A Month in Yorkshire

The extreme length of the pit is about 180 feet. In rainy weather it becomes a sink-hole into which the streams pour from all the slopes around, at times filling it to the brim and running over. Mr. Metcalfe shewed me the stem of a tree entangled in the crevices near the top, which had been floated there by the floods of the previous winter. While coming slowly up, I could not fail to notice the change of temperature, from the chill damp that made me shiver, to a pleasant warmth, and then to the heavy heat of a dull day in July.

A little way below the house, going down the narrow dale, you come to another mossy crevice in the rocks among the trees to which the country folk have given the name of Gingle, or Jingle Pot, because of a certain jingling sound produced by stones when thrown therein. To my ear there was no ring in the sound. It is quite dry, with a bottom sloping steeply and making a sudden turn to a depth of eighty feet. Mr. Metcalfe had let himself down into the Pot by a rope, two days before my arrival, to look for a young cow that had fallen in while on the gad, and disappeared in the lowest hole. He saw the animal dead, and so tightly wedged in under the rock, that there he left it. This was his second descent. The first was made in winter some years ago to rescue his ducks, which, perhaps deceived by the dark crevice, that looked like a deep narrow pond when all the ground was white with snow, took all together a sudden flight to settle on it, and of course went to the bottom. Mr. Metcalfe was driving them home at the time; he looked over the edge of the Pot, and invited the silly birds to fly out. But no, they would not be persuaded to use their wings, and remained crowded together on the highest part of the slope, stretching their necks upwards. So there was nothing for it but to fetch them out. Their owner let himself down; yet after all his trouble the ungrateful creatures refused as long as possible to be put into the bag.

Farther down again, and you come to Hurtle Pot, a gloomy cavity overhung by trees, and mantled with ivy, ferns, and coarse weeds. At the bottom rests a darksome pool, said to be twenty-seven feet deep, which contains small trout, and swallows up rocks and stones, or whatever may be thrown into it, without any perceptible diminution of the depth. You can get down to the edge of the water by an inconvenient path, and feel the gloom, and find excuses for the rustics who believe in the existence of the Hurtle Pot Boggart. In olden time his deeds were terrible; but of late years he only frightens people with noises. Both this and Jingle Pot are choked with water from subterranean channels in flood time, and then there is heard here such an intermittent throbbing, gurgling noise, accompanied by what seem dismal gaspings, that a timorous listener might easily believe the Boggart was drowning his victims. One evening a loving couple, walking behind the trees above the Pot, heard most unearthly noises arise from the murky chasm; never had the like been heard before. Surely, thought the turtle-doves, the Boggart is coming forth with some new trick, and they fled in terror. A friend of Mr. Metcalfe’s was playing his flute down on the edge of the pool.

Again farther, and there is the little chapel from which the dale takes its name. As I have said, we are here on classic ground. That is the edifice, and this is the place described by Southey. Here dwelt that worthy yeoman, Daniel Dove’s father, and his fathers before him, handing down their six-and-twenty acres, and better yet, an honest name, from one to the other through many generations—yea, from time immemorial. One of those good old families which had ancestors before the Conquest. Give me leave, good-natured reader, to complete my sketch by the description as it appears, with masterly touches, in The Doctor.

“The little church called Chapel-le-Dale, stands about a bowshot from the family house. There they had all been carried to the font; there they had each led his bride to the altar; and thither they had, each in his turn, been borne upon the shoulders of their friends and neighbours. Earth to earth they had been consigned there for so many generations, that half of the soil of the churchyard consisted of their remains. A hermit who might wish his grave to be as quiet as his cell, could imagine no fitter resting-place. On three sides there was an irregular low stone wall, rather to mark the limits of the sacred ground, than to enclose it; on the fourth it was bounded by the brook, whose waters proceed by a subterraneous channel from Weathercote Cave. Two or three alders and rowan-trees hung over the brook, and shed their leaves and seeds into the stream. Some bushy hazels grew at intervals along the lines of the wall; and a few ash-trees as the winds had sown them. To the east and west some fields adjoined it, in that state of half cultivation which gives a human character to solitude: to the south, on the other side the brook, the common with its limestone rocks peering everywhere above ground, extended to the foot of Ingleborough. A craggy hill, feathered with birch, sheltered it from the north.

