The whole district of Craven, in North-western Yorkshire, is honeycombed with innumerable earth-chambers. Ribblesdale, Wenningdale, Wharfedale, and half a score of other dales named after their respective rivulets, are undermined and tunnelled for miles by the hand of Nature, and beneath their surfaces flow ‘sunless streams,’ no one knows whither, and measureless to man. Often, in wandering over the mountains there, we hear voices and gurglings from torrents which never find their way at all to the upper world, and from out one cavernous mouth in the hill Whernside flows a stream which in flood-time washes out periodically old silver coins of the reign of Edward I., from some long-lost treasury.
Near Giggleswick Scar is an ebbing and flowing well of exceedingly irregular habits. If you lay your ear to the ground at a certain spot in Ribblesdale, you will hear how the water comes down at Lodore in fairyland, although not so much as a rivulet is to be seen outside of Robin Hood’s Mill. Sometimes tremendous funnels, 200 feet in depth, lead by a very direct route, and one which would take no time at all to traverse, right down upon these mysterious streams. Black and deep enough the water seems, as we peer over the edges of the ‘pot’ at it, nor does it make one at all ambitious for subterranean exploration. Hellen Pot, which contains in it an underground waterfall of no less than 40 feet, has been descended to the depth of 330 feet, where the black river revolves in a quiet pool, and does not reappear to mortal eye for more than a mile. Some few of these ‘pots’ have fish in them; large black trout abound in Hurtle Pot, where the boggart, in rainy weather, is heard to threaten and fret, and are also found in less quantity in the chasm above it, though the upward force of the water is there so strong as to cast up stones of considerable size to the surface, and even on to the bank.
These are some of the wonders within reach of Ingleton: Yordas Cave is perhaps the most wonderful of all. If you are awheel, you turn westward from the village to Thornton-in-Lonsdale. At the church here—note the ancient stocks still standing at the crossways for the punishment of malefactors—your road turns northward up a formidable hill. As seen from the summit of this, Kingsdale presents a wild, and to some folks a dreary, appearance. On the occasion of my visit mist-clouds hung low, and even the lower hills about the valley could scarce be seen. The lower part of the descent is easily rideable, and ere long you are pedalling along a fair moorland road. Around you belts of limestone at regular intervals seam the hillside, while closer are the dry brown stones of a river-bed. This is but one of Ingletonia’s many freaks; a mile back were anglers plying their craft. After a wet period this river-bed flows with a torrent, but in a few hours the overplus has dwindled away. The becks on all the surrounding hillsides disappear down rock-chines as they near the dale, to rise to the surface again, perhaps, a couple of miles away.
Opposite the first house in the valley is a notice-board, ‘Apply here to view Yordas Cave.’ I crossed the fields to Braida Garth House in accordance. Here I found Mr. Batty willing to guide me, and to give me any information in his power. Various photos and plans of the cave were shown me, and it was only after an hour’s interesting chat that we got under way. My cycle was now left behind, and we made ‘crow-drive’ for a larch-plantation a mile away. As we passed along the fields, mine host pointed out the locality of various ‘pots’ on the opposite fell. Rowton Pot, he assured me, was the deepest yet discovered among the Craven hills. From the ground to where its tributary rills sink out of sight and sound it descends 365 feet! It starts on the top of a ridge, and its bottom is 20 feet below the level of the stream in the valley beneath. About 100 feet down, Mr. Batty informed me, there was a natural bridge across the chasm.
After crossing the fields we reached the dale-road, leaving this at last opposite the larch planting. A wide gully, bristling with rocks and fairly steep, leads you toward shadowy sylvan recesses, and just as these are closing round, Mr. Batty turns to the left with a ‘Here we are.’
In the cliff you note a receding gap where the stone has crumbled away. This is the entrance to the cave. As you approach closer, you discover that a way has been dug here. There are steps, and at the foot a cave. Standing there, awaiting the naphtha-lamp Mr. Batty is kindling, you hear the mysterious droning voice of the great giant Yordas calling you to beware. But when, with a tallow candle in your hand, you pass the opened gate, the great Norwegian has withdrawn, though signs of his recent presence are with you for a long time. The throat of the cavern is some twelve feet wide, and perhaps six to ten feet high. There is no crawling to be done between dripping rocks and slimy floors. But a word to anyone who goes cave-exploring: the mud you are footing is very slippery, and care must be constantly taken to prevent downfall.
