research question

[julesjones]

I have my shapeshifters living in a cave that's loosely based on old limestone quarries such as Winspit and in particular Tilly Whim. Basic idea - quarry cave that may or may not have been started in a pre-existing natural sea cave, with large main chamber and passage running back with side chambers, tunnel to surface, probably with steep steps (a la Tilly Whim). The cave is at sea level, but the main entrance has long since been covered by a rockfall, and there is only a low entrance accessible by a dinghy but not easily seen. The cave is imaginary since the point is that nobody knows it's there, but I want it to be reasonably plausible, hence basing it on real ones. The tricky bit is...

It would be useful if there was a building near or above the exit to the tunnel that is available for sale to the human member of the trio. Easiest is probably the remains of buildings actually associated with the quarry. I'm quite happy to go with anything from tumbledown ruin to buying a plot of land and building a modern house on it, but it needs to be something that gives the guys safe, hidden access to the tunnel, which means they need to have physical control of the property, either outright purchase or long-term lease. But my recollection is that a lot of that coastline is National Trust or similar. Would it actually be possible for someone to own/rent a building that close to the shoreline, or is the best I can do a house in a nearby village and an old ruin near the actual entrance that nobody ever goes to because nobody has actually found the tunnel entrance?

Comments

[alex-holden.livejournal.com]

Even if they did manage to buy a plot of land on the coast, it would probably be stretching plausibility for them to then successfully obtain planning permission to build a new house on it.

[julesjones]

That was my feeling, which is why I'd rather they get something pre-existing. Getting permission to rebuild a ruin would still be difficult, but a lot less difficult than a completely new building. I am prepared to conjure up a building where no building exists in real life, and lightly gloss over the fun and games in getting the planning permission for conversion -- but I'd much prefer it to be at least feasible for them to buy/rent/get conversion permission for such a building were it to exist. :-)

[del-c.livejournal.com]

If this is chalk, you need the actual tunnel entrance, and the nearby old houses, to have been much further from the cliff edge a few centuries ago than they are now, unless that's a part of the coast where the soft Cretaceous material is shielded by harder Jurassic limestone.

Geological trivia: that's how Lulworth Cove happened. The sea broke through the limestone and swirled around inside the chalk behind it, making that shape like the key of a jigsaw puzzle piece, or a meteor impact :-)

[julesjones]

The book is carefully non-committal on exactly where this is, other than somewhere on the Dorset coast within commuting distance of Bournemouth. :-)

And thanks, that's a useful tip, leading on to: Is it possible for there to be a sea cave created by taking out the chalk under a Jurassic cap, leaving a cave that effectively gives you a sheltered harbour *inside* the cave, and thus sea access to a quarry at the back of the cave into the Jurassic layers? Which is the sort of formation I dimly had in mind when I first started this, but I don't know whether that would be believable along that coastline. There doesn't have to be a known example, just that it's plausible it could exist.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Cretaceous underneath Jurassic would have to be a heck of an inversion layer, or whatever the word is that geologists use for when the rocks turn upside down. I don't think that happens for those particular rocks.

[julesjones]

I've seen it in areas of severe folding, but as you will recall I have had a somewhat exotic exposure to exposures. :-) I didn't think anything of the sort had gone on in Southern England, but you never know.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

The quarry caves didn't start as sea caves. They're often well above sea level Winspit is about 30m above sea level - at high tide, ships could sail to the edge of the cliff and have stone lowered down to them by crane.

However, there's no reason you can't add a sea level cave as well and have a tunnel linking it to the quarry. (Not many people wander around the base of the cliff as it's got water upto the base nearly all the time. the wave cut platform is too lethal for walkers.

Winspit had some cottages very close to the sea, badly tumbledown now, but even I can remember when they weren't quite so bad. The National Trust doesn't own all the coast yet (where they own property, they often rent it out)

If you want to allow yourself a little poetic licence, try this http://www.swcp.org.uk/clavell-tower-appeal.html

[julesjones]

Ta for suggestions. Those quarry buildings right in the Winspit site were what gave me the idea in the first place, so if something like that could be bought/rented and renovated, it would be perfect. And if there's still some private land, I'm not going to have knowledgeable readers going, "But you *can't* buy anything along there."

There is a suggestion in some of the Tilly Whim material online that it may have *started* as a water erosion cave which was then quarried, though I can't remember now whether this was storm action against a soft bed high up, or groundwater action. Hadn't thought about having a two-level site -- that could be useful.

I could do with some talking over about some other geological features (e.g. where sand goes), but those aren't essential to the plot so can be retro-fitted if necessary.