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Wookey Hole

Mendip HillsVillages in Mendip District
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Wookey Hole is a village in Somerset, England. It is the location of the Wookey Hole show caves.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Wookey Hole (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Wookey Hole
Titlands Lane, Mendip St Cuthbert Out

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.2238 ° E -2.6744 °
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Titlands Lane

Titlands Lane
BA5 1BE Mendip, St Cuthbert Out
England, United Kingdom
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Wookey Hole Caves
Wookey Hole Caves

Wookey Hole Caves () are a series of limestone caverns, a show cave and tourist attraction in the village of Wookey Hole on the southern edge of the Mendip Hills near Wells in Somerset, England. The River Axe flows through the cave. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) for both biological and geological reasons. Wookey Hole cave is a "solutional cave", one that is formed by a process of weathering in which the natural acid in groundwater dissolves the rocks. Some water originates as rain that flows into streams on impervious rocks on the plateau before sinking at the limestone boundary into cave systems such as Swildon's Hole, Eastwater Cavern and St Cuthbert's Swallet; the rest is rain that percolates directly through the limestone. The temperature in the caves is a constant 11 °C (52 °F). The caves have been used by humans for around 45,000 years, demonstrated by the discovery of tools from the Palaeolithic period, along with fossilised animal remains. Evidence of Stone and Iron Age occupation continued into Roman Britain. A corn-grinding mill operated on the resurgent waters of the River Axe as early as the Domesday survey of 1086. The waters of the river are used in a handmade paper mill, the oldest extant in Britain, which began operations circa 1610. The low, constant temperature of the caves means that they can be used for maturing Cheddar cheese. The caves were the site of the first cave dives in Britain, undertaken by Jack Sheppard and Graham Balcombe in the 1930s. Since then, divers have explored the extensive network of chambers developing breathing apparatus and novel techniques in the process. The full extent of the cave system is still unknown with approximately 4,000 metres (13,000 ft), including 25 chambers, having been explored. Part of the cave system opened as a show cave in 1927 following exploratory work by Herbert E. Balch. As a tourist attraction it has been owned by Madame Tussauds and, most recently, the circus owner Gerry Cottle. The cave is notable for the Witch of Wookey Hole, a roughly human-shaped stalagmite that legend says is a witch turned to stone by a monk from Glastonbury. It has also been used as a location for film and television productions, including the Doctor Who serial Revenge of the Cybermen.

Wells (Tucker Street) railway station
Wells (Tucker Street) railway station

Wells (Tucker Street) railway station was the second terminus station on the Bristol and Exeter Railway's Cheddar Valley line in Somerset after the extension from the first terminus at Cheddar was opened. It was the third station on the third railway to reach the city of Wells and proved to be the longest surviving. The station was opened with the extension of the broad gauge line from Cheddar on 5 April 1870. It was converted to standard gauge in the mid-1870s and then became Wells' main station when the Cheddar Valley line was linked up to the East Somerset Railway to provide through services from Yatton to Witham in 1878. To achieve this through-running, the Great Western Railway, which had by this time taken over both the Bristol and Exeter and the East Somerset lines, had to run trains over rails owned by the separate Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway and through the S&DJR terminus station at Priory Road to the East Somerset station which was across the street. The East Somerset station at this stage closed, but GWR trains ran through Priory Road without stopping for a further 56 years, until in 1934 they started to call at the S&D station. Priory Road closed in 1951 with the closure of the S&D branch line from Glastonbury and Street, leaving Tucker Street as the only station in Wells. In fact, as the "main" station on the most direct line from other centres of population, Tucker Street station was known simply as "Wells" for the first 50 years of its life, being renamed only on 12 July 1920. It resumed the Wells name on 29 October 1951 when Priory Road shut. But Tucker Street station lasted only a dozen years longer. The Yatton to Witham line closed to passengers on 9 September 1963, though goods traffic mostly carrying stone passed through from Cheddar until 1969. The station was demolished soon after closure but the goods shed remains as commercial premises and a row of five houses built for the staff are still standing.