Mendip Hills
The Mendip Hills is a range of limestone hills to the south of Bristol and Bath in Somerset, England. Running east to west between Weston-super-Mare and Frome, the overlook the Somerset Levels to the south and the Chew Valley. The hills give their name to the government district of Mendip. The higher, western part of the hills, covering 198 km2 has been designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the hills are largely formed from Carboniferous Limestone, which is quarried at several sites. Three nationally important semi-natural habitats are characteristic of the area, ash–maple woodland, calcareous grassland, with their temperate climate these support a range of flora and fauna including birds and small mammals. The dry stone walls that divide the pasture into fields are of importance as they support important populations of the nationally scarce wall whitlowgrass. The origin of the name Mendip is unclear, but it is known that there has been human habitation since Palaeolithic and Mesolithic times with a range of artefacts being recovered from caves.
Neolithic, Iron Age, and Bronze Age features such as barrows are numerous with over 200 scheduled ancient monuments recorded. There is evidence of mining in the Mendips dating back to the late Bronze Age, the difficult conditions in the area were noted by William Wilberforce in 1789, which inspired Hannah More to begin her work improving the conditions of the Mendip miners and agricultural workers. In the 18th and early 19th centuries 7,300 ha of the heathland on the hills were enclosed. In World War II a bombing decoy was constructed on top of Black Down at Beacon Batch, More recently, the mast of the Mendip transmitting station, micro-hydroelectric turbines and a wind turbine have been installed. There are still several quarries on the Mendip Hills, some of the stone is still carried by Mendip Rail, the other railways in the area closed in the 1960s. Although the Roman Fosse Way crossed the hills, the main roads generally avoid the higher areas, the western end of the hills is crossed by the M5 motorway and A38.
Further east, and running almost north to south, are the A37, a wide range of outdoor sports and leisure activities take place in the Mendips, many based on the particular geology of the area. The hills are recognised as a centre for caving and cave diving, as well as being popular with climbers, hillwalkers. Wookey Hole Caves and some of the caves in Cheddar Gorge are open as show caves, long distance footpaths include the Mendip Way and Limestone Link. Several explanations for the name Mendip have been suggested and its earliest known form is Mendepe in 1185. One suggestion is that it is derived from the medieval term Myne-deepes, others suggest it derives from Celtic monith, meaning mountain or hill, with an uncertain second element, perhaps Old English yppe in the sense of upland or plateau
Skull
The skull is a bony structure that forms the head of the skeleton in most vertebrates. It supports the structures of the face and provides a cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of two parts, the cranium and the mandible, in the human these two parts are the neurocranium and the viscerocranium or facial skeleton that includes the mandible as its largest bone. The skull forms the anterior most portion of the skeleton and is a product of cephalisation—housing the brain, and several sensory structures such as the eyes, nose, in the human these sensory structures are part of the facial skeleton. In some animals such as horned ungulates, the skull has a function by providing the mount for the horns. The English word skull is probably derived from Old Norse skulle, while the Latin word cranium comes from the Greek root κρανίον, the skull is made up of a number of fused flat bones, and contains many foramina and processes, and several cavities or sinuses. For details and the constituent bones, see neurocranium and viscerocranium, the human skull is the bony structure that forms the head in the human skeleton.
It supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain, like the skulls of other vertebrates, it protects the brain from injury. The skull consists of two parts, of different embryological origin—the neurocranium and the facial skeleton, the neurocranium forms the protective cranial cavity that surrounds and houses the brain and brainstem. The facial skeleton is formed by the supporting the face. Except for the mandible, all of the bones of the skull are joined together by sutures—synarthrodial joints formed by bony ossification, sometimes there can be extra bone pieces within the suture known as wormian bones or sutural bones. The human skull is considered to consist of twenty-two bones—eight cranial bones. In the neurocranium these are the bone, two temporal bones, two parietal bones, the sphenoid and frontal bones. The bones of the skeleton are the vomer, two nasal conchae, two nasal bones, two maxilla, the mandible, two palatine bones, two zygomatic bones, and two lacrimal bones.