“The turf was as soft and fine as that of the adjoining hills; it was seldom broken, so scanty was the population to which it was appropriated; scarcely a thistle or a nettle deformed it, and the few tombstones which had been placed there, were now themselves half buried. The sheep came over the wall when they listed, and sometimes took shelter in the porch from the storm. Their voices and the cry of the kite wheeling above, were the only sounds which were heard there, except when the single bell which hung in its niche over the entrance tinkled for service on the Sabbath day, or with a slower tongue gave notice that one of the children of the soil was returning to the earth from which he sprung.”

Is not that charming?—a word-picture, worthy of a master’s pen. One error, however, has slipped in. There is no porch, nor any sign that one has ever been. The chapel will hold eighty persons, and is, as Mr. Metcalfe, informed me, “never too small.”

A week or more might be spent in explorations in this neighbourhood. Five miles down towards Kirkby Lonsdale, there is Thornton Force. Near it is Yordas Cave—once the haunt of a giant; Gatekirk Cave is distant about half an hour’s walk; Douk Hole is in the neighbourhood of Ingleton; and in all the region, and over the Westmoreland border, there is a highly picturesque succession of caves, ravines, glens, and torrents dashing through rocky chasms, and of all the magnificent phenomena only to be seen amid the limestone. Many a tourist hurries past on his way to the Lakes all unmindful of scenery which, in its kind, surpasses any that he will see between Windermere and Bassenthwaite.

I went up to the public-house and dined with the haymakers, and enjoyed the sight of sunburnt rustics eating smoking mutton-pie without stint, as much as I did my own repast. The host’s daughter brought me a book, which had only recently been provided to receive the names of visitors. Among them was the autograph of a Russian gentleman who had called within the week, and who, as I heard, did nothing but grumble at English customs, yet could not help praising the scenery. He was on foot, and with knapsack on shoulder. I crossed his track, and heard of him sundry times afterwards, and hoped to meet him, that I might ask leave to enlighten him on a few points concerning which he appeared to be distressingly ignorant.

I had planned to ascend and cross Ingleborough, and drop down upon Clapham from its southern side; but when a hill is half buried in mist, and furious scuds fly across its brow, it is best to be content with the valley. So I took up my route on the main road, and continued down the dale, where the limestone crags breaking out on each side form a series of irregular terraces, intermingled green and gray, pleasing to the eye. In the bottom, on the right, the subterranean river bursts forth which Goldsmith mentions in his Natural History.

The height of Ingleborough is 2361 feet. Its name is supposed to be derived from Ingle-burg—a word which embodies the idea of fire and fortress. It is a table-mountain, with a top so flat and spacious that an encampment of more than fifteen acres, of which the traces are still visible, was established thereon, probably by the Brigantes, if not by an earlier race. It is a landmark for vessels on the coast of Lancashire. St. George’s Channel is visible from the summit; and one who has looked on the eastern sea from Flamborough Head may find it convenient to remember that Yorkshire, on its westernmost extremity, is but ten miles from the western sea.

In a short hour from Weathercote you come to the end of the fells, an abrupt descent, all rough with crags and boulders, where the view opens at once over the district of Craven, and the little town of Ingleton is seen comfortably nestled under the hill. Craven lies outspread in beauty—woods, hills, fields, and pastures charming the eye of one who comes from the untilled moors, and suggestive of delightful rambles in store. The Ribble flows through it, watering many a romantic cliff and wooded slope. And for the geologist, Craven possesses especial interest, for it is intersected by what he calls a ‘fault,’ on the southern side of which the limestone strata are thrown down a thousand feet.

I left Ingleton on the right, and turned off at the cross-roads for Clapham, distant four miles. Here, as in other parts of my travel, the miles seemed long—quite as long as they were found to be years ago. We are told that when young Daniel Dove walked dutifully every day to school, “the distance was in those days called two miles; but miles of such long measure that they were for him a good hour’s walk at a cheerful pace.” On the way from Mickle Fell to Brough I met with a more unkindly experience; and that was an hour’s walking for a single mile.

