Talk available from Nick Powe, owner of Kents Cavern, where he'll reveal his family's 130 year involvement in protecting one of Europe's Top 10 Prehistoric Caves and the issues around running a successful visitor attraction within the constraints of the nation's highest level of state protection.

1. Nick Powe
Owner of Kents Cavern, Prehistoric Caves, Torquay, UK

2. Quaternary Area

3. Britain’s Oldest Home

4. Urban cave

6. Entrance to Kents Cavern
1780s

8. Father John MacEnery
1797 - 1841
• Irish Roman Catholic
chaplain to the Cary family
at Torre Abbey.
• His interest in archaeology
came from the Abbey
ruins.

9. MacEnery’s
Drawings

10. Stone Tools from
Kents Cavern

11. William Pengelly
The Great Excavation
1865 - 1880
“The exactitude of the Kents Cavern
excavation would not be repeated
anywhere else in the world for
decades”
Pr. Donald McFarlane

12. 1st Stalagmite Floor Ice Age 12,500ya
Flint tools and bones of extinct animals lie side by side in Breccia
2nd Stalagmite Floor Ice Age 350,000ya
Human evidence <350,000 years ago

13. 500,000 years of human occupation
Lower Middle Upper
Palaeolithic Palaeolithic Palaeolithic
Flint Handaxe Neaderthal Human jaw
c.500,000yo Flint bone
c.90,000yo
C41,000yo
Bronze and Iron Age and
Roman artefacts

15. George
Smerdon

16. Anstey’s
Cove
1903

17. Francis Powe

19. Ilsham Valley
1903

20. 1903 Quarry

28. Agatha Christie’s
Hampsly Cavern Beatrix Potter’s
Mrs Tiggy-Winkle

34. 1926 Excavation

35. 41,000 year old
Human Jawbone

36. International Media Exposure
Thursday 2 November 2011
• Researched published
in Nature
• Confirming Kents
Cavern Jawbone is 41-
42,000 years old and
modern human
• Oldest human bone in
NW Europe
£1million of PR for Torquay

37. Cavern Researches
Joint exhibition with Torquay Museum

39. Interactive promenade
shows
12-17th November
Book on line

40. Western
Morning
News
Today!

41. Day at Kents Cavern
10:00 Arrive for coffee
10:30 – 11:30 Tour of caves - £6.00
11:00 Arrive for coffee
11:30 Tour of caves
12:30 Lunch (main + dessert + coffee)
from menu - £16.00
14:00 Arrive for tour of caves
15:00 – 15:45 Cream Tea - £8.50

43. www.kents-cavern.co.uk
www.facebook.com/kentscavern