Information Topics

Click/Tap a link or scroll on down.

Membership and Subscription Fees

Also see: Membership Benefits and Fees

Membership of BCRA is open to all members of the British Caving Association. This arrangement ensures that members are covered by BCA's Public Liability Insurance. There is a substantial discount for student members of BCRA. Membership confers the right to vote at BCRA's AGM and to nominate and vote for Council members.

You do not have to be a member of the BCRA to take part in its activities or to purchase its publications. However, if you do want to join BCRA, please note that membership of BCRA is handled as an 'option' of our parent body, the British Caving Association – See Why do I need to join BCA as well?. The shortcuts, above, take you directly to application forms for membership and subscription to BCRA periodicals.

Donations

See our Donation Form

Donations to help us with our projects are always welcome - for example, just a few pounds can help our library to acquire books. If you are a UK taxpayer we can reclaim income tax on your donation via the Gift Aid scheme. You can specify where you would prefer your donation to be used, e.g.

• For general use by BCRA
• Our Research Fund, which issues grants for cave science projects
• The British Caving Library, which holds caving literature from the UK and around the world
• The Cave Radio & Electronics Group, one of our special interest groups

Aims of the Association

The British Cave Research Association is a UK-registered charity that achieves its objectives by

• supporting cave and karst research
• encouraging original exploration (both in the UK and on expeditions overseas)
• publishing speleological information
• organising educational and scientific conferences and meetings.

BCRA is administered by a Council of trustees and is a constituent body of the British Caving Association (BCA), with which it cooperates on many projects.

Summary information about BCRA's activities is given below. Many of the entries have links to pages with more detailed information.

Newsletters

Our "news" is now all published online, either on our News Forum, or at Facebook or Twitter. We also circulate information by email to subscribers to our Notices E-list. For further information click on the News Menu at the top of this page or go to our News page.

Publications

Also see... Bookshop

Cave and Karst Science (ISSN 1356-191X) is BCRA's peer-reviewed science journal, published three times a year. Paper subscriptions are available to members and non-members. It is also available online, free of charge, as part of BCRA's commitment to open access to scientific research.

The Cave Radio and Electronics Group Journal (ISSN 1361-4800). CREG is one of BCRA's Special Interest Groups. CREG is probably the leading organisation of its kind in the world. It produces a quarterly journal, which is available as a paper or an online subscription. The online content is free to BCRA members.

BCRA Review (ISSN 2516-1423). Until 2014, BCRA's "bulletin" was BCRA's magazine Speleology (ISSN 1478-999X), but this has now ceased publication. Instead BCRA publishes an Annual Review shortly before our AGM; usually in October. It contains reports of the previous year's activities, together with annual reports from BCRA officers and a copy of our annual report and accounts that we send to the Charity Commission. This Review is primarily an online PDF publication although it is shipped on paper to our Member Clubs (those that receive C&KS on paper) and to our overseas Journal Exchange partners. Paper copies may be purchased at our meetings and ordered online, whilst the limited print stock lasts.

The Cave Studies Series is a set of introductory booklets on a range of cave-related topics. It provides an introductory text aimed at the sport caver who has become interested in some other aspect of speleology. We are always willing to consider possible new titles and to discuss projects with potential authors. There are plans to make some of the titles available online in the near future.

Caves and Karst of the Yorkshire Dales is a set of two books from BCRA, which present a comprehensive overview of all aspects of the caves and karst of the Yorkshire Dales. This set is is the long-awaited successor to the 1974 publication Limestones and Caves of Northwest England but is a much more comprehensive treatment because of the many cave discoveries in the last 40 years and the new information that is available on the underground and surface features.

BCRA published a number of other items, which are described on our Bookshop page.

Searching Our Website

There are two broad families of "search" that you can use on our web pages...

1. To search our pages using Google, type your search string into the search box that appears at the top of each of our web pages.
2. For more advanced search options, click on the pull-down menu "Library and Search", at the top of each of our web pages.

The advanced search options are ...

