Kendrick's Cave

A Palaeolithic and Mesolithic cave on the lower Great Orme, site of major Welsh prehistoric finds

Kendrick's Cave is a small natural cave in the limestone on the lower slopes of the Great Orme, about 100 metres above the town. It was discovered in 1879 by Thomas Kendrick, a stonemason who was using the cave as his workshop and found the floor full of bone material when he started levelling it. The subsequent excavations produced one of the most important Upper Palaeolithic finds ever made in Britain.

The cave was used both as a burial site and as a workshop for several thousand years between about 13,000 and 9,000 BC. The most famous finds — an engraved horse jawbone, perforated bear and deer teeth strung as necklaces, and human remains — are now in the British Museum, but the cave itself is still accessible from a steep footpath off the Marine Drive. The cave is small (about 6 metres deep) and unlit, so a torch is useful; it is grilled off at the entrance but visible from outside.

Access is on foot only, by the path up from Church Walks. Allow an hour for the visit including the walk. The cave is a peaceful, atmospheric spot with excellent views over Llandudno Bay.

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Among the finds Kendrick made when he was levelling a floor in his workshop in 1879 was a horse jawbone engraved with a complex chevron pattern — one of the earliest pieces of decorative art ever found in Britain, dated to around 11,000 BC. A second find, a necklace of perforated red deer teeth, was originally believed to be Mesolithic but recent isotopic analysis has shown it belonged to a person who lived in the cave around 13,000 BC. Both objects are now at the British Museum.

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