Death's Head Hole
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Death's Head Hole is a cave on
Leck Fell Leck Fell is a Site of Special Scientific Interest in Lancashire, England. An area of typically heavily grazed open moorland of rough grass and remnant patches of heather with little or no tree cover, it is characterised by the virtual absence o ...
, in
Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...
, England. Its entrance is a deep shaft. It leads into Lost Johns' Cave and is part of the
Three Counties System The Three Counties System is a set of inter-connected limestone solutional cave systems spanning the borders of Cumbria, Lancashire and North Yorkshire in the north of England. The possibility of connecting a number of discrete cave systems in ...
, an cave system which spans the borders of
Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancash ...
, Lancashire, and
North Yorkshire North Yorkshire is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in Northern England.The Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority areas of City of York, York and North Yorkshire (district), North Yorkshire are in Yorkshire and t ...
.


Description

The fenced entrance shaft descends some onto a loose boulder slope which leads to a second pitch of into the Main Chamber, a large chamber with a waterfall entering at the east end. An excavated deep scaffolded shaft in the bottom corner of the chamber soon leads into a stream passage some long which ends at a waterfall into the main Lost Johns' Master Cave about from its terminal sump. A climb up the waterfall in the Main Chamber enters East Passage, a well decorated phreatic passage with a
misfit stream A misfit stream is a river that is either too large or too small to have eroded the valley or cave passage in which it flows. This term is also used for a stream or river with meanders that obviously are not proportional in size to the meanders ...
. It passes under an aven, and eventually lowers to a silted crawl after . The aven has been climbed for to a choked inlet. The stream enters East Passage from a low crawl after , called Dolphin Passage. This gets larger, and passes a small passage heading towards Eyeholes, a choked pothole located some 50 metres north-east of the entrance to Death's Head Hole, before reaching a very wet section. This has been forced through to the bottom of Long Drop Cave, which is the source of the water. Big Meanie (also called Hawthorn Pot and Nostril Pot) is another entrance into the system situated about due west of Death's Head Hole, in a shakehole by a kink in the wall. A tight rift leads directly onto a pitch which lands in a tall fissure passage. To the west, the passage terminates in a large chamber and a mud choke. To the east the passage divides, with one branch heading towards Eyeholes before becoming too tight, and the other passing through a dug-out constriction into a muddy crawl that finishes on a ledge above the floor of the Death's Head Main Chamber, opposite East Passage.


Geology and hydrology

The cave is a
solutional cave A solutional cave, solution cave, or karst cave is a cave usually formed in a soluble rock like limestone (Calcium carbonate, with chemical formula ''CaCO3''). It is the most frequently occurring type of cave. It can also form in other rocks, incl ...
formed in Visean Great Scar
limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...
from the Mississippian Series of the
Carboniferous The Carboniferous ( ) is a Geologic time scale, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era that spans 60 million years, from the end of the Devonian Period Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the ...
period. Its development has been largely determined by the same vertical fault encountered in
Rumbling Hole Rumbling Hole is a cave on Leck Fell, in Lancashire, England. Its entrance is a deep fenced shaft, and it rapidly descends a series of pitches to a low aqueous passage that has been connected to Lost Johns' Cave. It is part of the Three Count ...
and Big Meanie. The stream which flows through the cave originates from Long Drop Cave, and flows through to Lost Johns' Cave as a tributary, to eventually emerge from the Leck Beck Head spring in Ease Gill. It is thought that what is now the main cave is relatively recent, and that some 350,000 years ago water sinking at Rumbling Hole followed a phreatic trunk route along the fault, entering Death's Head Hole at the end of East Passage, flowed across what is now the Main Chamber, into the passages below Big Meanie. From here the water flowed through a continuation of the now-blocked passage to Glasfurds Chamber in Gavel Pot, and hence to a resurgence in the Leck Beck Valley some above the current resurgence, which is now covered with glacial till.


History

Balderstone described the entrance shaft to Death's Head Hole in detail in 1881 in ''Ingleton - Bygone and Present'', and plumbed it at :
Here is another chasm like the Fairies' Workshop, not so richly adorned, but still radiant in its embellishments, yet possessing a most remarkable configuration, indeed, that of the head and jaws of a human skeleton. The main shaft of the hole represents the mouth; a bridgelike bar of rock passes across the eastern verge, but is hollow below, so as to connect the chasm with a more shallow cavity beyond. The most peculiar feature, however, consists in a second bar-like bridge of limestone somewhat more slender than the first, spanning the secondary rift in exactly the opposite direction to that assumed by the former, so as to meet the greater bar in the middle of its course and form part of the same trellice bridgework. In this manner two cavities, like those of the orbits in a skull are produced; and the result is wonderfully curious and fine.
The first descent was by the
Yorkshire Ramblers' Club The Yorkshire Ramblers' Club (YRC) was founded in Leeds on 6 October 1892. It is the second-oldest mountaineering club in England (the oldest being the Alpine Club), and the UK's oldest caving club, active in mountaineering and caving in the Unit ...
in 1889, when they reached the bottom of the Main Chamber, and noted the stream entering from the east. In 1892 the cave was referred to as "Hell Hole" by the local historian and writer Harry Speight, who mistakenly reported that "the true bottom has never been reached". The inlet passage in Lost Johns' Cave was noted by the Yorkshire Ramblers on their original exploration in 1928, but the water was assumed to originate from Gavel Pot. The connection with Lost Johns' Cave was opened up, by a team from a variety of clubs, in 2011. The waterfall in the Main Chamber was climbed in 1949 by members of the Gritstone Club, who explored East Passage and Dolphin Passage, the inlet from Long Drop Cave. The connection with Long Drop Cave was made after bailing the short section of waterlogged passage, by the Gritstone Club in 1981. The entrance to Big Meanie was dug open by Manchester University Speleological Society (MUSS) in 1971. The connection with Death's Head Hole was opened up in the same year by a joint team from MUSS, Happy Wanderers Cave and Pothole Club, and Northern Cave Club digging through a boulder obstacle.


See also

*
Caving in the United Kingdom Recreational caving in the United Kingdom dates back to the mid-19th century. The four major caving areas of the United Kingdom are North Yorkshire, South Wales, Derbyshire, and the Mendips. Minor areas include Devon, North Wales, and the Scottis ...


References


Notes

{{notelist Caves of Lancashire Caves of the Three Counties System Limestone caves Wild caves