Weathercote Cave is a natural

solutional cave A solutional cave, solution cave, or karst cave is a cave usually formed in the soluble rock limestone. It is the most frequently occurring type of cave. It can also form in other rocks, including chalk, dolomite, marble, salt beds, and gypsum. ...

Chapel-le-Dale Chapel-le-Dale is a hamlet in the civil parish of Ingleton, North Yorkshire, England. It is in the Yorkshire Dales and was previously in the West Riding of Yorkshire. History The hamlet is situated on the B6255 road between Ingleton and Ribble ...

North Yorkshire North Yorkshire is the largest ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county (lieutenancy area) in England, covering an area of . Around 40% of the county is covered by National parks of the United Kingdom, national parks, including most of ...

, England. It has been renowned as a natural curiosity since the eighteenth century, and was accessible to paying visitors until 1971. The entrance is a large shaft about deep, dominated by a waterfall entering at one end. It lies within the designated Ingleborough

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle of ...

Description

The entrance lies in the floor of the Chapel-le-Dale valley below the Hill Inn, and is enclosed by a substantial wall. A path leads from a doorway in the wall to the open shaft, some long and up to wide. The underground Winterscales Beck emerges from a passage at the north end, and falls some down the shaft. The top of the waterfall is overhung by a massive wedged boulder known as Mohammed's Coffin. This an allegory to the legend that through the use of magnets and lodestones, the coffin of Mahoumet (Muhammad) was suspended in the air at his tomb in Mecca. The limestone bridge over the cave is said to resemble this legend. At the near end of the shaft, a flight of 51 steps descends beneath a natural rock arch, to the bottom, where a number of short passage all lead to sumps, the main one of which has been connected to Jingle Pot, another daylight shaft located down the valley, and thence to Hurtle Pot, a further down the valley. The total length of explored passages in the combined system is , and the total depth is . The water can be followed upstream of the waterfall through a series of low aqueous passages and small chambers. When the beck is in full spate, the shaft can fill to the top, and overflow down the valley.

Geology and hydrology

Weathercote Cave is a

formed in Visean Great Scar

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

from the Mississippian Series of the

Carboniferous The Carboniferous ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Permian Period, million years ago. The name ''Carbonifero ...

period, and is part of the underground watercourse of Winterscales Beck. Winterscales Beck sinks at Haws Gill Wheel, about upstream of Weathercote Cave, and flows through a shallow and largely flooded cave system. When the river reached a major cross joint at Weathercote, it descended to

base level In geology and geomorphology a base level is the lower limit for an erosion process. The modern term was introduced by John Wesley Powell in 1875. The term was subsequently appropriated by William Morris Davis who used it in his cycle of erosion ...

. The roof has since collapsed to form the surface shaft. The underground stream flows through the base of two other surface shafts, Jingle Pot and Hurtle Pot, before resurging at God's Bridge, down the valley. The connection between two of the caves was confirmed in 1770, when a bonnet lost by a woman in Weathercote Cave was later retrieved from Hurtle Pot.

History

Weathercote Cave was first described in detail by

Richard Pococke Richard Pococke (19 November 1704 – 25 September 1765)''Notes and Queries'', p. 129. was an English-born churchman, inveterate traveller and travel writer. He was the Bishop of Ossory (1756–65) and Meath (1765), both dioceses of the Church ...

who undertook a tour of Yorkshire in 1751. He said that it was ''"one of the most extraordinary and scenes I have ever beheld"''. It was drawn to the public's attention in 1780 by John Hutton in an appendix to Thomas West's "A Guide to the Lakes", who described it as ''"the most surprising natural curiosity in the island of Great Britain"''. Thereafter, it became a destination for those seeking the

picturesque Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in ''Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year ...

, and is featured in most later guide books of the area.

J. M. W. Turner Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 177519 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbulen ...

visited the cave in 1808, and made a number of sketches and painted a view from the bottom, and in 1816 he returned when he painted the view from the top when the river was in spate. In 1818,

William Westall William Westall (12 October 1781 – 22 January 1850) was a British landscape artist best known as one of the first artists to work in Australia. Early life Westall was born in Hertford and grew up in London, mostly Sydenham and Hampstead. ...

produced a book of aquatinted engraved views of Yorkshire which included five views of Weathercote Cave. In 1835,

Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ' ...

described it as a ''"fine object"''. By 1858 at the latest, tourists were paying for the privilege of visiting the site, and in 1875

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and politi ...

described it as "''the rottenest — deadliest— loveliest — horriblest place I ever saw in my life"''. In 1971, John Fellows, a visiting caver,

died Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...

after being struck by a falling rock, and since then access has been restricted. The underwater connection with Jingle Pot was made in April 1986 by members of the

Cave Diving Group The Cave Diving Group (CDG) is a United Kingdom-based diver training organisation specialising in cave diving. The CDG was founded in 1946 by Graham Balcombe, making it the world's oldest continuing diving club. Graham Balcombe and Jack She ...

References

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External links

Turner's 1808 painting at Sheffield's e-museumTurner's 1816 painting on the Tate websiteIndex to the British Museum's online copies of William Westall's engravingsHarold Haywood's photographs of Weathercote Cave taken in the early 1930s held by the British Geological Survey
Caves of North Yorkshire Wild caves Limestone caves Closed show caves in the United Kingdom