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

[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.