The road undulating along the hill-side commands pleasing views, and for one on foot is to be preferred to the new road, which winds among the fields below. And with a brightening evening we come to Clapham—a cheerful, pretty village, adorned with flowers, and climbers, and smooth grass plots, embowered by trees, and watered by a merry brook, lying open to the sun on the roots of Ingleborough. Looking about for an inn, I saw the Bull and Cave, and secured quarters there by leaving my knapsack, and set out to seek for the guide, whom I found chatting with a group of loungers on the bridge. Bull and Cave seemed to me such an odd coupling, that I fancied cave must be a Yorkshire way of spelling calf; but it really means that which it purports, and the two words are yoked together in order that visitors, who are numerous, may be easily attracted.

Here in Clapdale—a dale which penetrates the slopes of Ingleborough—is the famous Ingleborough Cave, the deepest and most remarkable of all the caves hitherto discovered in the honeycombed flanks of that remarkable hill. Intending to see this, I left unvisited the other caves which have been mentioned as lying to the right and left of the road as you come down from Gearstones.

The fee for a single person to see the cave is half-a-crown; for a party of eight or ten a shilling each. The guide, who is an old soldier, and a good specimen of the class, civil and intelligent, called at his house as we passed to get candles, and presently we were clear of the village, and walking up-hill along a narrow lane. Below us on the right lay cultivated grounds and well-kept plantations, through which, as the old man told me, visitors were once allowed to walk on their way to the cave—a pleasing and much less toilsome way than the lane; but the remains of picnics left on the grass, broken bottles, orange-peels, greasy paper and wisps of hay, became such a serious abuse of the privilege, that Mr. Farrer, the proprietor, withdrew his permission. “It’s a wonder to me,” said the guide, “that people shouldn’t know how to behave themselves.”

In about half an hour we came to a hollow between two grassy acclivities, out of which runs a rapid beck, and here on the left, in a limestone cliff prettily screened by trees, is the entrance to the cave, a low, wide arch that narrows as it recedes into the gloom. We walked in a few yards; the guide lit two candles, placed one in my hand and unlocked the iron gate, which, very properly, keeps out the perpetrators of wanton mischief. A few paces take us beyond the last gleam of daylight, and we are in a narrow passage, of which the sides and roof are covered with a brown incrustation resembling gigantic clusters of petrified moss. Curious mushroom-like growths hang from the roof, and throwing his light on these, the guide says we are passing through the Inverted Forest. So it continues, the roof still low, for eighty yards, comprising the Old Cave, which has been known for ages; and we come to a narrow passage hewn through a thick screen of stalagmite. It was opened twenty years ago by Mr. Farrer’s gardener, who laboured at the barrier until it was breached, and a new cavern of marvellous formation was discovered beyond. An involuntary exclamation broke from me as I entered and beheld what might have been taken for a glittering fairy palace. On each side, sloping gently upwards till they met the roof, great bulging masses of stalagmite of snowy whiteness lay outspread, mound after mound glittering as with millions of diamonds. For the convenience of explorers, the passage between them has been widened and levelled as far as possible, wherein the beck that we saw outside finds a channel after unusual rains. You walk along this passage now on sand, now on pebbles, now bare rock. All the great white masses are damp; their surfaces are rough with countless crystallized convolutions and minute ripples, between which trickle here and there tiny threads of water. It is to the moisture that the unsullied whiteness is due, and the glistening effect; for wherever stalactite or stalagmite becomes dry, the colour changes to brown, as we saw in the Old Cave. A strange illusion came over me as I paced slowly past the undulating ranges, and for a moment they seemed to represent the great rounded snow-fields that whiten the sides of the Alps.

The cavern widens: we are in the Pillar Hall; stalactites of all dimensions hang from the roof, singly and in groups. Thousands are mere nipples, or an inch or two in length; many are two or three feet; and the whole place resounds with the drip and tinkle of water. Stalagmites dot the floor, and while some have grown upwards the stalactites have grown downwards, until the ends meet, and the ceaseless trickle of water fashions an unbroken crystal pillar. Some stalactites assume a spiral twist; and where a long thin fissure occurs in the roof they take the form of draperies, curtains, and wings—wings shaped like those of angels. The guide strikes one of the wings with a small mallet, and it gives out a rich musical note; another has the deep sonorous boom of a cathedral bell, another rings sharp and shrill, and a row of stalactitic sheets answers when touched with a gamut of notes. Your imagination grows restless while you listen to such strange music deep in the heart of a mountain.

