The Golden Age Of Yorkshire Potholing
by P. C. Swindells
In the Craven District, exploration of caves and potholes by individual men had started well before the creation of the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club. For example, Mr. Farrar surveyed almost the whole length of Clapham Cave in 1837/8 and Mr. Birkbeck of Settle reached the ledge in Gaping Gill in 1872, having previously bottomed Alum Pot in 1870 but it is fair to say that the formation of the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club saw the birth of sustained and organised subterranean exploration.
Most interestingly, caving and potholing had no mention in the objects of the club which have remained unchanged since its formation in 1892 as—”to organise walking and mountaineering excursions, and to gather and promote knowledge concerning Natural History, Archaeology, Folklore, and kindred subjects”. Nevertheless, interest was there from the beginning as is instanced by the first annual meet being at Ingleton when members visited Yordas Cave (in a deluge) and the second being at Settle when they went down Hull Pot. By 1895 the annual report was stating that “… during the year substantial progress has been made in the exploration of Yorkshire’s caves and potholes. At Whitsuntide a thorough examination of Manchester Hole was undertaken in the hope of finding a through passage to Goyden Pot. No practical way was discovered, but the party penetrated a longer way into the cave than was known to have been reached before”.
In those days the underground party used to be supported by a handyman, by name of Ben Mason, who used to tend the ropes and also pass down refreshments at suitable intervals. Obviously there were certain advantages to be found in the pot-holing practices of our forbears.
Reading through the early journals, I have been struck by the high quality of the writing and the obvious intelligence and knowledge shown by members of the club. No doubt it was the spirit of adventure, coupled with man’s curiosity that drove them underground, but every new discovery had to be examined and evaluated, and I am confident that it was this close attention to detail that enabled them to be so effective in their discoveries. From the beginning they were carrying out accurate surveys of every hole they explored, having quickly acquired a scathingly low opinion of what plans were then in existence. The first survey the Club did was of Rowten Pot in 1897. It was prepared by S. W. Cuttriss, who was known as “The Scientist”, and always went underground accompanied by a green haversack and who was responsible for most of the early slides in the Club’s collection. There is a delightful picture, in the report on Rowten, of “The Scientist” at the bottom standing for ten minutes up to his knees in water, with a thermometer hanging from his trouser buttons whilst with one hand he chipped bits off the rock, and with the other he operated a compass and a barometer. The result was—”365 feet down, air 48.5F., water 48F.”!
This search for knowledge was not limited to natural history or geology, nor did the club scorn easy caves when they contained something of interest. In 1905 they visited Skoska Cave, which is a simple affair in Littondale, and there they stumbled upon human remains; first a radius, a vertebra and a portion of rib; then, after many more painstaking visits, further bones including a skull were found embedded in stalagmites and the whole was identified as belonging to a woman, aged about forty, and about 5 ft. 3 ins. tall, of the Bronze Age. They found a hole in the side of her skull which would approximate to that made by a sharp instrument, such as an axe or spear, and medical experts deduced that she had been banged on the head and had withdrawn into the cave to die. Medical experts also decided that she was an acute sufferer from adenoids with the result that her nasal bone was set almost at right angles to her face. What with this and the fact that she was undershot, she cannot have been a thing of beauty.
In 1913, Brodrick, an ardent potholer with much good work to his credit (and also sometime mayor of Southport) was brooding over the plans of Clapham Cave and Gaping Gill and it struck him that the low bedding plane, just visible at Foxholes, might prove a link in the chain. A considerable amount of digging, assisted by men from the Farrer estate, proved his theory false, but it did reveal a rock shelter consisting of an upper living space and a lower burial space in which were found, as well as human bones, bones of numerous animals, evidence of a fireplace and pieces of Neolithic pottery. Brodrick reported that the whole was probably unique in England.
In 1896 the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club claimed the discovery of the canal in Clapham Cave, but, unfortunately for them and fortunately for historical accuracy, the Headmaster of Giggleswick School, the Rev. Style read the report and wrote to the club pointing out that the area described resembled very closely the area reached by himself, Professor Hughes of Clare College, Cambridge, Mr. Birkbeck and party in 1872. A lengthy and entirely harmonious correspondence ensued with the result that the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club withdrew all claims of discovery of these areas.
