In 1969 blasting operations exposed a 100 metre long, 30 metre deep and approximately 20 metre wide pocket of reddish brown soils amongst the rock mass. This major find was later to be designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (S.S.S.I), and became known as ‘ Westbury-sub-Mendip Cave’.

In 1976, the Natural History Museum commenced excavations at the site, which after several years culminated in their production of their most excellent tome entitled “Westbury Cave, The Natural History Museum Excavations 1976-1984 (Published by Western Academic & Specialist Press Ltd, Bristol, UK. ISBN 0 9535418 0 0 ).

A vast collection of fossils and faunal material was recovered and catalogued, most of which were subsequently removed to the Natural History Museum in London. Amongst the materials excavated, supporting evidence was found that part of the cave had been used as a Denning area, predominantly by male cave bears for several millennium.

At one stage, a serious view held by some scientists, put forward the possibility that ‘worked flints’ and ‘bone scrapes’ found at the site could indicate the first site of such use by man in Great Britain, this has been a subject still debated and contested by experts to date. ( M.J.Bishop, Earliest Record of mans presence in Britain, Nature 253).

A neighbour of the Quarry, the Hydrologist Dr. William Stanton, who before his untimely death in 2010, had written much upon the early stages in the development of Westbury Cave, carried out much detail analysis of both the quarry itself and upon neighbouring sink- holes which lie above the quarry boundaries.(Notes on the geology and geomorphology of the Westbury bone fissure, Wessex Cave Club Journal 289-293)

Link to Natural England's SSSI Page