Fairy Cave Quarry
disused limestone quarry in Somerset, England
Fairy Cave Quarry (grid reference ST65734753) is between Stoke St Michael and Oakhill in the limestone of the Mendip Hills, in Somerset, England.
Quarrying was first started on the site in the early 1920s. In 1963 the quarry was acquired by Hobbs (Quarries) Ltd., and production on a much larger scale began. Excavations cut back into the hillside above St Dunstan's Well Rising, a Bristol Water abstraction point (long since abandoned); various caves were intercepted. The quarry ceased production in 1977.
The caves in Fairy Cave Quarry include:
Balch Cave
Conning Tower Cave
Fairy Cave
Fernhill Cave
Hillier's Cave
Hillwithy Cave
Shatter Cave
W/L Cave
Withyhill Cave
The caves in the quarry were formed by water from an unknown source. Withybrook Slocker is an active swallet to the south of the quarry and although the water sinking here presently flows through the quarry caves the stream is misfit. Withybrook Slocker, however, gives access to the upstream continuation of the quarry caves and digging activities by the Cerberus Spelaeological Society will hopefully lead to the discovery of the original source of the system.
The quarry has also been used extensively for climbing, with 172 named routes. Although this was previously without permission of the landowners, in July 2010 access for climbers was agreed.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5430947. Authority coordinates are 51.226, -2.492. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 1977 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fairy Cave Quarry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.