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Great forces have
formed the caves of Wookey Hole. About 400 million
years ago an ocean covered this part of England.
Microscopic sea creatures swam in its waters,
and their shells eventually became calcium carbonate,
or limestone, which settled on the bed of the
ocean to mix with and, eventually hardening into
rock.
Powerful internal
pressures squeezed that ocean bed like a crumpled
rug to form the Mendip Hills. As the rain fell
on these hills, so it began to dissolve the weaknesses
in the rock, little by little widening cracks,
eating into softer parts, turning into rivulets
and streams.
Deep in the earth
they became the River Axe. It broke through fissures
in the great blocks of limestone, swirled around
huge beds of the conglomerate, and worked away
to enlarge the caverns, always seeking new shafts
and tunnels down into the earth and eventually
back into the sunlight and the distant sea.
And all the time
the dissolved limestone in the water was itself
reforming, creating dripping stalactites, building
up great stalagmites, and turning into curtains
and waterfalls of shining crystalline stone.
The pale limestone
and brownish-red conglomerate is stained vermilion
with iron oxide, black with manganese, grey from
the lead once mined on the Mendip Hills above;
here and there is a golden splash of ochre.
Chamber 3, known as The Witch's Parlour, is a
very broad cave with a low ceiling, carved out
by the swirl of the underground river over a million
years. It is now a base for the cave divers.
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