“WITCH’S SECRET”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 73, Issue 6284, 18 September 1946, Page 4

“WITCH’S SECRET”

CAVE-MAN DIVER UNDERWATER EXPLORATION Mr Graham Balcombe, a London diver, probing the icy depths of a subterranean river under the Mendip Hills at the eerie Wookey Hole Caves, in Somerset has stumbled upon some 20Cy)-year-old clues to an archaeological mystery. He found three blackened human -skulls and an urn half-buried in silt under the shadow of the Witch of Wookey—a fantastic rock formation in human shape, legends about which have been handed down for centuries. Experts on the Mendip cave-dwel-lers have believed, the theory that the Witch was a god worshipped by cavedwellers who offered human sacrifices to it. •Now they are still more confident that this theory is right holding that the skulls which date from the Romano-Celtic period (250 B.C. to A.D. 450), are relies of long-ago victims. Mr H, E. Baleh, one of the experts called to, examine them, said: “I am almost convinced that they have a relationship, sacrificial or’ otherwise, to the Witch.” The underwater- exploration was carried out by Mr Balcombe and fourother members of rhe newly formed Cave Diving Group, whose researches are continuing. The group has been invited to search the river bed by Wing-Com-mander G. W. Hodgkinson, owne - of the eaves.