Mr. Batty ceases swinging the guttering light as he stands opposite a curiously-shaped rock. ‘This is the Flitch of Bacon,’ he said. Probably the giant was too much disturbed at our ingress to remove it, I thought; but on touching it, alas! it was of stone. The wily Norwegian did not trust Yorkshiremen or chance intruders. In rapid succession the Brown Bear and the Organ-Pipes were discovered, some distance apart, and with—greatest find of all—the Giant’s Hand between. Now I paused at all this, and pondered how such things could be! Yes, surely the giant, at the first distant sound of our approach, had been grinding out a tune that his pet bear might dance before him. Then, when the clashing of the sundered bars aroused him to his danger, with his left hand the full power of his patent refrigerator, and so instant was that power in action that Bear and Organ and Hand that had just left the gleesome turning of the handle were solidified ere another movement could be made. Then, as befits the grim ogre of a fairy domain, he abandoned the useless limb and fled.
But while I am piecing the story together my companion is detailing another labyrinth of evidence: The White Bear perilously anchored to an iceberg; a Lion—or is it a wolf?—ranging in stalactitic majesty along the cave wall. While Yordas was directing his circus, this stony-hearted beast was arguing which way the river flowed with a white lamb (the story is ancient, ergo the lamb has become an aged Horned Ram). But at the alarum of our approach the debate was adjourned sine die, probably because the Ram took refuge beneath the Canopy, while his tormentor chased in the direction of the Chapter-House (which, had he had his way, would speedily have become a charnel-house). The next relic, Mr. Batty informed me in an awed voice, is the Pulpit, or Throne; it is yet dinted with the impression of Yordas’s feet, for here he stood till the storming of the cave began.
From gay to grave, from the realms of fairyland to the hard facts of cave scenery, is always a difficult transition in such a locality as this. We are now standing in the Chapter-House. The light of the naphtha-lamp rises high, but not high enough to discover the roof. At a neck-tiring angle you watch fluted walls rising into far-away darkness. How wonderful is this modelling, done by Nature’s own forces! Water, holding lime in solution, trickles plentifully down the rocks. A crevice, a protrusion, however small, arrests its course, and a load of white molecules is deposited as drop by drop percolates down, till a crust of creamy white rounds off the awkward angle. The smallest obstacles cause the magic flutings. A thousand minute springs are, as we stand, busily extending the columns of the Chapter-House. Large ledges are coated with limy deposit; the outward extensions, as their foundations fail, droop over and fall into such formation as a fair representation of a bunch of bananas (christened two centuries syne the Hive of Bees). Through the gap between the Pulpit and the other wall we look into outer darkness, where the rays of our lamp are seemingly swallowed up. Then Mr. Batty kindles a piece of magnesium wire. In a moment the gurgling, yellow naphtha glow is transcended by a bright flare, which discovers, as you watch, pillars and encrustations suspended on the ones you have admired. The blaze rises higher, and the roof of the Chapter-House, some sixty feet above the damp floor, is seen. What a mysterious vault this must have appeared to a traveller of a hundred years ago, whose power of lighting was limited to a dozen tallow candles like the one in your hand! Every yard of the cliff is coated with creamy lime, on which, like diamonds, the sliding droplets reflect the intense light. Again and again the coil of wire is resorted to, and the eye wanders toward the gap to the greater cave. The top stone of the Pulpit throws a gaunt shadow across a bed of sand and shingle, in the midst of which a rivulet babbles briskly along. The strong shaft of light also reveals a dim, mysterious distance, where a congregation of rocks rises up to a world of gloom.
Mr. Batty’s pyrotechnics being completed, he leads towards the dark rivulet, which to me rather gives a sombre thought. Coming in full vigour from a crevice in the rocks, with a hurrying, worrying gait it crosses that leviathan room, and a screen of rock acts as a barrier to those who would see whither it is hastening. How like to the fretful rush of every-day existence! By a plank we cross the stream and make toward a hole in the limestone wall.
