An interim Report on Wigpool Cave: a syncline-guided, palaeo drainage cave in the Forest of Dean limestone basin, UK.

In the past the Forest of Dean limestone basin has been subjected to intensive cave forming processes and deposition of iron minerals. A network of caverns, infilled with generally high-grade iron ore, was formed in early Carboniferous limestone beds now exposed around the rim of the basin. Today the known ore caverns are empty following many years of mining, and they are visited by cave explorers and cave scientists. Recent explorations in the Wigpool Iron-ore Mine have led to the discovery of the Wigpool Cave, a well-developed, multi-level, cave system that evolved along the southward-plunging axis of the Wigpool Syncline - the northeastern culmination of the Forest of Dean Basin - and which drained an ancient landscape from the surface down to the contemporary water table.