Historic Cave Paintings Or Schoolboy Graffiti?

[Shinobi]

I always said to people from an early age that graffiti has been around since time begun
the reason being is that, if you go way way way back to the egyptians, the celts, the aztecs and so on
you will find that they were the first of many peoples to inscribe signatures, murals, drawings on walls.
So here we have an article finding more of these amazing discoveries, but only just being unearthed
dated back to two centuries ago. Im sure there is pleanty more out there, if we just did a little more digging.

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11:15 - 04 January 2007
Graffiti old and new is being found in the stone mines beneath Combe Down.

Several examples of scrawls from two centuries ago have been uncovered but there is also evidence of more recent graffiti.

Generations of Bath youngsters have explored the mines, with many leaving their mark.

Neville Redvers-Higgins, principal archaeologist at the site, said: "There were schoolboys going underground and people having parties. It is all part of the history of the mines. Artwork left by people in the 1970s uses spray paint and different materials."

Many of the older drawings and writings are being uncovered as miners clear away hundreds of years of debris which filled in areas of the mines as newer areas were excavated.

Recent discoveries include a drawing of a man wearing nothing more than a hat. The style of hat has dated it to around the late 19th century.

A letter writer in The Times has also revealed details of past explorations of the mines.

The writer, Michael Allen, of Haywards Heath, in West Sussex, said: "The disused mine was close to my prep school and was often explored by my friends and me on Sunday afternoons in the early 1950s.

"I shall say no more for fear of receiving a belated ASBO."

Cllr Roger Symonds, who represents Combe Down, grew up in the area and sheltered in the stone mines to escape the Bath Blitz.

He says it was common for youngsters to explore underground in the 1950s.

"We used to go into Hampton Rocks near Sham Castle," he said.

"We used to call them the Seven Sisters, but we never went in that far - it was dark and I was not very old. The entrances have now all been filled in because of health and safety, and some children got lost in Combe Down Stone Mines.

"The whole hillside was riddled with mines and we are only just finding out the extent of it."

Source - Here