WCMS offers to host 2017 NAMHO Conference

Photo copyright Peter Burgess

 

UPDATE (24th Nov 2015) : NAMHO Council have accepted the offer by WCMS to host NAMHO 2017.

The Wealden Cave and Mine Society (WCMS) have decided to offer to host the 2017 NAMHO conference and are hoping the offer will be accepted at the next NAMHO meeting in a few days time.

WCMS has 134 members largely, though not exclusively, made up of cavers who live in the south east. The society is very active, caving mainly in Wales and Somerset, and has a very strong interest in mine exploration and study.

The 2017 event will be to a large extent a repeat of the successful 2005 event, hosted in Surrey. The sites available for field trips are very different from those normally associated with NAMHO events. There are extensive underground stone quarries of considerable antiquity, 19th century sand mines, and chalk workings. Other subterranean features of the region include military structures constructed in the Second World War, and later in the Cold War period.

The photo above courtesy of Peter Burgess shows an ox skeleton in the most remote section of the medieval Chaldon quarries.

A lecture programme will be arranged as usual, but at this early stage a theme for the weekend has not been determined.