Study of the wave structure and shear layer in the vicinity of a wall mounted cavity is done by time averaged colour schlieren and time resolved instantaneous shadowgraph technique in an M=1.7 flowfield. Effect of change of cavity width on flow structure is investigated by using constant length to depth (L/D) ratio cavity models with varying length to width (L/W) ratio of 0.83 to 4. The time averaged shock wave structure was observed to change with change in cavity width. Dependence of the shock angle at the leading edge on the shear layer width is also evident from the images obtained. Unsteadiness in the flow field in terms of shear layer dynamics and quasi steady nature of shock waves was evident from the images obtained during instantaneous shadowgraph experiments. Apart from the leading and trailing edge shocks, several other waves and flow features were observed. These flow features and the associated physical phenomena are discussed in details and presented in the paper.