1. Search the British Caving Library Catalogue.
2. Search the CREG journal Database.
3. Search the BCRA Science Index.

The British Caving Library Catalogue allows you to search its catalogue by title and author. It covers a wide range of caving publications, including BCRA's, and is updated regularly (but manually) by BCRA volunteers working for the British Caving Library.

The CREG Journal Database is updated automatically whenever a new journal is placed online. It can be searched by Author and Title and also by any text string that appears in an abstract. This facility is an ongoing experimental work but may eventually be extended to cover Cave & Karst Science.

The BCRA Science Index is a "legacy" item and might no longer be actively maintained. It is being kept online because the information is still of value and it covers a slightly different range of journals to our other databases. The data is held on a third-party web site which might no longer be available, although some "pre-searched" lists are still accessible, but these may be old. For searching C&KS you are advised to use the British Caving Library catalogue, or to use Google to search BCRA's pages, which you can do by typing your search string into the search box that appears at the top of each of our web pages.

How do I search BCRA periodicals?

Apart from the CREG Journal Database, BCRA does not have its own comprehensive search facility that allows you to search for keywords in periodicals, so you will have to make use of a third-party search facility. The British Caving Library Catalogue contains its own search engine. Alternatively Google indexes the BCRA pages just as it does for any other site. To limit your Google searches to BCRA's site, use the search box we provide, or add site:bcra.org.uk to your search string. As noted above, the BCRA Science Index is a legacy item and might no longer be actively maintained. However, the "pre-searched" lists could still be of value to you.

Grant Aid

BCRA Research Fund. BCRA has managed a research fund for many years. In recent years the fund has been boosted by several bequests. At present, the fund is issuing grants totalling up to £5000/year. For information please go to the BCRA Research Fund web page.

The Ghar Parau Foundation (GPF), now an independent charity, used to be a sub-charity of BCRA. It manages an investment fund to provide grant aid to assist British caving expeditions to all parts of the world. It focuses on expeditions that include innovative exploration or scientific study and is keen to encourage young cavers into expedition caving, in order to maintain an active caving community in the years ahead.

The UK Cave Conservation Emergency Fund (UKCCEF) is a charitable fund administered by BCRA to support projects that further the conservation of threatened caves and cave features.

Prizes

For further detail see Caving Awards

The Arthur Butcher Award. This was first awarded in 1988 and is presented for, broadly speaking, "excellence in cave surveying". This award is usually presented at the Hidden Earth annual conference.

The E.K. Tratman Award is an annual award for the best contribution to British speleology in print. This can be in the form of an article, report or book. This award is usually presented at the Hidden Earth annual conference.

BCRA / Hidden Earth Cave Science Bursaries Please enquire.

The Premier Trophy. This was first awarded in 1975 and is presented to the winner of BCRA's annual Photo Salon event, which usually takes place at Hidden Earth, the national caving conference. As well as a cash prize, the winner gets to keep for a year the trophy - an engraved replica of the millionth lamp manufactured by the Premier Lamp Engineering Co Ltd.

Archives

Historical Caving Material. BCRA owns a large collection of historical caving material including sketches and notebooks that belonged to some of the pioneers of UK cave exploration. This material is now stored, under controlled conditions, at the National Geoscience Data Centre of the British Geological Survey. An extract of this collection - Eli Simpson's record books - can be viewed, alongside other items, on our archive web site. We also have an audio archive, with interesting tales from well-known cavers, past and present.

Cave Registry Data Archive. This archive is administered by BCRA's Cave Surveying Group. The archive provides a useful tool for current projects as well as archiving raw data which, although not required to be published itself, is nevertheless vitally important when it comes to extending on a previous project - the loss of data has been a major problem historically. Although it is envisaged that the main use of the archive is for survey data, it is available for all types of data, including surveys or scientific measurements.

Events and Meetings

For information about our next Cave Science Symposium, and other events, please go to the Events Calendar on our Home Page. Also see the postings on our News Forum and our Facebook page.

A list of Science Symposium Abstracts is available.

