On Ingleborough Cave

Abstract

I venture to lay before the Society a plan of the Ingleborough Cave in Clapdale. In Mr. Phillips's paper “On a group of Slate Rocks, &c.” published in the Transactions of the Geological Society, second series, vol. iii. part i. p. 12, under the title “Clapham-dale,” the dale or valley, of which the cave forms a feature, is described. The “broad depressed cavern” mentioned by him is a little beyond the mouth (A) of the “Old Cave,” immemorially known, the extent of which is shown upon the plan. At that time a curtain or barrier of stalactite ( a ), descending from the limestone roof, was supposed to be rock, but in September 1837, a passage being cut through it, the several galleries and chambers marked upon the plan (fig. 1) were discovered. This series of galleries and chambers has at some distant period been the course of the beck or stream which Mr. Phillips notices, but the great accumulation of stalagmite on the floor has diverted its course and forced it to work out another channel, and to issue generally through “the broad depressed cavern.” The rock in which these caves are situated is on the line of the Great Craven Fault, and is the Great Scar Limestone described by Prof. Sedgwick in a paper published in the same Transactions (second series, vol. iv. part i. p. 69). In floods, the “broad depressed cavern,” called in the country “Little Beck-head,” is not sufficiently large for the body of water, which rushes