The credit for finding Ariel Cave, on the ‘Isle’ of Portland, Dorset, goes to the caving and climbing section of the Combined Cadet Force of Hardye’s School, Dorchester. This is a brief note of context.
The school eventually took the name of its 16C founder after a somewhat chequered history (detailed on its web-site), and was a boy’s grammar-school until the introduction of the Comprehensive System in 1980. Under this change, it was merged with the local girls’ grammar, and secondary-modern, schools; and eventually all coalesced as The Thomas Hardye School on its modern site. It is now an academy under that name; mixed, and notable for its internal and local- community involvement in both the arts and sciences. Its impressive list of extra-curricular clubs include the Combined Cadet Force (CCF); but the site gives no details of these various club’s activities.
The discovery of the cave came from the HSCCF under its Captain, Andrew MacTavish, commissioning photographs from the Royal Navy helicopter squadron based on Portland at the time, to illustrate climbing routes on the high Westcliff. The entrance, about 10m down the 30m face, was proven for HSCCF by a Dorset Caving Group (DCG) abseiling practice; but fittingly it was ex-Hardyean Ian Wolff who was first in. He alone entered the passage for a few metres to prove it open, for DCG to tell the school the good news. After the students had had first go at it, producing a preliminary survey to perhaps BCRA Grade 2 (published in the archived HSCCF training manual presented here), the school and the club co-operated on further exploring this intriguing cave, reaching two boulder chokes and its Queen’s “Entrance”. The two groups had already co-operatively explored other Portland caves in the early-1970s; especially Sandy Hole, a DCG find at the cliff base several hundred metres South from Ariel Cave.
That Shakespearean name was given by HSCCF Capt. MacTavish. Also one of the school’s English Literature teachers, he played on The Tempest–uous weather of their first exploration, complete with heavy surf breaking on the rocky shore far below! A name further punned by others with nearby Persil Rift in the 1980s; and in late-2021, by an MCRA Archivist being nominatively house-proud with his finds in that cave’s inner recesses. Others connected Ariel Cave and Sandy Hole, c.1986, via one of the mass-movement rifts that break the limestone into huge blocks. The original relationships of these caves’ fossil stream passages are still enigmatic.
Finally, Hardye’s School holds a seismograph on permanent watch, making it one of the very few schools in Britain to be part of the British Geological Survey’s national seismography network. Although the instrument is in a foyer, it is of course normally accessible to visitors only on public events held in the main hall.
Nigel Graham (WCC and former DCG), 08 January 2022.
