The Formation of BCRA

About BCRA

Club caving in Great Britain started around 1900 and at first progressed slowly, with only about 30 clubs in existence by the 1930s. Eli Simpson, or "Cymmie" as he preferred to be called, was a well-known caving organiser in the Settle area of the Yorkshire Dales, before the Second World War. By 1935 he was dreaming of a national caving organisation devoted to speleology. His tremendous enthusiasm for such a venture led him to contact prominent cavers, and the British Speleological Association (BSA) was born thanks to his drive and energy. The first headquarters was an imposing building in Settle main street, now the Police Station, from where nowadays the first cave rescue callouts are coordinated. In pre-war days the BSA was strongly supported by members referred to by Cymmie as "academics", not without some measure of sneering scorn. However, the BSA organised a successful series of annual conferences, at which a number of prominent people such as the Abbé Breuil and Sir Arthur Keith gave lectures. Conferences were held in Buxton, Bristol, Giggleswick and Swansea, and organised visits to the local caves were well attended. Cymmie's field work included not only exploration in the Craven area, but also cave surveying of a fairly good standard, and the assembly of a mass of photographic and cartographic information. The BSA also supported the formation of local cave exploration chapters in various regions, more akin to modern caving clubs, but affiliated to BSA.

The war resulted in an almost complete suspension of cave exploration, although Cymmie encouraged a number of youngsters, not yet involved in the fighting Services, to keep activities going. By the time peace came, the BSA had changed its character and was little more than a caving club. Cymmie, however, continued as Recorder, handling many enquiries and large volumes of information, mostly from abroad, while encouraging cave exploration by the younger generation. Unfortunately he alienated a number of the more academic pre-war members, and on their return from the war this resulted in the formation of the Cave Research Group of Great Britain (CRG) by the disaffected members, with the main object of promoting the scientific study of caves. A dominant activity of CRG was its General Meetings, held alternately north and south of the "Glennie Line", an artificial line on the map from Lowestoft to Aberdovey, originated by Aubrey Glennie, which had the effect of treating the Yorkshire Dales, Scottish, North Wales and Peak District caving regions as "North" and South Wales, Mendip and Devon as "South".

The attempt to start a national organisation in 1935 had thus failed because cavers were not ready for such a federal organisation with individual membership. The explosive growth of caving clubs in the 1950s and 1960s led to the formation of the regional councils of caving, concerned largely with access. By the late 1960s it became obvious that a national organisation was needed, and in 1968 the National Caving Association (NCA) was set up as a federation of the existing autonomous caving organisations representing regions or specialist interests at national level. It was deliberately constituted to include both sporting and scientific interests because these were felt to be inseparable in caving. CRG and BSA actively supported the setting up of NCA, and were represented on its Council from the start.

The British Speleological Association and the Cave Research Group of Great Britain formally agreed to merge, and both were wound up on Saturday 23rd June 1973 in Bakewell, Derbyshire. After 38 years of BSA and 25 years of CRG, it was hoped that the existence of only one national body which was fully representative of all the scientific aspects of caves, cavers and their environment would lead to a more positive development of cave science in Britain. The caretaker Council established by mutual agreement of the two extinct bodies was replaced by the first elected Council at the AGM on 15th December 1973 in Skipton. The combined organisation was named the British Cave Research Association (BCRA), an amalgam of the two names. A consequence was that BCRA now had three delegates to NCA Council, a fourth scientific delegate being provided by the William Pengelly Cave Studies Trust. The Peak District chapter of BSA, which had latterly been concerned with the development of technical aids for caving, hived off at this time as the Technical Speleology Group.

The first action of BCRA was to formally issue an invitation to the International Union of Speleology for the 7th International Congress of Speleology to be held in Sheffield in 1977. This application was accepted, and a very successful Congress was held which promoted British speleological achievements to the world.

The National Speleological Conferences formerly run by BSA were taken over by BCRA, and the series of very successful conferences continue to the present day. These have been augmented in recent years by regional meetings, after the pattern of the CRG General Meetings. A novel venture in recent years has been the Cavers' Fairs, run in conjunction with NCA and cave rescue organisations.

The BCRA Bulletin (name later changed to Caves & Caving) took over the BSA Bulletin and the CRG Newsletter. The Transactions of the British Cave Research Association (name later changed to Cave Science) took over the Transactions of the Cave Research Group of Great Britain and Cave Science (the Journal of BSA).

This page, http://bcra.org.uk/detail/origins.html was last modified on Mon, 10 Jan 2005 23:00:00 +0000