William Eggy-Belch

The man and his orifices. Being a brief history of one of the lesser-known gentlemen of Somerset caving history of the 18th century.

(A result of half a dozen requests)

By  Nick “ Hawkins *” Harding

Ed. Note : Nick presents the last in the series.

Author’s note: William Eggy-Belch has often been mistaken for one John Aubrey of Chippenham due to their almost simultaneous altering of their nomenclatures. William Eggy-Belch was born Jonathan Aubrey while John Aubrey was born Aaron Henkels Electrometer.

Contemporary image of William Eggy-Belch complete with familiar egg mess on his left breast.

In his liberating and little known book The Sounds My Feet Make, William Eggy-Belch the one time sand yachting Epicurean vicar of Bridgwater often made it clear to his erstwhile flock that humour, particularly that of a flatulent nature, was the key to a long and richly fulfilling life. His oft quoted mantra ‘Tis a pour arse that canst nay rejoice’, has now entered into Somerset ignominy. Indeed no gentlemen’s excursion that he attended was complete without his gaseous exuberance. He could often be heard ‘letting one loose’ in Wookey Hole where his ‘boisterous reports echoed full long and hard’ sounding, as highlighted in one contemporary diary entry by his colleague and fellow caver Isiah Komputer-World, like the ‘blasted, concussive and thunderous eructions of some sulphurous goblin.’ 

Peter St John Being, his roommate at Cambridge, who remained a lifelong friend, often regaled the fellows of the high table with stories of the ‘industrious colonic machinations’ of his Somerset friend, manufacturing a reasonably faithful facsimile of his rumbustious privy noises, as punctuation, during after dinner speeches made by the Dean, who history recalls, ‘as the most persistently tedious dullard in all of Christendom’.    

After studying theology Eggy-Belch returned to his beloved Wells, via a brief detour as a man of the cloth in Bridgwater (little is known about his activities there except that he mastered the fine art of sand yachting), where he took on the task of restoring the biblical compliance of the local heathenish miscreants of that parish. Realising that a fire and brimstone attitude would push them further away from a life of pious worship Eggy-Belch introduced a humorous element in his sermons through the use of bodily gas. It was reported, although one is led to think that it is nothing more than a mythic nonsense, at least apocryphal guff (no pun intended) that he could quote Psalm 23 in one rude out-blast of air. What is not clear is which orifice he was using.

Eggy-Belch would often address his congregation sporting a varied selection of in-season fruits, stitched to his vestments while regaling his rapt audience with tales of his derring-do in the privies of the county in which he would often wait for an unsuspecting party to utilise the adjoining convenience then let slip the fogs of warmth, usually on the back of a thunderous outpouring of noise. 

While travelling in the area to administer his priestly duties he could often be seen furiously bouncing down the lanes of Somerset on his ‘font-astic’ a pogo-stick, of his own creation, fashioned from a stout ash pole with a small ewer of holy water with which he blessed anyone who happened to be passing. He always sported a smear of egg on his coat from his ‘excessive haste consuming his morning comestibles in the form of breaking his fast with the fruits of the chicken.’ (Isiah Titty, Memoirs of A Somerset Git 1848)

Sadly his clerical existence was brought up short after badly bruising the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Jeremiah Alternating-Whippet, with a desperately mistimed biff to the hooter, the result of which was a dramatic bout of public defrocking not ten feet from the walls of Wells cathedral. Despite Eggy-Belch’s skill with a mitre, soundly thrashing his opponent in under three rounds, it was not long before the Bishop saw to it that the man was swiftly frightened out of the county by a gang of hired Shipham ruffians. Half an hour later Eggy-Belch crept back into the Wells area, having spent ten minutes hiding in a cave in Burrington (which one is not known), deciding that what he really wanted to do was explore the inner world and subterranean levels of the Mendips and not tour as a member of the ecclesiastical comedy outfit the Crazy Croziers. They had been touring the area with their production of “More Tea Vicar?” (Described by the Gentleman’s Magazine as – “Two beastly hours of noxious vapours, bookended by four of ghastly anal ineptitude.”)

Fortuitously for E-B his spinster aunt Regina Stiffbits Belch passed noisily away one afternoon leaving the young man a country estate near Shepton Mallet and a handsome inheritance. For a short time he administered to the running of a large country house and the estate with its numerous staff, servants and general layabouts. But the young William was restless and in need of ‘orificular stimulation.’ He was not a businessman but was a peripatetic individual who often took to exploring the hills to escape the ‘yawning and bowel squeezing dullness of bookkeeping’. After that almost mistimed visit to Snapcock’s Wig Emporium (See The Wig in Caving, Belfry Bulletin Summer 2005, Vol.54, No. 2 Number 522), E-B came into possession of the famous Devon Loafa and never looked back. 

