Editorial

As announced in last month’s B.B., the postal department has
been reorganised, and is now in the care of ‘Prew’ and Tony O’Flaherty.  Owing to the fact that they both live in

Bath, there has been a
little delay in organising the sending off of the October B.B., but we hope
that all is now under control.  A further
improvement will soon come into operation as we now have an addressograph machine!!  Members living in odd places will soon
receive their B.B. with their address tastefully printed, and, we trust,
earlier in the month!

Alan Sandall and ‘Spike’ have both volunteered to help out
with the production of the B.B. as and when required.  It is a pleasure to welcome them back to the
Board.  This means that we now have a
goodly collection of people who are familiar with the slightly cockeyed system
by which the B.B. is printed, bound and distributed so that we are not so
likely to be held up through a vital member of the team being unable to help.

Our usual Bumper Fun Book for Christmas is well under way
and we hope that it, will be ready nice and early in December.

“Alfie.”

Committee Meeting

The November meeting of the committee discussed progress
made on the present Belfry – improvements to the kitchen are continuing – and
also progress on the new hut.  This is
proceeding satisfactorily and the foundations are now in.  Provision of a tent for the climbing section,
to be hired from the club by the weekend was agreed to and a suitable tent is
being purchased details of its use will be announced in the B.B. when it
becomes available.  A lock has been put
on the M.R.O. box.  It was agreed to send
Norman and Chris to the Balch Memorial Meeting to represent the club. 

Roy
agreed to inspect the club stretcher.  It
was agreed to publish a vote of thanks to Sid Hobbs for his work in looking
after the Belfry Detailer.

Caving Trips.

Following a resolution approved at the recent A.G.M., a list
of future caving trips will be printed at intervals.  Members are asked to submit details of trips
to the Caving Secretary.  At least one
trip will be arranged every other month suitable for novices and any
preferences as to time and place should be communicated to the Caving
Secretary.

Caving Trips for November.

Sunday 16th
November.  Agen Allwedd (Aggy Aggy)
S. Wales.  Details
from Norman Petty.

Sunday 30th
November.  Tyro’s trip at 11 am of Top of
Swildon’s.  Meet at the Belfry.  Leader ‘Prew’ .

New Hut.

We still need willing hands to build this hut!  When you next use the Belfry, think of those
past club members who put it up so that YOU could be comfortable on
Mendip.  Now’s your chance to do YOUR
bit!  Remember, there are FREE bed-nights
for all who WORK at this job.

For those who prefer to sing their notices, we have:-

“Cavers sitting in a daze
By the stove’s heat-giving rays
Foreman from the building bawls
“Stop flipping rays and raise flipping walls!”

Caving Log

Letters To The Editor

          S.S.”Alan Macbeth!!
         

Zanzibar.

To the Editor, B.B.

Dear Sir,

I believe I remember reading some months ago in the B.B.
that members would be interested to hear from their fellows in “furren
parts”, so here goes.

For the last ten days or so, we have been working down the
East African coast, discharging cargo at

Mombasa
and Tanga.  From there we go on to
Dar-es-Salaam and then a long pull across the Indian ocean to a one horse town
near
Cochin, in
South
India, where we start loading for home.

The weather here in E. Africa is pleasantly cool for an area
so near the equator and we often have rain at night, especially in

Mombasa.  The engine room is still uncomfortably hot
and we are not looking forward to

India where it will be a lot worse
– anything up to 125O.

Last week, four of us were able to get away to a game
reserve in

Kenya.  We had two whole days off – a rare event in
the Merchant Navy – and we made the most of it by hiring a car and having a
good look at the African bush.  Even the
main roads are un-metalled for the most part and in the reserve itself they
were so bad that I managed to put a 2½” gash in the petrol tank driving
over a large boulder.  There was plenty
of game about, and we were lucky enough to catch sight of three cheetahs
sunning themselves on a large anthill. As we had neither telescopic lenses nor much time, we were unable to get
any decent photos of the wild life. Nevertheless, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, arrived back at the ship
very tired and dusty after our expedition to the interior.

Tony Dunn.

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Flax Bourton.
5th November (of course!)

To the Editor of the B.B.

Dear Sir,

Seeing the footnote in last month’s B.B. about Sid Hobbs’
exploits in the Hunters makes me cast my mind back to other notable occasions;
back to the days when the room across the passage was exclusively the B.E.C.’s
week in and week out, and which other people entered strictly at their own
risk!  In those days, every weekend gave
us something to remember it by.

Who can remember the fantastic singsongs that took place
every Saturday; the time when a limerick session lasted for 23 minutes non-stop
without repetition, and it was found that one limerick plus chorus took 20
seconds; the “anti-social” games of bridge that used to precede the singing;
indeed, “Hunter’s Bridge” in general. Can anyone remember the rules?

Can anyone remember the only time that the sergeant from
Wells came into our room on a Saturday night? Small wonder that Casey was worried for by all the rules the table
should have been covered with bridge cards and pennies.  By some fluke, someone had brought up a pack
of ‘Lexicon’ that night and we were trying it out.  The law retired perplexed and defeated.