It is logical to move from Clapham Cave to Gaping Gill, which was first bottomed by M. Martel in August 1895. Actually E. Calvert of the Yorkhire Ramblers’ Club had designs on the place himself but the delays and procrastinations of YRC organisation let the Frenchmen in first. This, of course, was highly irritating to Calvert and spurred him on to action so that he reached the ledge in September 1895 and bottomed it in May 1896. From that point on, for many years, the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club virtually took over exploration of Gaping Gill and it might be of interest to follow the sequence in which the exploration developed. In 1895, Martel simply circumnavigated the cave. In 1896, the YRC opened up the East Passage and penetrated to the end far beyond Mud Chamber (and by so doing recognised that the through way to Clapham Cave was not going to fall as easily as they hoped). In 1903, Booth and Parsons did their famous crawl, in 1905 the Club reached Stream Chamber and in 1906 the West Chamber, the NW passage beyond Stream Chamber, the Belfry, Flood Exit Pot and the passage beyond. In 1907 they found the letter box in West Chamber and they opened up Flood Exit and reached the top of the final pitch down to the pot. It was not until 1920 that they did the Gaping Gill Flood Exit cross-over and even then they only exchanged two men from each party because the life line was too short and when they extended it, the knot caught in all projections in a dangerous manner. Actually the position of Flood Exit was deduced by the Yorkshire Speleological Society in consideration of the great height of the chamber above Flood Exit Pot and the great height of the waterfall, also because of a strong draught in the passage that did not go beyond the pot and finally because they found in the pot several flies and a live, red, worm. I quote this in order to illustrate, once again, how sharp eyes and intelligent deductions led to major discoveries.
It is, I think, equally interesting to consider the methods of descent and the exploration of Fell Beck. In 1872, Birkbeck dug a thousand foot trench to divert the waters and Martel used the same trench. In his first descent, Calvert fixed tackle across the hole and was lowered by windlass and it was during this descent that he discovered Jib Tunnel, and in 1896 he descended thereby in a bosun’s chair, a free fall direct to the floor. Finally, in 1921, the Burrow brothers found out how to site the gantry in its present position, thus allowing the bosun’s chair to be used in the main shaft itself.
In 1909 the Club discovered a low bedding plane in the side of Fell Beck, half-way between the camp and the main shaft, which was capable of taking all the water under normal conditions and which thereby enabled them to ladder the main shaft dry. This they called “Rat Hole”. And in the same year Booth and Wingfield made a landing by swinging from the bosun’s chair onto Spout Tunnel, which is where the lateral fall cascades into the chamber. It sounds a hair-raising operation as, not only is the mouth of the tunnel under water, but it also had an appreciable slope towards the chamber and it must have been similar to jumping on to a sloping roof in the middle of a thunderstorm. However, they did it, and got ropes across, so that a surveying party could go up and thus complete the knowledge of all the means by Which water falls into the chamber.
Also in 1909 occurred one of the landmarks of the early potholing experiences of the club when a party was marooned in the bottom of Gaping Gill for thirty-six hours by a flood. The rain started at midnight, and by noon the next day was rushing over the windlass platform (for a Jib Tunnel descent) and at one time the gauge in the main chamber showed that the level of water had risen four inches in half an hour. The party below was wet and tired and hungry but in no danger as they spent the time 45 feet above the main chamber in the South Passage, and, to my mind, the highlight of the story is the courageous descent by Booth, at the height of the flood, with a rucksack of provisions. He had an exciting time on the way down as the full force of the lateral fall drove him against the opposite wall; the lines got tangled and it was only with difficulty that he got them straight again. Then, when he got down, his troubles were by no means over as the reserve store of candles had been swept away and he had no light, other than matches, and it took him an hour in the dark to locate the party. During this escapade, the telephone had broken and not only did the underground party use their revolvers at frequent intervals (apparently a common means of attracting attention) but also the surface party joined in by borrowing a gun from Mr. Metcalfe of Clapdale and firing it down the hole; presumably on the reasonable assumption that a gun made more noise than a revolver and gambling that the force of the fall would so dissipate the impetus of the pellets as to render them harmless to anyone who might have been at the bottom.
Finally, one cannot leave Gaping Gill without some reference to the camp at the surface. The annual Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club Whit Camp by Fell Beck became a well loved institution and references are made on many pages in the journals to the friendly atmosphere, the singing round the camp fire and, above all, to the excellence of the commissariat.
