being the first visitor in years". Campbell 1 5-6, 17, 36,43-45,108,116,146,152,167-168,183,190. 2 pp [105], [122]-[123], [247], [262], [248], [332], [357], [367]. B V Cave p 16 lost bones. Rev B B Clarke, 1954 A Geologist Looks at King Arthurs's Cave Trans Woolhope Nats Field Club Vol XXIV Part II pp 76 - 82. p xxvi mentions a collection of bones from King Arthur's Cave is housed at Wyaston Leys. These were excavated by Rev W S Symonds. [cf Symonds 1871 infra] Cullingford 1951 78 Cullingford 1962 277, 321. CWM 96 Garrod, DAE, 1926 The Upper Palaeolithic Age in Britain. Oxford. Grigson G, 1957 Painted Caves 41-43 R E M Hedges, et al, 1997 Radiocarbon dates from the Oxford AMS system: Archaeometry datelist 24. Archaeometry39: 445-471 T F Hewer, 1926 King Arthur's Cave. Proc UBSS 2 221-8 Samuel Ireland 1797 Picturesque Views on the River Wye, from Its Source at Plinlimmon Hill to its junction with the Seven below Chepstow. London R Faulder & T Egerton. Not seen. ISCA Jl 12 3-9 S; 14 56-57 S Describes some lesser sites near King Arthur's Cave. Log Vol 3 entry No 151157; Vol 15 entry No 260391 Frances Lynch et al 2000 Prehistoric Wales. 246 illus. Sutton Publishing, Stroud, Glos. 27, 36. Nicholl's 6 & 7 illus. The cave is described as an ancient iron mine called King Arthur's Hall. Richard Owen 1898 Discoveries in King Arthur's Cave. Trans Woolhope Club 1898-9 p 133 Stratford NGR only SWCC N/L June [=Aug] 1951 refers to cave in quarry behind crushing plant, revealed Rhino bone. [nb quarry stopped working many years ago Ed 1994] W S Symonds, 1871 On the contents of a hyaena's den on the Great Doward, Whitchurch, Ross. Geol Magazine 8 433 P B Symonds 1924 King Arthur's Cave on the Great Doward. Trans Woolhope Club pp 28 - 29 refers to another cave as King Arthur's Hall [grandson of W S Symonds]. Taylor H, 1928 Second report on the excavations at King Arthur's Cave near Whitchurch, Ross-on-Wye. Proc UBSS 3 59-83 Tratman E G 1928 Proc UBSS 3 84-97 Bryan Walters A Survey of Prehistory in Dean circa 12,000 BC to AD 43 [in] DEAN ARCHAEOLOGY (2) 9-22 include two old photos (Rev Symond?) digging in KAC Thomas Wright 1854 Wanderings of an Antiquary Chiefly upon the traces of the Romans in Britain. J B Nicholas & Sons, London. [GBP 70 Barter Books Oct 2000] pp 1 - 22 The Roman iron district of the Forest of Dean and its neighbourhood. opp 13 engraving of King Arthur's Hall, a man with a top hat outside two openings. Main Index Britain King Arthur's Cave Index Topics Hierarchical Countries Maps Search General Information Terms of Use ©Jochen Duckeck Contact showcaves.com loading

Caves of Great Britain: King Arthur’s Cave Gallery