Some of these bones—the occipital, frontal, in the neurocranium, and the nasal, the skull contains sinus cavities and numerous foramina. The sinuses are lined with respiratory epithelium and their known functions are the lessening of the weight of the skull, the aiding of resonance to the voice and the warming and moistening of the air drawn through the nasal cavity. The foramina are openings in the skull, the largest of these is the foramen magnum that allows the passage of the spinal cord as well as nerves and blood vessels. The many processes of the include the mastoid process and the zygomatic process
Compton Martin
Compton Martin is a small village and civil parish within the Chew Valley in Somerset and in the Bath and North East Somerset unitary authority in England. The parish has a population of 508 and it lies between Chew Valley Lake and Blagdon Lake, north of the Mendip Hills, approximately 10 miles south of Bristol on the A368 road Weston-super-Mare to Bath. A spring rises near the church and feeds the duck pond, which used to power a paper mill. The Big Green Gathering takes place at Fernhill Farm above the village, there is evidence of habitation of the area from prehistoric times and the Romans mined lead in the local hill. According to Robinson it is listed in the 1086 Domesday Book as Comtona, the Manor of Compton was given by William the Conqueror to Serlo de Burci. In the reign of Henry I of England it passed to his grandson, Robert fitz Martin, the parish was part of the hundred of Chewton. In the 14th century the Manor passed to the Wake family, wife of Ralph de Wake, was tried and sentenced to be burned for the murder of her husband.
Perhaps she is the inspiration for the legendary White Lady, a figure said to haunt the parish. Compton Martin was the birthplace of Saint Wulfric and miracle worker, around 1500 teazle farming for use in the weaving of cloth became a major local industry. In 1770 a new whipping post was installed by the pond for corporal punishment for offences such as petty larceny. The organ at Frenchay Unitarian Church came from the former Compton Martin Methodist Church in 1980, on 14 March 1944, during World War II a United States Navy Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber crashed near the village with the loss of five lives. Compton Martin Ochre Mine is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, the parish council has responsibility for local issues, including setting an annual precept to cover the council’s operating costs and producing annual accounts for public scrutiny. The parish council evaluates local planning applications and works with the police, district council officers, and neighbourhood watch groups on matters of crime, security.
Conservation matters and environmental issues are of interest to the council and North East Somersets area covers part of the ceremonial county of Somerset but it is administered independently of the non-metropolitan county. Its administrative headquarters is in Bath, between 1 April 1974 and 1 April 1996, it was the Wansdyke district and the City of Bath of the county of Avon. Before 1974 that the parish was part of Clutton Rural District, the parish is represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom as part of North East Somerset. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election and it is part of the South West England constituency of the European Parliament which elects seven MEPs using the dHondt method of party-list proportional representation. According to the 2001 Census, the Chew Valley South Ward, had 1,032 residents, living in 411 households, with an average age of 42.1 years
Caves of the Mendip Hills
The caves of the Mendip Hills are formed by the particular geology of the Mendip Hills, large areas of limestone worn away by water makes it a national centre for caving. The hills conceal the largest underground river system in Britain, the hills consist of anticlines of Carboniferous Limestone lying over Devonian Old Red Sandstone, with the sandstone exposed on the summits. As the water changes route within the hill some caves are left dry, the passages below the water table often have a loop formation caused by the water flowing down a bedding plane and rising up a fracture in the rock. The catchment area of the Cheddar Yeo, which rises in Goughs Cave, dye marking shows that some of the water travels underground for up to 10 miles, taking up to 14 days to reach Cheddar. When Banwell Bone Cave was discovered in 1824, it was found to contain a great many animal bones which have dated as about 80,000 years old. The earliest scientifically dated cemetery in Britain was found at Avelines Hole.
The human bone fragments it contained, from about 21 different individuals, are thought to be between roughly 10,200 and 10,400 years old. Archaeological evidence including pottery, hearths, coins and metalwork from the Mesolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, a number of Mendip caves were found by miners, for example the Banwell Caves which were opened by ochre miners in 1757. Many caves in the Mendip area were photographed by caver Harry Savory early in the 20th century using huge cameras, glass plates and his work has been described as. of a quality to shame virtually all modern cave photographers. The 1990 book A Man Deep in Mendip, The Caving Diaries of Harry Savory, 1910-1921 provides a made by Harry Savory. A number of important cave excavations and explorations were undertaken, from the 1920s onwards, the caves are recorded in the Mendip Cave Registry and Archive. The caves which are accessible to the public are at Cheddar Gorge and Wookey Hole. Many of the caves are gated and operate leader systems in an attempt to reduce the damage caused when the caves are visited, local caving groups organise trips and continue to discover new caverns.
