From Coflein :
"Two cave chambers, explored from 1885 onwards. Finds have been mostly of animal bones, with some human material, both artefacts and bones."
and...
"first discovered in the late nineteenth century by a mining engineer and rediscovered in 1910 by Henry Hughes, a Gwaenysgor miner and quarryman, when blowing up a fox’s lair for a local farmer. He and subsequent investigators have found the bones of several pleistocene animals including bison,reindeer, Irish elk, hyena, woolly rhinoceros and arctic lemming. The cave was shown to the public for a number of years before being closed as unsafe."
Having spent some time at Gop Cave itself, and going through a drum journey there a few weeks ago, and knowing that there was another cave nearby where lots of bones had been discovered, I wanted to check it out.
So off I went.
I got to the field where I knew it should be, but wasnt sure whereabouts exactly it was, so, on a hunch, and following a raven, I got to a dip in the field, the sort of dip you'd expect to find a drainage pond in except it was bare earth and a bit of a 5 bar gate sticking out of the earth. As i walked round the edge of the dip, i saw the hole, and on closer inspection, found it was the entrance to a tunnel into the earth - the entrance to the cave!
The ground was very muddy and slippy and I slip more than walked down to the hole, and peered in, and could see the cave tunnel stretching down into the earth, the gate was suspended into the hole...
Me being sensible, thought that it looked quite dangerous, and was a bit miffed that I had made the journey and this was as far as i could safely go.
The other half of me said "...fuck it, I'm here now" so...... the gate was hanging from a tree by a piece of rope, and I clambered down the gate, squeezed myself through the narrow hole and ended up dangling from the bottom of the gate, not daring to let go... the tunnel went down further than I could see, steeper than a 45degree angle, and where it had been filled in with loose earth, it was slippy and there was no stable floor to grip onto. I made sure that I held onto the gate tightly and took a photo.
I struggled to squeeze out again, but felt really exhilarated to have been inside for those few minutes.
Walking around the field, I noticed there were lots of rabbit burrows, so went to check these, just on the off chance that the rabbits may have uncovered something from their digging...
The place was littered with bones! None ancient though... a rams skull, fox skull and jawbone, pelvis... a few others... as I made my way back across the field there was an odd shaped stone sticking out of the mud, U unearthed it with by boot and picked it up, immediately feeling sharp teeth pricking my fingers from the underneath... a stoat or weasel skull!
So the Bone Cave keeps its title.... the bones found there had been debris from what had been dragged there by hyenas in the ice age, and as I walked back to my car, I wondered what it would have been like for the people living in the main Gop Cave, just a little way round the other side of the hill, knowing that hyenas lived as their neighbours. Both caves had bones from the same period found in them. Gop cave itself was inhabited on and off for thousands of years and when it was re-discovered and excavated, a bricked up burial chamber was found at the back, containing 14 people.
I love this area :-)