All the time we have been in the cavern the sound of rushing, falling waters has been in our ears. At first it rumbled in a quiet monotony, fraught with a crashing note of warning; now the sound seems changed to the loud threatenings of some ancient Druid—of Yordas, maybe, hero-god of the dale. Three steps lead into a recess. Down my neck a copious splash of water pours. The ‘inner circle’ of the cave’s delights is guarded after rain by a veil of falling drops. Then walk along a wood bridge, and look up. Mr. Batty’s naphtha-lamp illumines a narrow rift in the bowels of the mountain. In front from an unseen height a stream is rushing down fifty feet of rock. The air is filled with spray as the curtain of water is torn and buffeted by rock ledges, and thrown out of its course. The whole ‘Chapel of the Force’ is not ten feet square at its base, and the great converging slabs of rock continue up and up till they seem to meet in darkness. Why cannot we be content with the lights of our forefathers? Had the ceilings of the Chapter-House not been revealed by the brilliance of modern fireworks, how imposing the recollection would have been! And here, where the water spouts from a dim height, churning down among fragments half unseen, the same thing occurs. It shows a great interval riven between two huge columns of rock, and that the leaping torrent issues from upper blackness through it—shows that even this cleft has a visible roof fifty or sixty feet away. But if magnesium’s steady combustion destroys delusions of immeasurable height and breadth, it also accentuates the beautiful gouge-marks on the damp walls, the proofs of an age’s activity by the cascade. I cannot describe the scene: for a moment the roar of the torrent seeming to slacken, then bursting into a climax of rattle and splash and tinkle almost before the ear had noted the slackening sound; the stream dashing headlong, and jetting from fragments and ledges into a continuous pearly mist; the grim, immovable seams of tough limestone, with here and there a splintered fissure or cornice torn away.
After a long pause we turned away, passed down a narrow pathway, and reached the floor of the cathedral cave again. Our lamp seemed to dwindle in importance, feebly illumining the grotesque stones on the far side of the vault.
‘How grand this would seem if the whole cave could be lit up at once!’ I remarked to Mr. Batty.
‘I’ve seen it properly lit,’ was his reply; ‘but it’s many a year ago. A few younger dalesmen hauled an empty tar-barrel from the farm into the cave. On a bonfire in the middle we placed it, and while the timber and tar lasted the light was splendid.’ Ah me! I remember the flickerings and booming explosions of light attending such a burning. How the great leaping flames would gild that giant dome, and send fugitive shadows dancing in mad riot among the pinnacles and pendant stalactites around! Mr. Batty showed me the Dropping-Well and another allegorical limestone—to me it seemed like the contour of a virgin, backgrounded by a gouge-work reredos. Then we came to the rivulet again; and here, nearly on a level with the sand-floor, my guide pointed out a confusion of paint-marks. Little colour there was left, but the paint had preserved the stone from the usual washing. ‘... Painter, Burton-in-Lonsdale, 1812,’ is, after much adjusting of light, finally shadowed on the slab. In ninety-one years Yordas Cave has presumably become one-sixteenth of an inch wider, for the paint-preserved portions are embossed to half that extent. The rivulet sinks out of view behind a lowered portcullis of rock; there is a large flow to-day, else, Mr. Batty assured me, we could have crawled down a mile of tunnel to open air. Baffled here, we retrace our steps to the bridge, cross the stream, and slowly make for the throat of the cave. Mr. Batty hangs up the pole he carries to elevate his lamp to the level of the chief encrustations, and as he does so he turns the light on to a medley of uncouth paint-marks.
‘Wait a minute! I can read them,’ I remark, for the slant of light brings them up clearly. ‘Initials, and date 1730.’
To Mr. Batty this is news, for no other date than that by the waterfall has been noted. My tallow-dip is pretty soon glancing a feeble ray against the smooth rock. About eighteen inches above the present floor is a jumble of hieroglyphs of various ages—1730, 1675, and, earliest of all, 1653. The last date had been the handiwork of one Robert Whitandal. (Quoth Mr. Batty: ‘The Whitandals once were well known in this valley; a family lives nearby even now. They are said to have held much property here once, and within my recollection one of the name was steward for this estate.’) Robert Whitandal had put some labour into his handiwork, an attempt at a double triangle and an ornamental initial I being added. Another dales family was represented by the name of Robert Foxcroft; the rest were either indecipherable or initials only. Most of the cuttings are now level, or even above the level of the stone; the chisel or knife has pressed the yielding stone to a somewhat tougher consistency than the surface around.
After this my guide departed, and I returned alone to Braida Garth, remounted my wheel, and returned to Ingleton.
Naturally, I was proud of my discovery of the new dates. The last flood in the cave had probably washed the accumulated grit away and allowed me the honour. But on looking into an old book of descriptions, published by Thomas West in 1795, I saw the following:
‘The Western Side of the Cave.—This is a solid perpendicular rock of black marble, embellished with many rude sketches, and names of persons now long dead, the dates of some being over two hundred years old.’
THE END
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
