WHO ARE ATLAS ANYWAY? – A POTTED HISTORY

Rich Witcombe

ATLAS is a Mendip cave digging team – an ad hoc, inter-club, mixed age and sometimes multi-racial digging team. Its origins go back to the early 1970s when a group of cavers drawn from several different clubs began a dig at Thrupe Lane Swallet above Croscombe on Eastern Mendip. Some years earlier the late Mike Thompson had coined the acronym – NHASA – for the allcomers team who came together to excavate North Hill Swallet near Priddy, making a link between the NASA astronauts in the news at that time and the “terranauts” seeking new frontiers beneath Mendip. The North Hill Association for Speleological Advancement had a grandiose ring to it, and the writer, who was part of the group working at Thrupe, thought that a more modest team offering a degree of friendly rivalry to NHASA would be a good idea.

At that time your scribe had fairly left wing views, and his first attempt at a suitable acronym had a certain Labour Party ring to it – ATLEE or the Association of Thrupe Lane Experienced Explorers! His more “centrist” colleagues were none too keen, and so in 1973 he came up with ATLAS – the Association of Thrupe Lane Advanced Speleologists. The name stuck. Around this time, some of the ATLAS team were also working with a group of Wessex and East Somerset Caving Club cavers, including John Cornwell and Tony Audsley, who were digging Charterhouse Warren Farm Swallet under the title of the Beaker team – a reference to the Bronze Age artefacts and bones being uncovered. For a short while the combined diggers became ABC or the ATLAS/Beaker Consortium, and Tony has remained an occasional ATLAS digger since those days.

The original Thrupe Lane diggers came from the Wessex Cave Club, the Axbridge Caving Group and the Westminster Speleological Group, and included Tony Dingle, Simon Meade-King, Clive North, Dave and Anne Everett, Barry and Andrew Webb from South Wales, Ray Cavill and the writer. At Easter 1974 after several years digging in several different shafts a breakthrough was made and the bulk of Thrupe Lane Swallet was quickly explored. With its deep pitches and roomy chambers, a length of over 4000’ and a depth of over 390’, this cave remains the most impressive ATLAS find to date. The very hospitable Thrupe farmers, Nelson and Gilda Butt, who provided changing accommodation in a shed occupied by their son's ferret, were commemorated by Butts' Chamber, and the team itself by the 80' deep Atlas Pot.

The diggers had entered the first major swallet cave feeding the St. Andrew’s Well resurgence at Wells, and were convinced that nearby sinks would prove just as productive. The siege of Viaduct Sink in the neighbouring Ham Woods valley from the mid to the late 1970s saw the inclusion of West London Caving Club members, notably Bob Cottle, in the team, and the complex 350’ cave that resulted must surely one day be significantly extended. After nearly four years at Viaduct, and brief forays to Midway and Larkshall Slockers, a return was made to Thrupe Lane Swallet where high-level passages were dug out in pursuit of a route to the top of Atlas Pot. The mid-1980s brought a change of scene and the team joined forces with the Wessex to dig Longwood Valley Sink. ATLAS diggers persisted here until the early 1990s but hundreds of sessions and a lot of explosives produced only a few tens of feet of passage.

In 1991, BEC members, Andy Sparrow and Steve Ellis, started a series of climbs in the upper reaches of Atlas Pot, hoping to reach the roof which was estimated to be about 100' above the Marble Streamway entry point. They eventually reached an area of rift chambers which they christened Wuthering Heights. As ATLAS diggers had passed over this point when exploring Bleak Hall and the Old Wells Road in 1983, Simon Meade-King decided to look around for a possible link. He settled on Chimney Pot, a narrow, often wet, slot upstream of Bleak Hall, and began a largely solo banging campaign. At a depth of 20’ a voice connection was established with Wuthering Heights and the link passage was blasted open in July 1992, providing access to the top of the impressive 190’ deep shaft and allowing a round trip for the SRT enthusiasts.