Some estimates put the number of cavers active on the Mendip Hills over a weekend at more than 500. The first successful cave dive in Britain was achieved the year at Wookey Hole Caves. The cave complexes at St. Dunstans Well Catchment, Thrupe Lane Swallet, Lamb Leer, there are caves within the Cheddar Complex SSSI. A selection of the known caves are listed below Barrington, Stanton. Mendip, The Complete Caves and a View of the Hills, David John, Knibbs Anthony J. Mendip Underground, A Cavers Guide
Show cave
Unlike wild caves, they typically possess such features as constructed trails, guided tours and regular opening hours. Show cave has inconsistent usage between nations, with many tending to call all caves which are open to the public show caves. However there are caves which are not developed but are visited by very many people. This kind of cave is called a semi-wild cave. Access may involve anything between an easy stroll and dangerous climbing, most cave accidents happen in this kind of cave, as visitors often underestimate the difficulties and dangers. The oldest known cave in the world is Postojna Cave in Slovenia. In 1649 the first authorized cave guide started guiding Baumannshöhle in the Harz in Germany -, the development of electric lighting enabled the illumination of show caves. Early experiments with light in caves were carried out by Lieutenant Edward Cracknel in 1880 at Chifley Cave, Jenolan Caves. In 1881 Sloupsko-Šošůvské Jeskyně, Czech Republic, became the first cave in the world with electric arc light and this light did not use light bulbs, but electric arc lamps with carbon electrodes, which burned down and had to be replaced after some time.
The first cave in the world with electric light bulbs as we know today was the Kraushöhle in Austria in 1883. But the light was abandoned after only seven years and the cave is visited with carbide lamps. In 1884 two more caves were equipped with light, Postojna Cave and Olgahöhle
Cheddar Gorge
Cheddar Gorge is a limestone gorge in the Mendip Hills, near the village of Cheddar, England. The gorge is the site of the Cheddar show caves, where Britains oldest complete skeleton, Cheddar Man. Older remains from the Upper Late Palaeolithic era have been found, the caves, produced by the activity of an underground river, contain stalactites and stalagmites. The gorge is part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest called Cheddar Complex, Cheddar Gorge, including the caves and other attractions, has become a tourist destination. The gorge attracts about 500,000 visitors per year, Cheddar is a gorge lying on the southern edge of the Mendip Hills. The maximum depth of the gorge is 137 m, with a near-vertical cliff-face to the south, the B3135 road runs along the bottom of the gorge. Evidence for Variscan orogeny is seen in the rock and cleaved shales. In many places weathering of these strata has resulted in the formation of immature calcareous soils, the gorge was formed by meltwater floods during the cold periglacial periods which have occurred over the last 1.2 million years.
During the ice ages permafrost blocked the caves with ice and frozen mud, when this melted during the summers, water was forced to flow on the surface, and carved out the gorge. The gorge is susceptible to flooding, in the Chew Stoke flood of 1968 the flow of water washed large boulders down the gorge, damaging the cafe and entrance to Goughs Cave and washing away cars. In the cave itself the flooding lasted for three days, in 2012 the B3135, the road through the gorge, was closed for several weeks following damage to the road surface during extensive flooding. The south side of the gorge is owned and administered by the Marquess of Baths Longleat Estate, the cliffs on the north side of the gorge are owned by The National Trust. Every year both of the gorges owners contribute funds towards the clearance of scrub bush and trees from the area, if planning permission is gained in Spring 2014, operations would start in Spring 2016. Notable species at the gorge include dormice, yellow-necked mice, slow worms and adders and the large blue butterfly.