And there are pools on the floor, and in raised basins at the side—pools of water so limpid as to be treacherous, for in the uncertain light all appears to be solid rock. I stepped knee deep into one, mistaking it for an even floor. Well for me it was not the Abyss which yawns at the end of Pillar Hall. The guide, to show the effect of light reflected on the water, crawls up to the end of one of the basins with the two candles in his hand, while you standing in the gloom at the other end, observe the smooth brilliant surface, and the brightness that flashes from every prominence of roof or wall.

Although geologists explain the process of formation, there is yet much food for wonder in remembering that all these various objects were formed by running water. The water, finding its way through fissures in the mighty bed of limestone overhead, hangs in drops, one drop pushes another off, but not idly; for while the current of air blowing through carries off their carbonic acid, they give up the salt of lime gathered during percolation, and form small stony tubes. And these tubes, the same cause continuing to operate, grow in course of ages to magnificent stalactites; and where thin, broad streams have appeared, there the draperies and wings and the great snow-fields have been fashioned. The incrustation spreads even over some of the pools: the film of water flowing in deposits its solid contents on the margin, and these, crystallizing and accumulating, advance upon the surface, as ice forms from the edge towards the centre of a pond, and in time bridge it over with a translucent sheet.

Among the stalagmites are a few of beehive shape; but there is one named the Jockey Cap, an extraordinary specimen for bigness. Its base has a circumference of ten feet, its height is two feet, all produced by a succession of drops from one single point. Advantage has been taken of this circumstance to measure the rate of its growth. Mr. Farrer collected a pint of drops, and ascertained the fall to be one hundred pints a day, each pint containing one grain of calcareous matter; and from this daily supply of a hundred grains the Jockey Cap was built up to its present dimensions in two hundred and fifty-nine years. In six years, from 1845 to 1851, the diameter increased by two, and the height by three inches. Probably owing to the morning’s rain, the drops fell rapidly while I stood looking at the cap—splash—splash—splash—into a small saucer-like depression in the middle of the crown, from which with ceaseless overflow the water bathes the entire mass. Around it is the most drippy part of the cave.

In places there are sudden breaks in the roof at right angles to the passage—cracks produced by the cooling of this great limestone bubble in the primeval days—which look as if Nature had begun to form a series of cross aisles, and then held her hand. Some of these are nests of stalactites; one exhibits architectural forms adorned with beads and mouldings as if sculptured in purest marble. The farther you penetrate the loftier do they become; impressing you with the idea that they are but the ante-chambers of some majestic temple farther within. The Abyss appears to be a similar arch reversed in the floor.

Then we came to a bend where the roof rushing down appears to bar all further advance, but the guide puts a thing into your hand which you might take to be a scrubbing-brush, and telling you to stoop, creeps into a low opening between the rising floor and descending roof, and you discover that the scrubbing-brush is a paddle to enable you to walk on three legs while crouching down. It keeps your right hand from the slippery rock; and your left has always enough to do in holding the candle. The creeping continues but for a few yards, and you emerge into one of the cross vaults, and again sand and pebbles form the floor. Then comes the Cellar Gallery, a long tunnel-like passage, the sides perpendicular, the roof arched, which, like all the rest, has been shaped by currents of water, aided in this case by the grinding action of sand and pebbles. Continuing through thousands of years, the result is as we behold it. The tunnel appears the more gloomy from the absence of ornament: no stalactites, no wings, reflect the dim candle-flame; for which reason, as well as to avoid the creeping, many visitors refuse to advance beyond the entrance of the Long Gallery. But the tunnel leads you into the Giant’s Hall, where stalactites and draperies again meet your eye, and where your light is all too feeble to illumine the lofty roof. And here is the end, 2106 feet from the entrance—nearly half a mile. From the time that the gardener broke through the barrier in the Old Cave, two years were spent in gradual advances till the Giant’s Hall was reached. The adventurous explorers endeavoured to get farther, for two small holes were discovered leading downwards from one side of the Hall to a lower cave, through which arose the sound of falling water. They braved the danger, and let themselves down to a level, where they were stopped by a deep pool—the receiver of the fall. It must have looked fearfully dismal. Yet might there not be caverns still more wonderful beyond? Fixing a candle to his cap and with a rope round his body, Mr. James Farrer swam across the murky lake, and found it closed in by what appeared to be an impassable wall of limestone—the heart of Ingleborough. It was a courageous adventure.

