Glendene Park Cave   5L238

Moonmilk on walls

GLENDENE PARK CAVE.

 A seemingly insignificant one by 0.5 metre diameter roof window in a shallow rock-filled doline, the entrance to cave 5L238 was bulldozed closed sometime around the early 1960s and was reopened by the author and fellow caver, Andrew Cox, after several hours of digging on 1st Feb. 1984 ... resulting in the "discovery of one of the most impressive fissure-cave systems in the Lower South East in recent times" (according to prominent caver Kevin Mott, anyway!)

After descending via a 3 metre length of ladder to the floor of the entrance chamber, visitors can see several large passages running off both to the north-west and south-east. The cave is a multi-passage maze-type system com-prising several major tunnels and exhibiting phreatic joint control-led development, with the main area of cave stretching out to the south-east. The north-western passages intersect and lead to a fissure with water in its bottom (where a tiny amount of decor-ation is also found on the ceiling), but the cave ends here with silt fills. The south-eastern passages take the form of several very narrow (and one much larger) joint passages with extensive and very beautiful, white moonmilk walls and several crawly fissures which head back towards the entrance from the end of the main passage. Motor vehicles can also be heard in one section of the main passage as they pass a few metres overhead!

Apart from its size (more than 240 metres of passage to date), the cave is also an important palae-ontological site and needs to be protected from excessive visitation and subsequent degradation, but 5L238 is actually part of a much larger northwest-southeast joint system which includes 5L67, 5L243 and other associated features nearby.  There are no known “people-passable” connections between these features so at present they are considered as being individual caves in their own right.

*LSECR - P Horne

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