A wide variety of birds may be seen in Cheddar Gorge including peregrine falcons, kestrels, ravens. The flora include chalk grassland-loving species such as marjoram and wild thyme, the Cheddar pink, Dianthus gratianopolitanus, known as firewitch, only grows in the wild in the gorge. It was once common in the gorge but declined after being picked by collectors and it is home to unique species of whitebeam. The nationally rare little robin geranium, and Cheddar bedstraw and the nationally scarce species include slender tare, dwarf mouse-ear and it is one of the very few areas in southern Britain where the lichens Solorina saccata, Squamaria cartilaginea and Caloplaca cirrochroa can be found
East Harptree
East Harptree is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England. It is situated 5 miles north of Wells and 15 miles south of Bristol, the parish has a population of 644. The parish includes the hamlet of Coley, one suggested explanation for the derivation for the Harptree name is from hartreg, an Old English word for a grey hollow. According to Robinson it is listed in the 1086 Domesday Book as Harpetreu meaning The military road by the wood from the Old English herepoep and treow. In November 1887, while searching for the source of a spring, the jar was 6 inches below the surface in swampy ground. It contained 1,496 coins, five ingots of silver, the coins covered the period between the reigns of Constantine the Great and Gratian. The parish was part of the Winterstoke Hundred, around 1870-1880 the East Harptree Lead Works Co Ltd mined the area around the village for lead, but this seems to have been largely unsuccessful and did not last for many years. Smitham Chimney is a reminder of the work.
The parish council has responsibility for issues, including setting an annual precept to cover the council’s operating costs. The parish council evaluates local planning applications and works with the police, district council officers, and neighbourhood watch groups on matters of crime, security. Conservation matters and environmental issues are of interest to the council and North East Somersets area covers part of the ceremonial county of Somerset but it is administered independently of the non-metropolitan county. Its administrative headquarters is in Bath, between 1 April 1974 and 1 April 1996, it was the Wansdyke district and the City of Bath of the county of Avon. Before 1974 that the parish was part of the Clutton Rural District, the parish is represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom as part of North East Somerset. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election and it is part of the South West England constituency of the European Parliament which elects seven MEPs using the dHondt method of party-list proportional representation.
Coley is a hamlet in East Harptree parish just off the B3114 and it is near the Litton Reservoirs which is popular with dog walkers. The hamlet has roughly 100 people living there and has no amenities, Coley is quite often mistaken to be in the Litton parish. Coley has a bridge going through the centre which has the River Chew running under the bridge. According to the 2001 census the Mendip ward, had 1,465 residents, living in 548 households, with an average age of 39.0 years
Cave survey
A cave survey is a map of all or part of a cave system, which may be produced to meet differing standards of accuracy depending on the cave conditions and equipment available underground. Cave surveying and cartography, i. e. the creation of an accurate, the first known plan of a cave dates from 1546, and was of a man-made cavern in tufa called the Stufe di Nerone in Pozzuoli near Naples in Italy. The first natural cave to be mapped was the Baumannshöhle in Germany, another early survey dates from before 1680, and was made by John Aubrey of Long Hole in the Cheddar Gorge. It consists of a section of the cave. Numerous other surveys of caves were made in the following years, the first cave that is likely to have been accurately surveyed with instruments is the Grotte de Miremont in France. This was surveyed by an engineer in 1765 and includes numerous cross-sections. Édouard-Alfred Martel was the first person to describe surveying techniques and his surveys were made by having an assistant walk down the passage until they were almost out of sight.
Martel would take a bearing to the assistants light. This would equate to a modern day BCRA Grade 2 survey, the first cave to have its centreline calculated by a computer is the Fergus River Cave in Ireland, which was plotted by members of the UBSS in 1964. The software was programmed onto a large university mainframe computer and a plot was produced. Since the late 1990s digital instruments such as distometers have started to change the process, the main variation on the normal methodology detailed below have been devices such as LIDAR and SONAR surveyors that produce a point cloud rather than a series of linked stations. Video-based surveying exists in prototype form, a survey team begins at a fixed point and measures a series of consecutive line-of-sight measurements between stations. The stations are temporary fixed locations chosen chiefly for their ease of access, in some cases, survey stations may be permanently marked to create a fixed reference point to which to return at a date. Later, the cartographer analyses the data, converting them into two-dimensional measurements by way of geometrical calculations.
