The creature created a sensation but all was not as it seemed
Reports of the cave’s hideous creature – likened to a dragon – gripped Victorian Britain(Image: Georg Janny/Wiki)
On October 20, 1870, the Times newspaper broke the sensational news of the discovery of a large reptile-like creature living in a cave in North Wales. Measuring 4ft 7, it was billed as an authentic Welsh dragon, a scaly “monster” that was “evidently at home in the dark recesses of the craggy place”.
The scene of the “strange discovery” was Cefn Cave, one of four interlinked caves in the limestone cliffs in the Elwy valley near Cefn Meiriadog, Denbighshire. Worried the hideous creature might alarm locals and tourists, a party of men was reportedly assembled to “brave the lizard and bring about his extermination”.
Dealing the fatal blow, when the creature emerged from the cave, was a Rhyl chimney sweep called Thomas Hughes. Having “slain in single combat” the chain-coated monster, his heroic exploits were recorded in newspapers across Britain.
By beating the creature about its abdomen, Mr Hughes’ actions were commended as “emulative of the achievements of St George against the dragon”. Over the following days, the enterprising sweep made the most of the tale, charging people in Rhyl a shilling a head to see the “marvellous lizard of Cefn”.
Sadly, his ruse was soon uncovered: he had bought a recently deceased crocodile from a travelling circus and fabricated his derring-do.
Even so, the story lingered and so did the dead croc, to the extent that Rhyl’s sanitary authority eventually ordered it to be burned. Sign up now for the latest news on the North Wales Live Whatsapp community
Yet the real story about Cefn caves is almost as strange as the fiction. One of the caves in particular has become nationally famous as among the oldest human sites in the UK – and the only one with fossils of a classic Neanderthal.
It’s thought some of the cave’s archaeological remains may have been washed in with mud from surrounding areas(Image: Llywelyn2000/Wiki)
Bones found in Bontnewydd Cave also point to a distant past when mammoths, hippos and woolly rhinoceros roamed North Wales.
More recently, during the Second World War the cave was walled up to be used as a military store for landmines and depth charges.
The Cefn cave complex was already famous by the 1530s when they were recorded by the writer John Leland.
But their archaeological significance wasn’t realised until 1830 when they were visited by the Rev Edward Stanley – later Bishop of Norwich – who found human and animal bones, along with the remains of ancient artefacts.
He discovered them in spoil created from the area’s landscaping by landowners the Williams-Williams Wynn family – this saw a series of gentle steps and staircases created from the valley bottom and through Cefn Cave. Among those drawn to the site by Stanley’s discoveries was Charles Darwin in August 1831.
The cave was walled up in the 1940s to store military explosives(Image: Llywelyn2000/Wiki)
When Stanley again excavated Cefn caves in 1832, he claimed to have found the bones of a straight-tusked elephant, along with a rhinoceros tooth, but both have since been lost.
Similar finds were reported during digs at nearby Bontnewydd cave in the 1870s by Welsh geologist Thomas McKenny Hughes and Prof Boyd Dawkins, the eminent Victorian archaeologist.
Yet the area’s importance remained under-recognised and the caves were then largely ignored for another century.
It meant few eyebrows were raised when, in the 1940s, the Army built a limestone wall across Bontnewydd Cave entrance to create a munitions store. Inside, a brick chamber and another steel door were installed, with a coke stove to keep the guards warm.
After the war, the caves remained a place of casual exploration by local people. It wasn’t until 1978 that Museum Wales (Amgueddfa Cymru) launched a new research project. It was a move that led to Bontnewydd being declared the single-most significant archaeological cave in Wales.
A multi-generational Neanderthal family like the one whose remains were found in Bontnewydd cave(Image: American Museum of Natural History/Wiki)
Over the next 17 years, a total of 19 teeth from at least five individuals were unearthed deep within the cave, dating back some 230,000 years. The most complete discovery was a fragment of an upper jaw of a child aged around nine-years-old.
X-rays showed the teeth to have been from Neanderthals, early humans who are thought to have died out 36,000 years ago. Stone tools and animal bones were also found, some of them showing signs of butchery.
Although Bontnewydd is the UK’s only site with remains of classic Neanderthals, archaeological evidence of earlier forms of Neanderthals has been found in Kent dating back around 400,000 years ago.
The UK’s earliest evidence of human occupation is from around 900,000 years ago on the Norfolk coast.
Bontnewydd’s importance means it can no longer be visited and the site is on private land. However people reportedly continue to take peeks inside through the holes and steel grilles.
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