Short term projects with Wessex members, Dave “Tuska” Morrison and Graham Bromley, in Rushy Ground Swallet, Clay Holes and Eighteen Acre Swallet followed, producing only tiny extensions, and then a brief return was made to a dig below Downside Aven in Viaduct Sink. Disappointingly, this led only to a too-tight streamway. The team was in need of a significant breakthrough and decided to try the new HyMac excavation technique being pioneered by “Tuska”. A shallow depression on Little Crapnell Farm just west of Thrupe was chosen and the farmer’s son, Dave Speed, proved a willing convert to cave digging. One weekend’s HyMac excavation in 1995 and a few months hauling spoil up the concrete pipe entrance shaft produced a fine little stream cave nearly 1000’ long and 300’ deep. MNRC members including Paul Stillman joined the team at this time.

Encouraged by this success, the team brought the HyMac back the following year to tackle a depression a hundred yards south of Little Crapnell Swallet. The well-decorated and complex Honeymead Hole was the result, 1,300’ long and 170’ deep. New ATLAS diggers included Mark “Gonzo” Lumley of the BEC, Tony Boycott of the UBSS and Rob “Tav” Taviner of the Wessex. The short Parfitt’s Cave next to Withybrook Slocker was opened up following a field collapse in the winter of  1996 but digging here was abandoned as part of a deal with Fairy Cave Quarry owner, Jeremy Hobbs, to regain access to the quarry caves.

In 1997 the team moved west to a huge HyMac excavation on Charterhouse Warren Farm. Dave Mitchell’s Dig had been dug intermittently from the 1960s, but the new 40’ deep digger excavated hole was one of the most impressive seen on Mendip. An airspace found at the bottom draughted well but it proved to be no more than a series of voids in stal-cemented buried scree. The three year dig consumed vast quantities of steel and concrete, and the lack of solid rock and the occasional “unprovoked” collapse proved unnerving to the diggers. It is still open but ATLAS has no plans to return. During this period in 1998 three short HyMac excavations in the same field as Honeymead Hole all drew a blank.

During nerve calming breaks from digging at Charterhouse, the team took over a NHASA dig in 1997 at Frog Pot on Chancellor’s Farm near Priddy, The farmhouse was the base for the Somerset Wildlife Trust’s Mendip Hills Officer, Kate Lawrence, who had helped with Dave Mitchell’s Dig. A shaft found by Imperial College cavers in 1966 was pushed to a second shaft and short passage, before serious slumping stopped work in 1998. The summer of 1999 saw digging at a collapse near Sand Pit, christened Beetle Drop after the swarms of black beetles which insisted on falling into it. At a depth of 15’ a large diameter, mud choked phreatic passage was entered, but only twenty feet of progress through glutinous clag was achieved before a more traditional East Mendip swallet dig enticed the team away.

Dave Speed had suggested sinking a steel shored shaft at Thrupe Swallet, some 300 yards north east of  Thrupe Lane Swallet. This active sink, which is on a faultline, had been dug inconclusively on three previous occasions, the earliest in 1936, but ATLAS intended to pursue the small stream until open passage was reached. A technically demanding dig over the next five years eventually produced a sporting little cave some 750' long and over 200' deep. Fit and agile cavers with a bang licence might yet push it further. As interludes from Thrupe Swallet activity, Radford Farm Swallet was briefly probed in 2001 – it was unfortunately too close to the farmhouse living room for chemical persuasion – and the lost unconformity cave, Cloford Quaary Big Cave, was re-located and reopened in 2003. This geologically important 400’ cave is formed at the junction between the Carboniferous Limestone and the Jurassic Limestone. Tony Littler and Dave King of the MNRC became regular ATLAS diggers at this time.