I have already indicated that, prior to the formation of the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club, known underground exploration was limited to Clapham Cave, Gaping Gill and Alum Pot. Of those yet to be invesigated, Rowten Pot came top of the list. Martel refers to it as of the same magnitude as Gaping Ghyll, and someone else had estimated its depth as 600 ft. so what more natural than that it should be amongst the first objectives of the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club and in 1897 an assault was mounted with a strong party (Booth, Cuttriss, Parsons, Scriven, Swithinbank, assisted by Woodhouse and Somers) and they successfully bottomed the pot. I dwell on this report as I think it brings out some interesting points and permits of another anecdote. I do not think anyone will deny that those men possessed in equal measure to the “Tigers” of modern times the qualities of courage, determination and physical ability and yet they rated Rowten as a most severe undertaking whereas, today, it is rated V. Diff. Why was this? Firstly, they had not discovered the easy way down and in this case, they laddered a big pitch from the bridge all the way in the waterfall, whereas nowadays one can avoid the worst by going through the eyeholes. Secondly, there was the ever present danger of falling stones from the bridge, and it must be remembered how much worse the old ladders were for dislodging loose rock than the modern electron. Thirdly, it was impossible to keep any light going when descending 140 ft. in a waterfall. The next point concerns the sheer quantity and bulk of equipment. Knowing the reputation of the pot, they went prepared and their gear included 200 ft. of ladder, 1,700 ft. of rope, numerous coils of telephone line, flare lamps, crowbars, pulley blocks, and much other paraphernalia weighing many hundredweights. 200 ft. of ladder may not appear excessive when measured in terms of neatly rolled electron but with bulky and heavy rope ladders it becomes an entirely different proposition and there were numerous references in the early journals to the difficulties and effort required to manipulate wet ladders in a constricted pot. In the very early days, they apparently had only one ladder and if further laddering was needed after the first pitch, a man at the top of the pitch lowered the ladder on the end of a very strong rope. To help this man pull the ladder up, on the return journey, they used to fasten a life line to the top rung, pass it over a pulley, and lower it down the hole so that the underground party could lend a hand.
To return to Rowten Pot, this very thing had happened, and when they returned to the bottom of the waterfall pitch they communications had broken and they could not tell the man up top to pull the ladders up. What happend next is best described by Swithinbank in his memoirs and I quote verbatim…
“A kettle, cork, and broken telephone line seem to have little in common with each other, but they are to my mind inseparably associated with Charlie Scriven and Rowten Pot. It is difficult to understand why a telephone line always breaks down when it is most required, but the inevitable happened on this occasion. When the time came for hauling on the main ladder lines at the bridge, to restore a climbable means of communication with that point, the telephone refused to work. Whistling and shouting were tried but anyone familiar with the pot and the 250 ft. level will readily appreciate how utterly impossible it was that such a means would be successful. We were indeed in a sad predicament: as a last resource, a letter was written on a scrap of paper and tied to a light halyard that had been used for the conveyance of refreshment, hoping that sooner or later someone on the bridge would haul it up. We had not long to wait; the line with its vital message suddenly disappeared up the chasm, to our infinite satisfaction and delight. Everything that goes up Rowten Pot main chasm does so in the heavy waterfall for something like 150 ft. yet we hoped that the message would land. It had, as we subsequently learnt, met with a watery grave, but Charlie sensed the situation and sent the halyard down again with a tin kettle, having a cork in the spout, tied to the end. One does not find much opportunity for a hearty laugh in potholes as a rule, but when Charlie’s kettle with its corked spout appeared we had one of the finest reasons for hilarity that ever came our way below ground”.
I can’t find anything of particular interest on the subject of communications, except the revolver shots to which I have already referred, and even these were not universal, or else they would have shot off in Rowten. From the earliest days they had a telephone of sorts and they also used the standard whistle signals and there are one or two references to the advisability of having in the party men who knew each other so well as to recognise changes of voice inflection on the argument that inflection carries further than words. But I suppose this is just as true today. A semi-humorous report on Lost Johns in 1898 comes next and I start by quoting from the author as they prepared for entry . . .
“But the Scientist, at this point, handed me a large lump of clay and a singular hat. The latter was extremely hard. In shape a compromise between clerical and lay, it was in colour a dingy and unbecoming yellow flecked with spots of dirty white and much too large. The clay I supposed was to make it fit. Fortunately before my ignorance was discovered I observed that it was to be moulded into a candle holder and stuck in front of the crown. The insertion of a candle gave the hat a more imposing appearance but there was still much to be desired in looks and comfort. Before pofholing is likely to become popular with women the millinery incidental to the sport will require careful thought and more chic.”