I stretched out my candle and peered down the two holes. One is dry and sandy, the other slimy with a constant drip. I heard the noise of the fall, the voice of the water plunging for ever, night and day, in deep darkness. It seemed awful. A current of air blows forth continually, whereby the cave is ventilated throughout its entire length, and the visitor, safe from stagnant damps and stifling vapours, breathes freely in a pure atmosphere.

I walked once more from end to end of the Hall; and we retraced our steps. In the first cross aisle the guide made me aware of an echo which came back to the ear as a hollow moan. We crept through into Pillar Hall, and I could not help lingering once more to admire the brilliant and delicate incrustations, and to scramble between or over the great stalagmitic barriers to see what was in the rear. Here and there I saw a mass resembling a font, filled with water of exquisite purity, or raised oval or oblong basins representing alabaster baths, wherein none but vestal virgins might enter.

Except that the path has been levelled and widened, and openings enlarged, and planks laid in one place to facilitate access to a change of level, the cave remains as when first discovered. Mr. Farrer’s precautions against mischief have prevented that pillage of the interior so much to be deplored in other caves of this region, where the first-comers made prize of all the ornaments within reach, and left little but bare walls for those who follow. Yet even here some of the smaller stalactites, the size of a finger, have been missed after a party has gone through; and once a man struck a group of stalactites and broke more than a foot off the longest, in sheer wantonness, as it seemed, for the fragment was too heavy to carry away. And there the mutilation remains, a lasting reproach to a fool.

My candle burnt out, and the other flickered near its end, but the old man had two halves which he lit, and these more than sufficed for our return. The red light of sunset was streaming into the entrance when we came forth after a sojourn of nearly two hours in the bowels of the mountain. The guide had been very indulgent with me; for most visitors stay but an hour. Those who merely wish to walk through, content with a hasty glance, will find little to impede their movements. There is nothing, indeed, which need deter a woman, only she must leave her hoop at home, wear thick boots, and make provision for looping-up her skirts. Many an English maiden would then enjoy a visit to Ingleborough Cave.

The beck flows out from under the cliff a few yards above the entrance through a broad low vault. I crept in for some distance, and it seemed to me that access to the cave might be gained by wading up the stream. Then as we went down the hill, the old soldier thought that as there were but two of us, we might venture to walk through the grounds, where we saw the lake, the bridge, and the cascade, on our way to the village.

Delicious trout from the neighbouring brook, and most excellent beer, awaited me for supper, and made me well content with the Bull and Cave. Afterwards I joined the party in the little bar-parlour, where among a variety of topics, the mountain was talked about. The landlord, a hale old fellow of sixty, said that he had never once been on the summit, though he had lived all his life at the base. A rustic, though a two years’ resident in Clapham, had not been up, and for a reason: “You see,” he said, “if a man gets on a high place, he isn’t satisfied then; he wants to get higher. So I thinks best to content myself down here.”

Then spoke another of the party, a man well dressed, in praise of rural quiet, and the enjoyment of fresh air, contrasting the tranquillity of Clapham at that hour with the noise and confusion at Bradford, where the streets would be thronged till after midnight. He was an ‘operative’ from Bradford, come as was his wont, to spend Sunday in the country. He grew eloquent on the subject of masters and men, averring that masters, as a body, would never do anything for the benefit of workmen unless compelled thereto by act of Parliament. Well might he say so. Would the mills be ventilated; would dangerous machinery be boxed off; would schools have been interposed between children and slavery, had Parliament not interfered? The number of Yorkshire factory children at school on the last day of October, 1857, was 18,000, from eight to thirteen years of age. On this latter particular our spinner could not say enough in praise of the House of Commons: there was a chance for the bairns now that the law punished the masters who did not allow time for school as well as for work. “It’s one of the grandest things,” he said, “Parliament ever did for the factory hands.”