Pen Park Hole was discovered by quarrymen in 1669. A letter of 21 August 1669 from Thomas Henshaw to Sir Robert Paston, now in the Royal Society archive, says the find was reported to Charles II, and that Captain Samuel Sturmy, a mariner who had settled in Bristol and had just published The Mariner's Magazine, was ordered to explore it.
Sturmy's own account, quoted by the Royal Society, says he went down in July 1669 with a former miner. They found a great chamber and an underground river, and the miner climbed a ladder into a high opening where he found what looked like a rich mine. He was also sent into a panic by the sight of an evil spirit and refused to go back. Four days after coming out Sturmy had a violent headache, then a fever, and he died before the end of the year. The report of the spirit and his death kept explorers away until Captain Collins went down on 18 and 19 September 1682. He found nothing but a few bats and said the candles burned clear and the air was not bad.
The legend outlived the debunking. In 1775 the Reverend Thomas Newnam of Redcliffe Church fell to his death in the shaft while trying to sound its depth, and his body was recovered some days later (accounts differ on whether that was 17 or 39 days). In 1876 the Bristol Mercury printed a long comic poem called The Goblin's Curse, which jokes about knackers, gnomes and goblins in the Hole.
The hole was closed by Bristol City Council in 1961, reopened for landscaping in 1992 and is now a closed Site of Special Scientific Interest because of a rare cave shrimp. Cause of Sturmy's death is not known, and the spirit is reported only second hand from his account as relayed by the miner.
Comments