Windmill Hill Cavern (also called Windmill Hill Cave, the Brixham Cave, Brixham Bone Cavern and Philp's Cave) is a limestone cave system in the town of

Brixham Brixham is a coastal town and civil parish, the smallest and southernmost of the three main population centres (the others being Paignton and Torquay) on the coast of Torbay in the county of Devon, in the south-west of England. Commercial fish ...

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...

. It was discovered in 1858 and later excavated by a team led by the geologist

William Pengelly William Pengelly, Royal Society, FRS Geological Society, FGS (12 January 1812 – 16 March 1894) was a British geologist and amateur archaeologist who was one of the first to contribute proof that the Biblical chronology of the earth calculated ...

, who found proof that humans co-existed with extinct British fauna.

Discovery

Windmill Hill Cavern was a chance discovery in 1858 by builder John Lane Philp, who was searching for a pickaxe that had fallen into a hole in the ground during construction of a house on Mount Pleasant Road in the northwestern part of Windmill Hill and incidentally came across the cave. Upon hearing about Philp's discovery, the

Geological Society of London The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe with more than 12,000 Fellows. Fe ...

drew up a lease to secure an excavation of the cavern.

, a British geologist and paleontologist, was selected to lead the excavation of the cavern, with geologist

Hugh Falconer Hugh Falconer MD FRS (29 February 1808 – 31 January 1865) was a Scottish geologist, botanist, palaeontologist, and paleoanthropologist. He studied the flora, fauna, and geology of India, Assam,Burma,and most of the Mediterranean islands ...

, supervised by Pengelly, outlining the operation plans for the exploration before beginning.

Excavation

In excavating the cave, the team used a grid system, an exploration technique that had never been used until that time. During the excavation, 36

Palaeolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

artifacts were discovered, the first being a flint knife. Some of the artifacts were associated with fossils of extinct animals, which prompted Pengelly and some of the more sceptical members of his team to dig deeper for proof that humans lived amongst extinct British animals. After studying the flint artifacts at the Somme River Valley's gravel terraces, the more sceptical members of Pengelly's team, such as Joseph Prestwich, found the proof that they sought that humans and extinct British animals had once lived amongst each other. Remains of animals found in the cave included those of extinct species such as

aurochs The aurochs (''Bos primigenius'') ( or ) is an extinct cattle species, considered to be the wild ancestor of modern domestic cattle. With a shoulder height of up to in bulls and in cows, it was one of the largest herbivores in the Holocen ...

and

woolly mammoth The woolly mammoth (''Mammuthus primigenius'') is an extinct species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with '' Mammuthus subp ...

, as well as still extant taxa now absent from Europe, such as the

spotted hyena The spotted hyena (''Crocuta crocuta''), also known as the laughing hyena, is a hyena species, currently classed as the sole extant member of the genus ''Crocuta'', native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is listed as being of least concern by the IUC ...

Operations

Windmill Hill Cavern was open to the public at one point as a show cave, but later closed. The cavern is listed under Section 1 of the

Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 or AMAAA was a law passed by the UK government, the latest in a series of Ancient Monument Acts legislating to protect the archaeological heritage of England & Wales and Scotland. Norther ...

Discovery

Excavation

Operations

References

Further reading