THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



No. LXXXVIII.— OCTOBER, 1871. 



L — On the Contents of a Ht^na's Den on the Great Doward, 



Whitchurch, Eoss.^ 



By tlie Eev. W. S. Stmonds, M.A., F.G.S., of Pendock. 



THE hill of the Great Doward rises above the right bank of the 

 river Wye to the N.W. of the well-known limestone escarpment 

 of Symonds Yat. The section of the Great Doward, geologically 

 considered, is best seen by ascending the hill from the Monmouth 

 road, a quarter of a mile from the village of Whitchurch. The base- 

 ment beds consist of Upper Old Eed Sandstone, which thins out 

 considerably in its Southern strike from the Bi'econ Vans ; and we 

 pass upwards over the Old Eed Conglomerate, and the Passage beds 

 of the Upper Yellow Sandstones, while the hill itself is capped by 

 the Lower Limestone shale and the Carboniferous Limestone. 



View of tlie "Wye from the roof of King Arthur's Cave looking towards Monmouth. 

 Height of the cave above the level of the river, 300 feet. (From a photograph.) 



On the summit of the Great Doward are the vestiges of an ancient 

 encampment known as " King Arthur's Hall," and on its western 

 slope is a cavern called "King Arthur's Cave." A short distance 

 to the westward is the " Little Doward Camp," where the remains 

 of an old encampment are very conspicuous, and where, according to 

 Gibson's Camden, " broad arrow-heads have been found ; " and in a 

 place which seemed to have been arched over, an almost entire 

 human skeleton was discovered, " whose joints were pretended to be 

 twice the length of those of the present race." 



1 Read before the British Association, Edinburgh, August, 1871. 



VOL. VIII.— NO. LXXXVIII. 28 



