Devon Holiday Guide

Description

Kents Cavern is situated in Torquay on the South Devon coast.

Regular tours daily from 10:30. Last tour at 4:00pm.

Guided tours around the caves run regularly every day and take you on an incredible journey back 400 million years to when Kents Cavern Rock was formed at the bottom of a warm tropical sea.

You will discover how the cave and the spectacular formations formed over 2 million years. You will feel, smell and experience the cave just as our prehistory ancestors did as they sheltered in the cave, lighting fires and hiding from Mammoths, Hyenas, Cave Lions, Cave Bears and Saber-toothed cats during the Ice Age.

In 2008 the cave was awarded best large visitor attraction in South West England for the quality of our guided tours and visitor facilities.

The cave is privately owned and dispite being a protected national monument receives no public support or funding. The future of the cave is totally dependent on the income we receive from our visitors.

In Britain, Kents Cavern is by far the most important prehistoric cave dwelling and is known around the world for its record of prehistoric human occupation.

Kents Cavern is a protected national monument and a site of special scientific interest. It is a natural cave, formed by an underground river over 2 million years ago and is situated in the heart of Torquay, on the south coast of Devon.

As Ice Ages came and went, the cave was used as a shelter by the most ancient of humans over 500,000 years ago.

Over 80,000 artefacts were excavated from the cave between 1865 and 1880 by William Pengelly. Today these artefacts are in museums all over the world. Pengelly removed two stalagmite floors in the caves, one 12,000 and the other 350,000 years old. Under each he found scientific evidence that would challenge the thinking on the antiquity of man.

The controversial nature of his discoveries led Pengelly to write prolifically and record every step of his excavation. Today Pengelly´s diaries and the exactitude of his work in the caves are recognised as being the first ever example of modern archaeological recording in the world.

One of the most important artefacts so far found in the cave is a human jawbone dated at 37-40,000 years old, currently the oldest anatomically correct human fossil in Europe. However, current research is on-going to determine if the fossil is England´s first Neandertal bone fragment.