Frog Pot NGR 52355260 Chancellor’s Farm, Priddy
Frog Pot Recovered - Richard Witcombe
Digging work during 1997 and 1998 by the Wessex/ATLAS team and members of NHASA on their “Lodmore off” Wednesdays has reopened and lengthened this small but interesting cave system to the rear of Chancellor's Farm, the Somerset Wildlife Trust's Mendip headquarters to the north of Priddy.
Actively assisted by the Trust’s Mendip Hills Officer, Kate Lawrence, a large amount of farmhouse waste and spoil was removed from a depression containing a fluted rock outcrop (with a nice Michelinia fossil) 100 yards west north west of the farmhouse. This is believed to have been the site of an 18' deep collapse briefly investigated by Imperial College cavers in 1966, although there is a school of thought which holds that their Frog Pot was in a smaller depression sixty feet to the north. This is based on the view that the ICCC description of a 3’ square shaft does not tally with the 11’ by 8’ dimensions of the current entrance, although of course, the earlier collapse might not have run back to the rock walls.
The 1997/98 dig has opened up a very attractive 15' deep, water worn shaft in solid limestone, with on its north side two tight entrances to a second shaft on the same rift line. The floor of the inner shaft has been dug downwards to a depth of 33' beneath ground level, at which point a passage in the far wall was cleared to enter a narrow aven, too tight after 12’ but probably rising to a point close to the surface.
Digging continued below this aven and a stooping height passage with a flat bedding plane roof was followed for 12’ to a further mud filled aven. Short sections of telegraph pole were used to prop the bedding plane as it appeared to have minor rifts on either side! The digging spoil from the excavation was dumped on the surface 25’ down valley from the entrance shaft. Unfortunately the spot chosen for this temporary dump has proved to be directly above the new aven, and as mud has slumped down from the roof, the surface spoil heap has started to sink underground! There is now a real likelihood that the collapse will continue until a new entrance to the cave is opened up.
The cave passage seems to be developed along a joint heading down towards the valley floor, and is marked by a line of small depressions. The several potential entrances and its closeness to the surface may indicate that it is an ancient drainage route which has been exposed by the solutional downcutting of the Mendip plateau. Indeed there are narrow choked passages leading “upstream” from the entrance shaft, which may itself have been a splash pot aven “decapitated” by the erosion. Despite the very square cross section of the lower passage (see photo), there is no evidence of any mining activity in the cave.
If the present collapse can be stabilised, digging will continue. The cave is close to Flower Pot and the now closed Hollowfield Swallet, and is heading for the general area of downstream Bowery Corner Swallet, one of the BEC’s conjectured entrances into the Cheddar bound “Middle Yeo” river.
The name Frog Pot was given to the site by the Imperial College cavers who found two frogs, and more curiously a golf ball, at the bottom of the original collapse. There is a story that the ball was lost during a sponsored competition to hit a golf ball right across Mendip! In addition to many more frogs and a great crested newt, the current excavation has revealed a lot of recent domestic rubbish and cow bones of indeterminate age.
Footnote
By July 1999, the surface collapse was ten feet in diameter and on average two feet deep. Underground, the slumped material had reached the first aven chamber.
Reference
P.A.Davis, Frog Pot, Priddy, Journal London University Caving Club (3) p11 (June 1967)
Volume 25