Symposiums: BCRA currently organises an annual Cave Science symposium and occasional Cave Technology symposiums. These one-day meetings allow researchers to present cave science and technology papers, which may appear subsequently in one of our periodicals. They are friendly events at which academics, students and interested amateur cave scientists attend and give presentations. They are usually followed by a one-day field meeting in the local area or by local demonstrations of equipment in use. These events are organised are organised either by local cavers and members of BCRA or in collaboration with an organisation that has similar interests to BCRA. See the Events Calendar on our Home Page. Also see the postings on our News Forum and our Facebook page.

Field Meetings. Other events and field meetings are organised from time to time. See the Events Calendar on our Home Page. Also see the postings on our News Forum and our Facebook page.

National Caving Conference: Hidden Earth: – see next entry

National Caving Conference: Hidden Earth

Also see Hidden Earth Website

Each year, BCRA organises a national caving conference. The full conference weekend has a packed programme of presentations on British caving, including expeditions, new discoveries, technical updates, cave science talks and audio-visual shows. Equipment suppliers and caving clubs have stands in the exhibition hall, which also features Art, Photo and Video salons and various competitions. The conference is an ideal place for the exchange of ideas, the planning of new ventures, and for meeting old friends.

In 1996 the conference was re-branded as Hidden Earth. In 2016 we took a break for BCA's Eurospeleo event and in 2020–2022 Hidden Earth was cancelled due to the covid-19 pandemic. Thus, in 0000 it will be the 00th BCRA conference and the 00th Hidden Earth event. BCRA used to hold its AGM at the annual conference but we now hold it at the BCRA Science Symposium in October or November. For those who like to count these things, this year (0000) will see the 00th BCRA AGM. Thanks to Alan Jeffreys for supplying the following list.

▼List of past British annual caving conferences

BSA annual conferences

BCRA annual conferences

BCRA Hidden Earth

 

British Caving Library

The British Caving Library (BCL) is a national research and reference library based in the Peak District, owned by BCRA and staffed part-time by a librarian. It mostly comprises published and archived material collected by BCRA and its predecessor organisations, with a minority of the items on long-term loan from clubs and individuals. The library function with the generous financial assistance of the British Caving Association, through which the library is able to offer its services to all cavers and to all those interested in cave science and related topics. Services and materials include...

• Books; reports; maps, charts and surveys
• Over 150 non-UK journal titles
• Over 300 UK journal titles and club bulletins
• Journal exchanges: foreign and UK organisations
• Photocopying and computer facilities
• Online catalogue
• Audio archive with more than 100 interviews

Enquiries via phone, email or personal visit. See: caving-library.org.uk

Special Interest Groups

BCRA supports a number of Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that allow BCRA members to associate and communicate in a more specialised way than is possible through the general membership. Some SIGs produce a newsletter or journal and organise regular meetings or training sessions. Currently active SIGs are...

• Cave Archaeology
• Cave Biology
• Cave Radio & Electronics
• Cave Surveying
• Explosives Users

To visit those pages go to the List of SIGs. BCRA also hosts a number of SIG-related pages that are not directly maintained by the SIGs themselves. These include ...

• Andy Lewington's Cave Life of Britain website.
• Graham Proudlove's Cave Biology Databases and related information.
• The BCRA Grading System for Cave Surveys.

Constitution, AGM, Elections

BCRA is UK registered charity number 267828, and a constituent body of the British Caving Association. It was created on 23 June 1973 and is now in its 00th full year of existence. Some information (including annual accounts) is available on the Charity Commission web site.

The BCRA Constitution was last amended at the BCRA AGM on 14 November 2020.

BCRA's Annual General Meeting is now usually held at the Cave Science Symposium in October or November. (It used to be held at the annual caving conference, Hidden Earth, in September). AGM notices and AGM minutes are posted on the BCRA web site. This year (0000) will see the 00th AGM.

