The limestone that was once deposited by tropical seas has been sculpted by deep time into something that looks like the work of an extraordinary artist.

The cave has been open to the public for more than a century — a tourist attraction that brings visitors through the dimly lit passages to see the formations.

But beneath the tourist infrastructure, the deeper archaeology of the site tells a story that goes back far further than any recorded human occupation of Britain.

The cave attracted human visitors and inhabitants intermittently across thousands of years before recorded history.

The earliest human presence at the site dates to approximately 14,700 years ago — the Paleolithic period, the Old Stone Age, when anatomically modern humans were spreading across Europe as the great glaciers that had covered much of the continent were beginning to retreat.