Thinking of the Hunter’s means thinking of people too, both
cavers and locals, for I think at that at that time we were much closer to, and
more a part of the local folk.  I can
think of Hal Perry, of the magnificent voice and beard, with his pint pot of
orange juice; of Pongo doing the Can-Can; of Sett and George Lucy having some
involved scientific argument; of half-pint, Roger Cantle and Sago; of Johnny
Ifold’s uncanny knack with cards.  And
the girls too, especially one, who shall be nameless, who amazed an outsider by
knitting, reading, singing, drinking, smoking and holding two conversations all
at once!

Then above all, there was Ben ands Mrs Dors.  If it hadn’t been for them, the Hunter’s
evenings would never have been.  The
B.E.C. owes a lot to them.  And the other
locals too, Gilbert, Art Dors, Pop Harvey, Bert Russell and that huge man from
Cheddar who could persuade Ben to do a jig. If they had acted differently we should not have had the fun we
did.  Always too, to bridge the gap
between us and the locals, there were people like Dev and Les and Mary Browne.

The drinks too were as diverse as the drinkers.  Scrumpy,

Orange, Bamboo, etc.  Remember the stout shandy craze one hot
summer when you had to find a drinking partner as it took three bottles of
Liffey Water to make two good drinks?

There are just as many memories from outside the
Hunter’s.  Who can remember Tim Hendrick
flying around with the Harvard and “shooting up” the Belfry from zero feet on
occasion?  I wonder where the photo of
him flying past the old Belfry has got to? And what about the day Angus, in full dirty caving kit, pedalled a push
bike of the diving board into a mineries full of swimmers.  Above all, what of the ‘Menace’ whose
exploits could fill a book?  Surely some
of the old gang with better powers of description than myself could amuse the
current Belfryites and it could certainly bring back memories to some of the
earlier fraternity.  Perhaps even His
Grace the Duke of Mendip, Baron Priddy could, through his secretary, utter some
reminiscent words of wisdom on the subject.

                                                            Yours
etc,
                                                                        Tony
Johnson

P.S.  Please, for an
iggerunt one, what is screech?

Editor’s
Note:    Screech,
Tony, is the current name for rough or scrumpy on which Sid is the present
virtuoso.

The B.E.C. Goes West

by Jack and Dorothy
Waddon

For some weeks early in this year, proposals for spending
the Easter weekend had been the subject of much controversy in the Waddon
household.  To camp or not to camp, that
was the question.  To the argument that
“We always camped before at Easter” came the reply that this year Easter was
earlier than usual and it was also much colder than normal.  Eventually, the female side won by craftily
pointing out that if we used ‘B and B’s instead of camping, we would be able to
bring back far more geological specimens than we otherwise would if we were
loaded up with the tent, sleeping bags, primus etc.  As a result, it was decided to spend the
weekend geologising in
North Devon and leaving
camping until warmer weather.

On Good Friday morning, as we were about to set off from
Taunton, where we had stopped overnight to break the journey, a large black
contraption with burnished copper tank agleam thundered up the street;
Keith Murray astride “Louise”, the mostly 1922 Brough
Superior 1000cc twin.  He was on his way
to study the mineralogy of

Cornwall!  After a cup of tea, we were off on our
respective journeys westwards.

On our way through Lynmouth, we looked in at the Sunny Lyn
camp site, where Norman Petty had said that he would be camping for the
weekend.  In company with

Norman were Alan and
Carol Sandall and Roger and Daphne Stenner.

An aroma of fried onions hung about in the

Lyn
Valley
during the time these stalwarts were in camp, from the hot dogs which Norma
dispersed to all and sundry from time to time. The evening was getting rather late and very cold, and after remarking
on the rapid growth of the ice crystals in the water bucket, and making the
observation that it looked like snow, we went on to the farmhouse where we were
to spend the night, but not before Roger Stenner had announced that in the
absence of a sleeping bag, he was making do with a flying suit “inner” and a
layer of clothing.

Next morning, we looked out on a white landscape and the
snow was still falling fast!  On top of
Exmoor, the snow was two or three inches deep and the
road conditions were a little dicey in places. As we dropped down to Comb Martin, on the coast and a lot lower, the
snow gave way to a steady rain.  Parking
the Ariel, we set out on foot to geologise in the area.  At Combe Martin are some famous silver mines,
which were extensively worked at various periods from as early as the 13th
century to the latter end of last century. The silver obtained from these, and other mines at Beer Alston in Devon
is said to have financed various several of the wars with

France which
English monarchs at one time indulged in. The ore is a highly argentiferous galena, containing about 80 to 120
ounces of silver to a ton of lead.  In
fact, the silver content was so high that the lead was a relatively unimportant
by-product.