With no experience of such subterraneous activity E-B sought immediate council with a local old soak who had great experience digging numerous mines in the area. This fellow, whose name has slipped from history (although evidence has lately surfaced in Wells Museum that the individual might have be none other than Jedediah Fridge, inventor of the cave swing) told E-B to find the muttering waters of Trumpeter’s Chocolate Muck Hole (now lost), which sounded like ‘the drunk ramblings and frenetic utterances of a Glaswegian ne’r do well’. Why this particular hole was chosen against the easier Wookey for instance is beyond the ken of cavers to this day. Trumpeter’s Chocolate Muck Hole is, as we know, but only according to legend of course, a ‘super severe’ especially in the long pitch and all too tight muddy crawl that was its fabled entrance. Whatever the reason E-B took to it with firm enthusiasm. Knowing that this cave’s furthest reaches were as yet unplumbed and its overall length unknown he decided that his mission would be to discover all that he could about it. 

I didst find myself as if a turd in a privee outflow yet reversing said journey back into the bowels of the Earth. I was ever surrounded on all sides by malodorous and foetid doings the cause of which I dared not consider.   After an hour up to his lobes in filth E-B popped out, rather unceremoniously into the First Great Chamber, which Catcott described in I Like Holes as a ‘numinous cavern of certain cyclopean magnificence, except for the little bit at the end shaped like a job.’   Here E-B was met with his first proper view of the subterranean world. Or he would have done had he brought something to light his way. It was a rather embarrassed E-B that surfaced several hours later none the wiser for his vigorous activities underground.

Keen to put that obvious mistake behind him E-B sought further council from the Old Men who promptly pointed him the direction of Voluminous Titty, ex of the Somerset cheese police and grandfather of the famous biographer of some of Somerset’s greatest explorers Isiah Titty. (Isiah Titty would become famous for his Memoirs of A Somerset Git 1848, in which he describes various conversations with himself).  Voluminous Titty was no stranger to underground exploration but preferred the armchair variety to actual descent into the caves of the Mendips. 

In his own book Voluminous Titty describes his first meeting with E-B while experimenting with his ‘Titty’s Patent Gentleman’s Field Stilts’, ‘a brace of poles two and half fathoms in height for the execution of continuous and swift perambulations across ye levels of Somersetshire.’ A means of travel that he swiftly dispensed with after trying to walk home to his residence in Oakhill from an excess of libational behaviour at the notorious Pump and Glottis, a well known Inn on the Shepton Mallet to Wells road. Titty spent nearly two weeks hopelessly lost in a field. This hilarious incident is recorded in Underground Adventures with Dr Pleems, a children’s book from the 1930’s and also makes an appearance in the Ladybird book, What To Look For In Stupid People, 1966.   

Titty had had many conversations with Catcott about subterranean activities and was thus able to introduce E-B to a variety of illumination devices – a number of different length candles, a bag of gas and some odd device of Titty’s with which Catcott had been experimenting.  What that odd device was no two modern scholars of caving can agree on except that E-B was suitably unimpressed by it. ‘Inserting the hose is deemed unworthy of a gentleman and one is sore dashed if it is decent for one’s favoured servant to do likewise.’ But it had nonetheless planted a seed E-B’s mind. 

After vigorously thumping Titty for being a prize arse and chastising Catcott for continuing with the man’s ‘device of rude magnitude’, E-B decided that the best way was further experimentation. Keen to return to Trumpeter’s Chocolate Muck Hole E-B opted for a device of his own.

On June 14^th  1761 visitors to the Wells area would have been witness to a bizarre sight. Lined up in Augustus Dildee’s top field were numerous prize heifers ‘a few short of a herd’, more than a handful of E-B’s servants and ‘several rugose gentlemen of the vicinity’.  E-B’s servants were unwinding a thick hose down the entrance of TCMH in slow deliberate movements. With ‘a system of winches, pulleys, weights and brass constructs’ the hose had been connected to three cows at a time. From these ‘bovine reservoirs much illuminatory gas was drawn to the satisfaction of all’.  E-B spent many hours exploring the system until around three in the afternoon there was a ‘loud report that issued from the depths thus causing the ground to oscillate in undulations of a rude nature.’ Shortly afterwards it is said, two cows both ‘sporting demeanours of incredulous and mistimed surprise eructed in violent detonations as if struck by several broadsides of artillery.’ E-B was never seen again and it was not long after, a week or so, that the entrance to Trumpeter’s Chocolate Muck Hole was sealed due to the collapse of the very dangerous pitch near the opening now highly unstable as a direct of the subterranean explosion.

A week later EB’s singed and muddy Devon Loafa popped out into daylight in the river Axe having obviously found a route from TCMH into Wookey.   

*Due to an inability by Richard Whitcombe Esq. to get my name right.

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