The UBSS in Ireland
As with most parts of the Society's history, this story starts some time earlier
than one first thinks. The Society's first visit to the Irish Republic came as
early as 1922, when a party did some archaeological investigations in caves in
Co. Waterford. However, this was not followed up and the Society's main association
with Irish caves dates from the 1940's. English cavers had already visited Co.
Clare in pre-war days, Ernest Baker had been over as early as 1911 and parties
led by Graham Balcombe and S.J. Pick had spent three Easters caving in Clare in
the years 1936-8. It was not their work, however, but that of an Irish caver,
Jack Coleman, that first sparked off our interest. Jack published a major paper
on the Poulnagollum system in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy in 1944
which was read with great interest by our members and eventually lead to four
UBSS members; Charles Barker, Bob Bendall, Mike Gummer, and John Pitts; joining
Coleman in 1948 and exploring, with him, High and Low Road passages in Poulnagollum.
That first trip has been followed by further visits at the rate of at least one
a year for every year since and has resulted in the discovery and exploration
- and even more important the surveying - of many kilometres of cave passage.
Foremost amongst the Society's discoveries have been such finds as the Doolin
Cave System, Cullauns 1, 2 and 3, Gragan West Cave; Poulnagree, the Fergus River
Cave amongst many others. And if the Society was not responsible for the finding
of a number of others, such as Polldubh, Faunarooska, Poll Cragreagh and so on,
then it is our members who have surveyed and recorded these caves.Our most recent
significant discovery was the Priory Streamway, about 2 km of fine stream cave
found beyond the sumps in Poulnagree which was first entered in 1999 by Steve Cottle and
Andrew Atkinson. This work has been recorded in detail in our own Proceedings and in the
journal Irish Speleology.
The model for our work was set in the earliest days with the publication of Bendall and Pitts' report on the Coolagh River Cave whose detailed surveying and observation was of a standard rarely seen in those days, but one which has been maintained in our subsequent publications. Foremost amongst these are our books: The Caves of North-west Clare, Ireland, edited by E.K. Tratman was published in 1969 and The Caves of County Clare, edited by Charlie Self was published in 1981. Our third book on this area, the Caves of County Clare and South Galway, incorporating a gazetteer of all known sites and bringing the scientific view up to date, was published in 2003. The fourth edition, which will include information on the remainder of Galway and on County Mayo, is now in preparation.
Detailed reports of our work in Ireland can be found through the literature search page but we have also produced more "informal" accounts. in the late 1950s and early 1960's our then Treasurer, Oliver Lloyd used to write an annual calypso describing that year's trip.
In addition to the publications quoted above; we are also now making a machine readable version of the Co. Clare cave survey data available for download. This can be found on our cave survey archive page.
The Society has not limited its Irish activities wholly to Co. Clare, however. Descriptions of caves in other areas can be found in the following papers:
Drew,D.P., and Hickey,C., 2004. Caves of County Roscommon. UBSS Proceedings, 23(1) , pp 35-50.
McShea,H., and McShea,J., 1969. Caving expedition to Sligo, August 1967, Ireland. UBSS Proceedings, 12(1) , pp 113-116.
Squire,J.E., and Squire,R., 1964. Caves in the Tralee Area, Co. Kerry, Eire. UBSS Proceedings, 10(2) , pp 139-148.
Tratman,E.K., 1957. [Expedition to] Leitrim, Eire, 1956. UBSS Proceedings, 8(1) , pp 49-68.
Graham Mullan
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