Qualla: Wookey Hole Caves

Wookey Hole Caves: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steve Barnes, CC BY-SA 2.0. The name is a triple redundancy: Wookey is a Celtic word for cave, ogo or ogof in Welsh; Hole is an Anglo-Saxon word for cave; and Cave is what we add in modern English. Wookey Hole Cave technically means Cave Cave Cave. The redundancy is appropriate, because the system that runs back into the southern slope of the Mendip Hills has 25 known chambers, contains the longest underwater cave system explored in Britain, and has been claiming and rewarding cave divers for over ninety years. Tourists see the first three chambers. Past chamber five, the way on lies underwater, and that is where the strange history of British cave diving begins.

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Image: Steve Barnes | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wookey Hole Caves: The Witch

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the first chamber stands a stalagmite roughly the shape and size of a hunched human figure. Legend says it is a witch from the Iron Age, turned to stone by a monk from Glastonbury who came to deal with her. The story may be older than the legend - in 1912, Herbert Balch, who w...

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Image: Rodw | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wookey Hole Caves: The First British Cave Dives

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nav reet rana, CC BY-SA 4.0. Up to chamber five, the cave is dry and walkable. Past that, the way on lies in the water-filled sump where the River Axe emerges from the deeper cave system. In 1935, Graham Balcombe and Penelope 'Mossy' Powell, working under the Cave Diving Group, borrowed standard diving dress...

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Image: Nav reet rana | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wookey Hole Caves: The Lake of Gloom

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pam Brophy, CC BY-SA 2.0. The names attached to the deeper chambers tell their own story. The way on from chamber twenty-two was found by Colin Edmond and Martyn Farr in February 1976. A few days later Geoff Yeadon and Oliver Statham, laying just nine metres more line, reached chamber twenty-three. They e...

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Image: Pam Brophy | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wookey Hole Caves: A Paper Mill and a Crazy Golf Course

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, Public domain. Above ground, the village of Wookey Hole grew up around a paper mill that drew on the cave's water. The current mill building dates from around 1860 and is Grade II listed; its water wheel was powered by a canal channelled from the River Axe. Commercial handmade paper production ...

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Image: Rodw | Public domain

Wookey Hole Caves: What You See

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit william, CC BY-SA 2.0. Public tours follow the dry gallery through the first three chambers, then take artificial tunnels - excavated in 1974-1975 by ex-coal miners from the Radstock area - to bypass the underwater sections and visit chambers seven, eight, nine, and twenty. The river runs through the s...

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Image: william | CC BY-SA 2.0