Leather Hole

Accessible only to climbers on Great Tor is the prehistoric bone cave – Leather's Hole. Only a small passage is visible on the surface of the rock (some thirty feet from its height), but this leads, via a long crawl through a very narrow tunnel, into the very heart of the Tor. The first central chamber of Leather's Hole (measuring forty feet long by twelve feet high by eight feet wide) is divided by a small arch from a second, thirty foot long, chamber.

The cave was fully excavated by Col. Woods in the 19 th Century when remains of Fox, Deer, Mammoth, Woolly Rhinoceros, Wolf and Hyaena were discovered. Given the relative inaccessibility of the cave today, these discoveries raise the intriguing question as to how these animals found their way into Leather's Hole. Obviously, Mammoth and Woolly Rhinoceros were too big to even fit inside the cave and it is believed that the remains of these animals that were uncovered by Col. Woods had been dragged inside by smaller animals like wolves, having been scavenged from an already dead animal found on Penmaen Burrows. That even animals like wolves or foxes could not even access the cave today more than suggests that the terrain here must have been significantly different in prehistoric times. The easiest approach to the cave today is by descending the thirty feet of cliff to the entrance from the top of the cliffs but this is treacherous to all but skilled climbers. This route must have been more navigable in former times as evidence suggests Leather's Hole Cave was used by several species of animals as a hide during prehistoric times. Erosion, rock falls etc. over the millennia must have contributed to significantly reshaping the look of Great Tor. That at the time when Mammoths and Woolly Rhinoceros graced the Gower landscape, the sea that laps at the beach over which Leather's Hole now looks down on, and even the beach itself, did not exist and the whole area was one large plain, such erosion appears less spectacular.

Today, apart from the odd human intruder, Leather's Hole is only used by over wintering bats.