There wouldn't have been much room to swing a pickaxe in here!. That didn't stop Heath and Dawkins. In just over a month the deposits in this chamber had been dug out. The stone tools and other artefacts they found have made this a very special place. Neanderthal people made some of the tools between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago. Hunters camping at this cave 12,500 years ago left behind stone tools and the picture of a horse drawn onto a piece of bone. Many bones of animals such as wolf, bear, lion, horse, giant deer, reindeer, bison, arctic hare and arctic lemming which lived during the Ice Age were also found.

Surviving sections of cave earth and flowstone
A similar flowstone layer found in Church Hole had formed in this chamber on top of the soft red cave earth. It took them about a month to dig down to the surface on which we are now standing, a depth of about one and a half metres.

More sections of cave earth and flowstone
Here, on this side of the chamber we can see the natural 'concrete' flowstone level indicated by this shelf. The 19th century archaeologists would have been walking on this surface before the cave was excavated.