From this description arise two points. First, how on earth did they get a lump of clay to stick onto their hats and to stay there? Secondly, the development of lighting is fairly clear from the journals provided that one understands what is meant by flare lamps. I imagined this must mean hurricane lamps, as somewhere there is reference to paraffin, but I am informed that a flare lamp worked off carbide and had a side flame. In any case early potholers started with flare lamps, balls of magnesium wire for long range illumination and candles. Candles or tallow dips were the main source of illumination as they were the handiest. Some they stuck in their hats, some they carried in their hands, either singly or in clusters, but always they were made of tallow, not paraffin, so that they could be eaten in emergency. Reference to the modern shape of carbide lamp is found in the Flood Entry exploration in 1909 and Roberts refers to the good light that they threw in enabling Dr. Mackenzie to attend to Boyd in Sunset Hole. Roberts also refers to electric lamps for the first time in 1911 in the Siege of Mere Ghyll and he liked them a lot except that they were so unhandy.
The second point from the Lost Johns article concerns the female sex. The Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club has never had female members, but there is ample evidence of women being present at early potholing meets and they did not play merely a passive role. Obviously they acted as the commissariat but when, for example, Boyd had his accident, it was Mrs. Payne who ministered to him on the surface and in the description of the exploration of Little Hull Hole, Roberts paid tribute to Miss Bowden. Roberts, I think, was feeling a bit peeved because the weather was wonderful and certain stalwarts preferred to sun themselves while he and Stobart struggled underground, and here I quote…
“The result was that during the time Stobart and I were engaged in the arduous task of rigging the first pitch and passing the ladders through the window, we were surprised by Miss Bowden, who had most gallantly travelled alone from the pool along the eerie passage”. From then on Miss Bowden played her full part in the exploration and in the arduous task of dragging out the ladders.
To revert yet again to Lost Johns there is an anecdote that amused me and I will again quote from Swithinbank. He and Booth were in the advance party and, having outstripped the others, they decided to have something to eat. “Sitting together, eating sandwiches, surrounded by Stygian darkness, made more intense by the feeble rays of a tallow candle, we became conscious that something was wrong out front; the passage was becoming luminous, a soft glow at first, but increasing in intensity until the whole passage became one glowing mass of light. This lasted for a short time and then the luminosity appeared to concentrate in the centre of the passage and take vague shape. By this time I was badly scared, it was my first real ghost, and I had no precedent to guide me. Scared as I was, I knew enough of Lost Johns to realise that any display of speed would probably end in something worse than the ghost. The luminous form now began to approach slowly, but still decreasing the distance between us; common sense gave way to unreason. Here in the very heart of Lost Johns was the spirit of the cave resenting our intrusion. Fortunately the tension was released, the ghost, still approaching, began to smell, and I recognised the smell”. What had happened was that they had retreated a few paces to eat and had left behind a candle which had fallen over and ignited the covering of the telephone cable.
We now move on to the year 1909 and the transition period between the first and second waves of explorers. Ernest Roberts was the leader of the second wave and I think it is possible to detect slight and subtle changes in the spirit of the club. Perhaps a slightly less serious note was struck, perhaps there was greater emphasis on potholing for the sport of the thing, but certainly there was ample evidence of a spirit of bonhomie, of the spirit of the camp fires and of community singing. We are in the era of the song writer and there are innumerable versions of club songs, of which Yorkshire (words and music by the Rev. A. C. Calvert, headmaster of Batley Grammar School) was first sung at the dinner of 1909.
Apropos of nothing at all, it appears to have been de rigeur from the beginning to smoke a pipe whilst potholing, and when reading the journals one comes across inane remarks such as… “the only discomfort suffered by so and so when climbing the waterfall pitch was that his pipe went out.” And again, on another occasion, “everybody except one man broke his pipe and that unfortunate was made to share his smoke at the bottom with his comrades.” They played a game; each man in turn had a smoke until the pipe went out, in the meanwhile the others, by jest and by engaging in conversation, tried to make the smoker lose control. As a pipe smoker myself, I can just imagine the state of the tobacco when the turn came for the last man to light up.
To turn from the frivolous to the dramatic, 1910 saw the only serious accident reported in any of the first five journals, from 1892 to 1930 and it occurred in Sunset Hole. To set the scene, Roberts and Addyman had sufficient energy, after a full day dismantling tackle and clearing Gaping Gill, to walk over the col and examine a hole previously noticed by Addyman which they hoped would link up with Braithwaite Wife Sink Hole. It was sunset when they arrived, without tackle, and they went in and reached the last pitch. History does not relate the time they came out nor the time they set off again next morning from the camp at Gaping Gill but it was again sunset the next day when they emerged, having bottomed the hole but having failed to find a way through. Hence the name Sunset Hole; and an apt illustration of the energy of the men of those years and in particular of Roberts. Reveille at camp at Gaping Gill was at 6 a.m., breakfast at 6.30 and the first descent started at 7 a.m., and most people did not emerge until 12 or 14 hours later and often they slept below ground.