The mines at Coombe martin are mostly in the hills to the
North East of the village.  One of the
very early mines is situated high above the village, in the south slope of the
valley.  It is approached up a long steep
lane, rightly called ‘Watery Lane’, and it was while visiting this spot one
Boxing day a few years ago that I managed to get four bike load of Belfryites
successfully bogged down!  This time,
however, we were interested in the newer mine on the
North
East side of the valley. Most of the many adits and shafts which formerly existed are now
blocked, but within almost a hundred yards of

Comb Martin Main Street is a very small
preserved adit, which has a shallow dam across the entrance and is used as a
reservoir for supply to a nearby market garden. It is possible to enter this adit wading through the water and penetrate
the old workings for a considerable distance. The water gradually gets shallower, until at about 75 feet in, the adit
floor is reasonably dry.

The Combe Martin Mines are located for the most part, in the
Ilfracombe beds, a series of grey shaly slates attributed to the mid
Devonian.  The high calcareous content of
the rock was clearly demonstrated by the presence of dripstone and stalactites
in a small hollow from which a spring rose.

A quick search at the spoil heaps at the entrance to the
adit and in the nearby sunken lanes, proved profitable, and produced various
pieces of veinstuff; quartz, shot with flakes of muscovite (white mica) some
very small pieces of the ore which was worked (gelena) and unexpectedly enough,
some large lumps of siderite or “white iron ore” (iron carbonate).

An inspection of the beach at Combe Martin produced very
little.  There were several boulders
composed mainly of quartz and interspersed with chlorite, a complex silicate
frequently found as “gangue” mineral. Some of the boulders contained pieces of dolomite (magnesium carbonate)
and a small amount of umber.  Umber is a
dark brown variety of ochre which has at one time worked in from a
neighbourhood for use as a pigment.  The
river which flows down the valley and enters the sea at Combe Martin is, in
fact, called the River Umber.

A rather dicey scramble round the rocks, above the outgoing
tide brought us to “

Wild
Pear
Beach”,
a secluded spot in which were patches of an edible variety of seaweed, used to
make ‘laver bread’ locally.  There are
several small sea caves in the cliffs all around this area but all the ones
which we examined were very short, about ten to fifteen yards long.  Most of them seemed to be formed by erosion
by the sea along vertical mineral veins. Overlooking the beach at this point
are the “Little Hangman” and the “Great Hangman”, two hills which rise steeply
above the surrounding land, and which give their name to the “Hangman’s Grits”,
a series of shales and clay slates which extend across much of Exmoor and the
Quantocks.

Before turning in that night, we paid a visit to Lynmouth to
see how the campers were faring.  The
news that Roger Stenner had that day ridden in to

Barnstable and bought a sleeping bag, having
found a flying suit inadequate caused little surprise.  Sid Hobbs and two more Belfryites had also
passed through that day heading west, and as far as is known have not been
since.  We paid our respects to the
campers and set out to spend the rest of the weekend geologising further
inland, where we actually saw the sun for a short time!  Somehow, I don’t regret the fact that we
weren’t under canvas last Easter.

Minery Photograph

The photograph of the St. Cuthbert’s Minery in production
was copied from a print belonging to Gil Weeks – a local septuagenarian well
known to club members who visit the Hunters. Gilbert worked at the minery and can remember such things as when the
bowl shaped depression south east of the Belfry was an ore washing reservoir.  Nowadays it tends to be used as a reservoir
for the Belfry’s organic matter!

The date of the minery photograph is between 1890 and 1910
and the presence of new sheds and the twin stacks are probably the blast
furnace stack, indicate that it was taken during the last revival of the works
between  1902 – 1908.

In 1890, only the St. Cuthbert’s lead works was in
operation, dealing entirely with tailings and old slag debris.  Although new equipment was installed about
this time, a fall in the price of lead caused the works to close on 1897.

During 1902, a company, the New Chaffers Extended Mining
Co., recommenced operations and a new blast furnace was installed.  The buddling troughs were replaced by modern
equipment and a light railway was built to transport material to the
furnace.  This company kept in operation
until 1902, when a further fall in the price of lead caused it to cease, and
mining on Mendip came to an end for the last time.

M. Hannam

Editor’s
Note.     Readers who are interested in
this subject will remember the articles by Mervyn Hannam in B.B.’s last
year.  Since he wrote then, I happened to
be having a natter with Bert Russell who tells me that the story of Mendip
smelting very nearly had another chapter added to it.  It seems that, I think in 1923, he was
employed by a company to collect samples of slag from the heaps and as a
result, it was decided to reopen the smelting works.  A celebratory dinner was held in the Star at
Wells, but at the last moment, money was not available and the project fell
through.  He reckons even now, that a
small modern working, employing just a few men and using electricity, might
pay.  It would be interesting to have:
Mervyn’s comments on this.

Returning to the photographs now in the Belfry, the lower of
the two is a copy from the print possessed by Gil Weeks, which in turn is a
copy of the original print.  The upper
photograph was obtained by touching up a similar print of the lower photo;
rather clumsily I’m afraid, and re-photographing.  It says a lot for the quality of the original
when you consider that the upper photograph has been through no less than four
cameras!

*****************************************

THE B.B. EDITOR S.J. COLLINS.  33
Richmond
Terrace,
Clifton,

Bristol 8