BCRA is governed by a Council of trustees. BCRA Council comprises

• Three annually elected honorary officers – Chairman, Treasurer and Secretary
• Up to seven annually elected representatives of the Personal Members
• Optionally, a President, appointed by Council for a three-year term
• Upto three additional members, co-opted by Council as and when required

To see the present list of trustees, please scroll to the bottom of our Contacts page. You can also read a brief biography of each of our trustees. To see the latest list of nominations please go to agm/2023/nominations_for_2024.html. By tradition, the Chairman of the British Caving Association is one of our co-opted Council members. The procedure for elections to BCRA Council is described in our constitution. Anyone wishing to submit a nomination is asked to use the following form: Word document | PDF

Sub-Committees

Clause J8 of the BCRA Constitution states that The Council may appoint one or more sub-committees for the purpose of making any inquiry or supervising or performing any function or duty which in the opinion of the Council would be more conveniently undertaken or carried out by a sub-committee; provided that all acts and proceedings of any such sub-committee shall be fully and promptly reported to all members of the Council.

Because these are sub-committees, it is clear that they must be governed by the same rules as the committee from which they are spawned; and so, specifically, voting members of a sub-committee must be members of BCRA. However, a sub-committee may also include non-voting observers or advisers.

Members of sub-committees are appointed or approved by Council and are not subject to election by the members, nor to a fixed period of office. Currently, BCRA has FIVE sub-committees, as follows.

▼1) Annual Conference (Hidden Earth)

▼2) Library Steering Group

▼3) CSTRF Awards Panel

▼4) Cave Radio & Electronics Special Interest Group

▼5) IT Sub-committee

 

Employees and Associates

BCRA is mostly run by volunteers, including

• BCRA's trustees, who are also its Council members (see list of contacts)
• Members of its sub-committees (see above)
• Other volunteers in named posts (see list of contacts)

In addition to those roles, we have ...

Paid administrative roles. BCRA has several officers performing paid administrative roles. These are actually part-time employees of BCA, not BCRA. Their line manager (at the time of writing) is the BCA Treasurer. BCRA reimburses BCA for the cost of their time when an employee of BCA is working on administrative matters concerned with BCRA. The reason for this arrangement is that BCA has the structure in place to deal with employees (including the handling of sick pay, personal pension and so on) which BCRA does not have. The remuneration and hours worked for BCRA, as well as the exact tasks, are decided by BCRA Council in consultation with the BCA Treasurer. Those BCA employees who undertake duties for BCRA are listed in the table below.

Paid associates. In addition to the BCA employees, BCRA engages a small number of 'associates', who might also be described as contractors or consultants. These are not employees, but are designated by HMRC as 'self-employed for tax purposes' according to the tool at gov.uk/guidance/check-employment-status-for-tax. They are paid a fixed honorarium for a task, rather than an hourly rate. The remuneration is 'nominal' and is below the commercial rate that would apply to such work. Our associates are listed in the table below.

▼Table of Employees and Associates

 

Honorary Members

Clause E/1/a/ii of BCRA's constitution says: Honorary Membership may be granted by the Council to anyone who has given outstanding service to speleology; Honorary Membership shall confer all benefits of Individual Membership without payment of subscription and shall be conferred for life.

Past Honorary Life Members

Jerry Wooldridge, Trevor Ford, Pauline Ellis, Bob Picknett, Peter Harvey.

Current Honorary Life Members

John Frankland, David Brook, Trevor Shaw, Tony Waltham, David Judson, Alexander Klimchouk*, David Lowe*. (7)

* 2022 Awards

BCRA Council has awarded Honorary Life Membership of the Association to Dr Alexander Klimchouk, the leading Ukrainian Cave and Karst Scientist. Dr Klimchouk has made major contributions to hydrogeology and speleogeology. His many published works include the seminal book Hypogene Speleogenesis and the books Speleogenesis: Evolution of Karst Aquifers and Hypogene Karst Regions and Caves of the World for both of which he was lead editor. The award is made to Dr Klimchouk but it is also a mark of our respect for the courageous stand of the Ukrainian people in the face of the Russian onslaught on their nation.

