Kent's Cavern

Kent's Cavern, or KENT'S HOLE, is notable for the evidence which it has furnished as to the contemporaneity of man in Britain with various extinct or no longer indigenous mammals. It is situated in a small wooded limestone hill in the immediate neighbourhood of Torquay, and appears to have been known from time immemorial, although it did not attract the attention of scientific men until 1825. The early explorers of the cave, Northmore, Trevelyan, MacEnery, Godwin-Austen, and (in 1846) a committee of the Torquay Natural History Society, all succeeded in finding flint implements mixed up with the remains of extinct animals. But these discoveries received little attention until 1858, when the results of the systematic exploration of Brixham Cave by a committee of the Royal Society led to the appointment in 1864 of a similar committee by the British Association for the examination of the deposits in Kent's Cave. The results of this exploration, carried on under William Pengelley (1812-94), from March 1865 to June 1880, at a cost of £1963, are of the highest importance. They show that the bottom of the cave is paved with a succession of sheets of stalagmite, red earth, and breccia—all of which have yielded relics of man and various extinct or no longer indigenous mammals. Amongst the former are palæolithic flint tools and implements of bone, such as a needle with a well-formed eye, an awl, a harpoon, &c., also perforated badger's teeth, which were probably used for ornamental purposes. The animal remains comprise those of lion, bear, mammoth, machairodus latidens, rhinoceros, hyæna, reindeer, Irish elk, red-deer, wolf, fox, badger, glutton, beaver, &c. In one part of the cave there occurred underneath stalagmite a dark layer some 4 inches thick, which consisted mainly of small fragments of charred wood. This doubtless was an old hearth, round which the palæolithic cave-dwellers gathered to roast bones for the sake of their savoury marrow. The sheets of stalagmite are of inconstant thickness—the lower one attaining in places a thickness of 12 feet, while the upper one does not seem to have exceeded 5 feet, and was frequently very much thinner. The general character and structure of the cave-deposits show that a prolonged time was required for their accumulation. See M. W. Pengelley's address to the British Association (1883), and the Life of him by his daughter (1897).