From them he/she creates a line-plot, a geometrical representation of the path through the cave. Cave surveys drawn on paper are presented in two-dimensional plan and/or profile views. Although primarily designed to be functional, some cavers consider cave surveys as an art form, hydrolevelling is an alternative to measuring depth with clinometer and tape that has a long history of use in Russia. The technique is used in building construction for finding two points with the same height, as in levelling a floor
Cheddar Yeo
The Cheddar Yeo is a small river in Somerset, England. Beneath the limestone of the Mendip Hills it forms the largest underground river system in Britain, after emerging into Cheddar Gorge it flows through the village of Cheddar, where it has been used in the past to power mills. From the Middle Ages until the 19th century the river had ports for seagoing vessels but is no longer navigable, some of the water, which is of good quality, is diverted into Cheddar Reservoir to provide drinking water for Bristol. The Yeo rises from a spring near Charterhouse and disappears under the Limestone of the Mendip Hills before reappearing in Goughs Cave before emerging into Cheddar Gorge, within Goughs Cave the river forms the largest underground river system in Britain. From a point relatively close to the areas of the open to the public. The bottom of that passage opens into the passage, which is several meters across. This has been explored for 335 m downstream, whilst upstream a dive of 150 m brings the diver out in a 20 m long chamber named Lloyd Hall and this chamber is the largest chamber currently found in the Cheddar caves.
Further on, three sump pools lead to Sump 2 which is about 27 metres deep at its lowest point and 150 metres long, air is again reached at Sheppards Crook, which is followed by Sump 3. This sump is 55 metres deep and at its bottommost point is about 30 metres below sea level, following Sump 3, a wide ascending passage continues for 370 metres before reaching an impassable blockage, still below the waters surface. Roman remains have uncovered at the site. It flows south under a railway bridge which used to carry the Cheddar Valley line. The catchment area is 54 square kilometres, as early as 1527 there are records of watermills on the river. In the 17th and 18th centuries, there were several watermills which ground corn and made paper, with 13 mills on the Yeo at the peak, declining to seven by 1791, in the Victorian era it became a centre for the production of clothing. The last mill in Cheddar, which was used as a shirt factory, Rackley was a trading port in the Middle Ages following construction of a wharf in 1200.
In 1324 Edward II confirmed it as a borough, however by the end of the 14th century the port was in decline. In the 14th century a French ship sailed up the river and by 1388 Thomas Tanner from Wells used Rackley to export cloth and corn to Portugal, and received iron and salt in exchange. There was a port at Hythe on the Wedmore Road, just south of Cheddar. Water from the river flows into Cheddar Reservoir which is a circular artificial reservoir operated by Bristol Water
PLOS One
PLOS ONE is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science since 2006. The journal covers primary research from any discipline within science and medicine, operating under a pay-to-publish model, PLOS ONE publishes approximately 50% of submitted manuscripts. All submissions go through a review by a member of the board of academic editors. According to the journal, papers are not to be excluded on the basis of lack of perceived importance or adherence to a scientific field, although the number of submissions decreased from 2013 to 2014, PLOS ONE remained the world’s largest journal by number of papers published. Numbers decreased further to 22,000 published papers in 2016, later, PLOS ONE was launched in December 2006 as a beta version named PLoS ONE. It launched with Commenting and Note making functionality, and added the ability to rate articles in July 2007, in September 2007 the ability to leave trackbacks on articles was added. In August 2008 it moved from a publication schedule to a daily one.
In October 2008 PLoS ONE came out of beta, in September 2009, as part of its Article-Level Metrics program, PLoS ONE made the full online usage data—e. g. HTML page views, PDF, XML downloads—for every published article publicly available, in mid-2012, as part of a rebranding of PLoS as PLOS, the journal changed its name to PLOS ONE. The number of published by PLOS ONE grew rapidly from inception to 2013 and has since declined somewhat. By 2010, it was estimated to have become the largest journal in the world, at PLOS ONE, the median review time has grown from 37 days to 125 days over the first ten years of operation, according to Himmelsteins analysis, done for Nature. The median between acceptance and posting a paper on the site has decreased from 35 to 15 days over the same period, both numbers for 2016 roughly correspond to the industry-wide averages for biology-related journals. The founding managing editor was Chris Surridge and he was succeeded by Peter Binfield in March 2008, who was publisher until May 2012.