BCRA Council has awarded Honorary Membership of the Association to Dr David J Lowe. The award is in recognition of his outstanding service to the science of speleology and his service to BCRA. The former is evidenced by his publications and most notably his seminal work on Inception Horizons. His editorial service to BCRA includes Caves and Karst of the Yorkshire Dales (with Tony Waltham), the BCRA Review for 2015, 2016 and 2017 and Cave and Karst Science, the association's periodical, which he has co-edited with John Gunn since 1995. Deej was BCRA's President from 2016 to 2021. This post is in the gift of BCRA's trustees and Deej was ex officio a BCRA trustee for that period.

Further history, and a description of procedures regarding awards of Honorary Life Membership is given in the private Manual of Operations document for Council Members.

Safeguarding

Organisers of BCRA Events and Meetings will take note of BCRA's policy on Safeguarding. BCRA's trustees are also expected to be familiar with the guidelines at gov.uk/guidance/safeguarding-for-charities-and-trustees

Structure and History

• For information specifically about this web site see Accessibility, Copyright and Policy Info.
• For information about the BCRA logo, see below.

BCRA is responsible for two restricted funds (the BCRA Research Fund and the UK Cave Conservation Emergency Fund). See Grant Aid, above. BCRA's sub-charity, the BCRA Library and Heritage Fund, has now been dissolved. The Ghar Parau Foundation, which used to be subsidiary charity 267828/1, is now operating as an independent charity.

The BCRA was formed in June 1973 from a merger of the BSA and the CRG. When the NCA was formed, BCRA became one of its constituent bodies. (See Origins of BCRA and A description of the NCA). In 2005 NCA was dissolved and the new British Caving Association took over the 'national body' services from NCA and BCRA. A BCRA/BCA 'Road Map', as envisaged back in 2005, is described in Speleology 5 pp42-43. At the start of 2006, we announced a new membership structure for BCRA, which limited BCRA membership to BCA members. At the time, the reason for restricting BCRA membership to BCA members was explained largely as a demonstration of BCRA's support for the new structure, and to avoid there being two national bodies in conflict over the recruitment of members. However, an important underlying reason was that the public liability insurance that BCA was to offer to its members required that all members of BCA member clubs be individual members of BCA.

BCRA now focuses on cave science, technology, speleological publishing and speleological heritage; the latter involving the cataloguing of the vast amount of library and archive material that BCRA has collected over the years. The BCRA Library, which used to be located in the Local Studies department of Matlock Council offices now has its own premises at Glutton Bridge, near Buxton. The material in the library is largely owned by BCRA or on long-term loan to BCRA. BCA contributes a sum of money that covers the employment of a part-time librarian and the library is now known as the British Caving Library.

The BCRA Logo

The BCRA logo is a silhouette of a caver bridging across a cave passage that has a cross-section in the shape of the British Isles. It was originally used for the 1977 International Congress of Speleology, hosted by BCRA, which then adopted the logo for its own use. It was designed by Mike Cowlishaw who was chair of the NCA Equipment Committee at the time, and who responded to a request for ideas for a logo for the Congress.

In 1993 the logo was traced and digitised as a vector graphics file in WMF format by Mike Bedford. Since then a number of minor variations in bit-mapped formats have been created for different uses, including one in full colour designed by the printers of our Cave & Karst Science journal, Pagefast (now trading as MTP Media).

If you are working on a BCRA project, please contact the secretary for information about the logo files that we have available, and for information about the font used for BCRA titling.

BCRA's 25th Anniversary logo was a modification of the basic logo created by David Gibson in 1998.

Our 50th Anniversary logo was designed by Jo White in 2023. It is a circular badge, with octants containing a representation of seven aspects of speleological studies, plus the original BCRA logo.

Staff Info

Amending this page: Download a plain-text version containing an html-style markup. 2) Make your changes, taking care not to include any incorrect mark-up, as far as you are able. 3) Email the file to the website editor who will run it through a verification program and then upload it.

Using Hashtags with this page: You can refer to sections of this page using hashtags, but you should not use the hashtags listed in the Information Topics section above, as those are generated dynamically and are subject to change. Instead, use one of the permanent hashtag links from the list below. If the tag you require is not present, please ask IT to generate it for you. These are used in URLs as, for example, http://bcra.org.uk/info.html#agm.

JS inserts list here