In 1910 they forced a through way into the sink hole (since blocked up) and in Whit 1910 the accident occurred. A mixed party of experts and novices entered the hole at 11.30 a.m., intending to have an easy day, and by 3 p.m. seven of the eight men had been hauled up the last pitch. Boyd was the last man to come up and in so doing, the rope broke and he fell back thirty feet, fracturing his thigh and suffering bad bruising. Kilburn, the landlord of the Hill Inn, cycled to Ingleton for the doctor (and just imagine the time that would take) and Addyman scrounged a leaf from a farmhouse table and took it down the hole to the top of the pitch, whilst, during the same period, the others got Boyd up the pitch. Dr. Mackenzie courageously went straight in to the top of the last pitch and strapped the patient to the table top and then returned to the enrance to await the arrival of the long suffering man who was eventually brought out at 8 a.m. the next day, seventeen hours after the accident. Apparently they had not taken ladders in, but had fixed a pulley at the top of the shaft in such a convenient way that they decided to use only a single rope, contrary to the normal practice of having a second, or life line. The rope they used was of great strength, and had been used in Gaping Gill a number of times, but it was untarred and at some time cannot have been dried properly, with a consequence that a short section was rotten. From that time forward the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club took greater care in drying out ropes and enforced the rule always to wear life lines.
The Siege of Mere Gill is an epic account of an assault on a Super Severe Pothole which started in 1908 and was not completed until 1912. During that period there had been four or five intervening attacks and they had all failed because the assaulting party was too small in numbers and recruitment was difficult because of the reputation of the pot for extreme wetness. The crux was to get the whole party down the third pitch, or was it the second—it is difficult to be certain because the pitches are not numbered in the journals as they are in Pennine Underground—and to do this a rope ladder was necessary rather than a rope and breeches buoy because of the difficulty of getting the last man up; on the other hand none of them thought it was safe on the ladder because of the distance to be climbed in the waterfall. It was not until they diverted the beck that they were able to solve the problem and thus open the way for a final, successful, assault. I realise I have done scant justice to what was regarded as an epic achievement and I can only recommend anyone interested to read the full account for himself.
My last extract from the journals is of Little Hull Hole which again took a long time to conquer. Starting in 1910 it did not actually fall until the fourth expedition in 1922, but of course the war years intervened and Roberts himself comments that in the early stages they were suffering from anti-climax after Mere Gill and did not push it as hard as they might. They reached what they thought at the time was the bottom in 1913, but some doubt lingered, and they returned to apply the acid test—namely that a pot is not bottomed until two men, in each other’s presence, have each tried and failed to progress further. The account is of interest as Roberts talks about ladders and the weight thereof and says those were the days before the Botterill Ladder, thus indicating that between 1912 and 1922 Botterill designed a lighter ladder.
In the first Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club Journal the secretary, Lewis Moore, reviews an article written by four Y.R.C. men in the volume on Cave Exploration in the series, The Encyclopaedia of Sport, and I quote …
“If there is one point upon which it is possible to join issue with the authors it is upon the form of rope ladder best adapted for this work. In spite of its extra weight a ladder with alternate rungs of wood and rope, or at least every third rung of wood, is to be preferred to the ladder with one wooden rung in every four or five recommended”. The authors were Calvert, Ellet, Gray and Green, all experienced potholers, and presumably they liked the maximum of rope rungs because of lightness but in the opinion of later generations wooden rungs, even though heavier were to be preferred because of the extra stability they gave.
In the article on Little Hull Pot, Roberts also underlines the relative difficulties encountered by the early explorers, before the easy ways and the best holds had been found, and he says, when describing their exit from the pot… “I was first up the top pitch and if anyone wants a really sensational position I can recommend leading from the window up a ladder at an angle of originally 45 or less which trembles and threatens to turn over, first on one side and then on the other. We had not then found all the holds that permit the pitch to be done most gracefully”.
By this time nearly all the major known holes had been conquered and the golden age of potholing in Craven was coming to an end. I do not wish to give the impression that the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club had the monopoly of underground exploration. That is palpably untrue. Nor do I wish to imply that they were interested only in new ground and in severes and upwards.
To conclude, I can do no better than to make a final quotation, again from Swithinbank. “A priceless memory is the faith and trust in each other that is born of potholing. I wonder how many men outside the climbing world would know what safety and confidence can be found in a single hand clasp, when that clasp is the only link between safety and death. In the early days of potholi’ng, when tackle was not so commonly used, it was no unusual experience to hear the words, ‘Right, now swing clear’. That hand clasp was symbolic of the purest system of ethics ever thought out by mankind”.