With the far reaches of Thrupe Swallet becoming a crawl too far for some of the older diggers, a return was made to the higher levels of Thrupe Lane Swallet. Amongst other trial digs, the far end of the Old Wells Road was pushed for another 50’, including a rather loose aven, but the hoped for high-level route to St. Andrew’s Well failed to materialise. It was decided to seek pastures new and a project took shape to re-open Fernhill Cave, buried since the 1960s by quarry tip in Fairy Cave Quarry. The first attempt in 2006 was a series of short digs in the boulder ruckle which separates Fairy Cave from Fernhill, but despite the best efforts of the stone wallers in the team it proved impossible to venture far into the vast jumble of small rocks filling the intervening cavity.

The team, augmented by Mandy and Matt Voysey of the Cerberus SS, then moved across the quarry to tackle the far end of Balch Cave’s Pool Passage which seemed to offer a route under the quarry floor. A side passage attracted attention and although a breakthrough was quickly made, it was only a new route into a series found by John Walsh of the BEC in 1999. At least ATLAS had engineered a pleasant new round trip, and when the continuation proved to be too smashed up by quarry blasting to follow, a new dig was begun in 2006 at the bottom of a fine 40’ pitch in John Walsh’s series. Carpal Tunnel, a mud and sand filled phreatic passage, is still being excavated today, and now snakes under the quarry floor for some 60’. Although there have been periodic set-backs caused by flooding and slumping, a possible aven development seen at the furthest point reached in 2008 entices the diggers onwards. Cavers joining the team during the Balch phase included Alan Gray of the Axbridge CG and Geoff Dawson from Northern Ireland via Lancashire.

To provide a little variety from this now very routine spoil removal process in Balch Cave, a second front was opened in the quarry in the spring of 2008. The search for Fernhill Cave was resumed, this time from the surface downwards. With financial contributions from Natural England and various caving organisations, the team raised sufficient funds to hire two mechanical excavators for a week. Under the technical control of Dave Speed, 2,500 tons of spoil was shifted and the blocked entrance shaft was uncovered at a depth of 35' feet. Dave Morrison and Jim Young assisted with the installation of a concrete pipe shaft, and digging proper began in mid-April 2008. Much steel, stone and concrete shoring has had to be inserted to safeguard the diggers from the run-ins which have bedevilled the dig, but a year later at a depth of 20' below the pipes, the southern passages of Fernhill Cave have been re-entered and the team, which now includes cave diver Duncan Price, is close to uncovering the route to the main chamber with its fine formations hopefully still intact.

Over the thirty six years of its existence, the ATLAS team has welcomed well over a hundred cavers to its digs, from under 10s to over 70s. At different times, the team has included Pakistani, West Indian, Chinese, German and Australian cavers, not to mention contributions from the Welsh, Scots and Irish, including the redoubtable Bristol Irishman or Irish Bristolian, Pat Cronin. As is traditional on Mendip, digging takes place every Wednesday night in all weathers – torrential rain, sleet and snow included – with occasional forays at weekends. The group has been fortunate over the years in attracting a useful cross section of skills – bang men, drystone wallers, timber and steel shoring specialists, surveyors, photographers, artists and now even a tame diver, and prides itself on a high standard of conservation. All workmanship underground is to the highest standard achievable in the circumstances, and although the ubiquitous “plastic” sacks are used for spoil haulage, they are never left permanently underground.

ATLAS is mercifully free of all bureaucracy, subscriptions and caving politics, but does publish an Annual Report and keeps the caving world abreast of its activities by means of the Thrupe Lite website run by Tony Audsley, and the diggers log – www.atlasdiggerslog.org.uk – maintained by Paul Stillman. At Thrupe Lane Swallet itself, the environs of which the team continues to look after, ATLAS maintains a small hut – the "new" Ferret Shed – for tool storage, changing and rescue purposes. Post-digging social drinking is naturally a requirement for team members, and as the Hunters' is rather a long way from the present scene of operations, the current hostelry of choice is the Wagon and Horses, near Beacon Hill. If you enjoy good company, good humour and tall tales from around the caving world, look us up one Wednesday. We can't guarantee a breakthrough but there are worse ways to while away the hours from 7pm to midnight.