History
The first cave to be discovered was the Stalactite cave in 1757. This was opened in 1824 as a show cave to raise money for the local school. In an attempt to make access easier a tunnel was dug into the hill during which the bone cave was discovered in 1825.
The estate was owned by George Henry Law as Bishop of Bath and Wells, who thought the bones which were found were those of animals drowned in the flood at the time of Noah's Ark described in the Book of Genesis. The bishop had paths and folly buildings created for visitors and built a small cottage, which later became his retirement home.
Since the 1970s preservation and restoration work has been undertaken.
Read more about this topic: Banwell Caves
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)