Photo by Chris Grimmett
Photo by Chris Grimmett
In blazing sunshine the Friday morning saw Simon Amatt, Graham Christian, Chris Grimmett and Clark Friend up at the dig to persuade some boulders in the floor that they should move. The quartet then returned for punishment - shovelling the ballast for the new floor.
Saturday saw a mammoth effort clearing out the floor and lowering it by approaching 3 feet. The arch way in the western side turned out to look very promising, whilst another possible southerly-trending wall was found in the eastern, sand-filled end.
CF then did a runner to watch the Australian massacre leaving our three heroes to continue on their own on the Sunday.
The entire easternside was lowered and the southerly trend was found to be a large alcove. The western end still continued. Monday saw CG & CF up at the dig (fools) to produce spoil in the hope that GC would appear and that we could then operate the winch. This happened and the floor was again lowered.
The total for the three days was over 200 Grimmett buckets, representing a significant increase in depth of the shaft to over 12.3m across a floor area of some 6.5 m x 1m.
Discussion over the Welsh name has landed upon the clover leaf shape of the first parts of the shaft - essentially three sub-circular avens that have coalesced - so, Pwll Meillion or Pwll Meillionen, depending upon gender has been suggested. We need to consult Welsh speakers further on this matter.