Damian Pattinson held the editorial position until December 2015. Joerg Heber was confirmed as editor-in-chief from November 2016, according to Nature, the journals aim is to challenge academias obsession with journal status and impact factors. Being an online-only publication allows PLOS ONE to publish more papers than a print journal, in an effort to facilitate publication of research on topics outside, or between, traditional science categories, it does not restrict itself to a specific scientific area. Papers published in PLOS ONE can be of any length, contain full color throughout, reuse of articles is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution License, version 2.5. In the first four years following launch, it use of over 40,000 external peer reviewers
Charterhouse, Somerset
Charterhouse, known as Charterhouse-on-Mendip, is a hamlet in the Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the English county of Somerset. The area between Charterhouse and Cheddar Gorge including Velvet Bottom and Ubley Warren is covered by the Cheddar Complex Site of Special Scientific Interest. The name is believed to come from the Carthusian order of Chartreuse in France, there is evidence, in the form of burials in local caves, of human occupation since the late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age. The lead and silver mines at Charterhouse, were first operated on a large scale by the Romans, there was some kind of fortlet here in the 1st century, and an amphitheatre. The Roman landscape has been designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, the parish was part of the Winterstoke Hundred. After the dissolution of the monasteries, it was granted to Robert May who constructed a house here. There is further evidence of mine workings in the medieval and Victorian periods, there is evidence of a rectangular medieval enclosure.
The outdoor activity centre and headquarters of the Mendip Hills AONB is based at Charterhouse, with accommodation, there are several caves in the limestone around the village including Manor Farm Swallet and Upper Flood Swallet. The Church Of St Hugh was built in 1908 by W. D. Caroe, on the initiative of the Rev. Menzies Lambrick and it is a Grade II* listed building. A cross in the churchyard and the wall are listed buildings. The roof-truss, screen and altar are all made of carved whitened oak, aerial photograph of Roman fort Charterhouse Centre Map of Charterhouse circa 1900
Cave diving
Cave diving is underwater diving in water-filled caves. It may be done as a sport, a way of exploring flooded caves for scientific investigation, or for the search for. Recreational cave diving is considered to be a type of technical diving due to the lack of a free surface during large parts of the dive. It originated in the United Kingdom, stemming from the more common activity of caving and its origins in the United States are more closely associated to scuba diving. Compared to caving and scuba diving, there are relatively few practitioners of cave diving and this is due in part to the specialized equipment and skill sets required, and in part because of the high potential risks due to the specific environment. Despite these risks, water-filled caves attract scuba divers and speleologists due to their often unexplored nature, Underwater caves have a wide range of physical features, and can contain fauna not found elsewhere. The procedures of cave diving have much in common with procedures used for types of penetration diving.
This is ensured by the use of a continuous guideline between the team and outside of the flooded cave, and diligent planning and monitoring of gas supplies. Two basic types of guideline are used, permanent lines, permanent lines may include a main line starting near the entrance/exit, and side lines or branch lines, and are marked to indicate the direction to the nearest exit. Temporary lines include exploration lines and jump lines, in some caves, changes of depth of the cave along the dive route will constrain decompression depths, and gas mixtures and decompression schedules can be tailored to take this into account. Most open-water diving skills apply to diving, and there are additional skills specific to the environment. Good buoyancy control and finning technique help preserve visibility in areas with silt deposits, the ability to navigate in total darkness using the guideline to find the way out is a safety critical emergency skill. Emergency skills for dealing with gas supply problems are complicated by the possibility of the emergency occurring in a confined space, Cave diver training stresses the importance of risk management and cave conservation ethics.
Most training systems offer progressive stages of education and certification, Cavern training covers the basic skills needed to enter the overhead environment. Training will generally consist of gas planning, propulsion techniques needed to deal with the silty environments in many caves and handling, and communication. Once certified as a diver, a diver may undertake cavern diving with a cavern or cave certified buddy. Once intro to cave certified, a diver may penetrate further into a cave, usually limited by 1/3 of a single cylinder, or in the case of a basic cave certification. An intro cave diver is not certified to do complex navigation
