A veteran cave-hunter from Liverpool gladly joined me in a second visit to the Ceiriog Cavern. Our host could not be with us, but sent a village youth as his substitute. This young man was very keen and plucky, and, as things turned out, saved the situation, for my speleological friend, to his intense chagrin, failed to get through the narrow entrance to the parallel tunnel, and the two of us had to finish the job by ourselves. Climbing along the walls of the water-rift, we soon found it best to wade straight through the stream bed, and finally, when the space grew more and more restricted, to crawl through the water. Toward the end of the rift a small tunnel broke away to the left, and the water disturbed by our advance flowed into it and away down a small swallet. Wriggling through, heedless of a wetting, we came into a small chamber with four exits, each of which we explored, marking off each with a cross or arrow to prevent our losing the route back. Every branch led eventually to other points of divergence, and ultimately to small tunnels or pipes, through which the water flows in rainy weather into the head of the cavern. Having conscientiously examined every one, without finding the mythical passage to Oswestry, we returned to the tunnel of the swallet. One of the bifurcations, it was interesting to discover, led back unexpectedly into the water-rift. There were numberless chinks and fissures, and holes in the roof, leading into this network of passages, all very interesting as a concise example of the whole history of the formation of a cave; but the farthest point reached was, by measurement, only a little more than 500 feet from the entrance. Only in places were there stalactites, and those small ones. There were stalagmite curtains on the walls at one or two spots, and patches of very white amorphous tufa. Curious filaments of cave-weed, white and brown, without a vestige of leaves, abounded throughout the cavern. Not far above the cave mouth I came across the exit of the water, a beautiful spring, pouring down into the Ceiriog, a few yards away.
On the top of the hill, in a disused Limestone quarry, there were traditions of a cave opening that had been covered by a landslip for some thirty years. A man was set to work digging it out, and a small fissure was disclosed, the old channel of a tributary leading into the middle of a cave running north-north-east and south-south-west. The total length was 172 feet. The water apparently entered at the top of the left passage and ran away into a low bedding cave to the right. The floor is wet clay at present, but there are traces of large stalagmites, including one handsome "beehive"; and the roof is covered with beautiful white and amber stalactites. Our further attempts to uncover openings into the Limestone only brought us down to the solid rock, and we found nothing to confirm the rumour that a cave exists which carried a stream down to the Ceiriog, feet below.
[THE EXPLORATION OF STUMP CROSS CAVERN]
The explorers who have done so much work in Derbyshire and Somersetshire have also carried out extended explorations in some of the more remote caves of Yorkshire. Recently a party carried out farther investigations than any previous explorers in Stump Cross Cavern, on the moors between Wharfedale and Nidderdale. This cavern, which is named after the ancient boundary mark of Knaresborough Forest, and is situated near the summit of the moors, 1326 feet above sea-level, 4½ miles from Pateley Bridge and 11½ from Skipton, was discovered in 1843 by miners searching for lead, as was the case with several of the Derbyshire caverns. The Greenhow lead mines are not far off, and the ground in many parts hereabouts is riddled with old workings. No place could look more unlikely for caves than the flat field on the top of the hill, where a few steps lead down to a doorway into the ground, close to the rough road to Grassington and Appletreewick.
The party of five, besides myself, Messrs. B. and F. Wightman, J. W. Puttrell, J. Croft, and H. Bamforth (all members of the Kyndwr Club), drove up from Bolton Abbey Station by way of Burnsall, and through various delays did not reach the cave mouth till nine o'clock on Saturday evening. With our photographic and other apparatus we descended at once to a level gallery 50 feet or so below the surface, whence several passages branch off, and there we made a halt. To give a clear general idea of the structure of this cavern is not easy. It consists of a number of galleries running in different directions at different levels, with a few intercommunications, and many continuations that have gradually become choked with clay and stalagmite and have for ages been impassable. Descending the steep stairway in a northerly direction one soon reaches the first of the natural passages, which bears to the west. A gallery goes off to the right, west-south-west, and bifurcates, but is uninteresting, the earth and clay that show its proximity to the surface rendering it very dirty. In the opposite direction, east-north-east, the corridor where we had placed the luggage and made our general rendezvous continues to a distance of 120 feet, and then dwindles away into a low stalactite grotto. Being so inaccessible and so little known, the various chambers have never yet been christened, except with the vague and general names of Upper Caverns and Lower Caverns, which have little meaning owing to the intricate conformation of the series. From our rendezvous two important tunnels, called the Lower Caverns, go off in a westerly direction from the bottom of a natural shaft 20 feet deep. These were left for the present whilst we went into the Middle Caverns, which strike off to the north from the same spot, and after many turns and twists approach the surface in the ravine of Dry Gill, south-east from the entrance to the caves. Many chambers and passages open out from this series, the largest and most beautiful being called, very inappropriately, the Top Cavern. As it leads eventually to a charming piece of cave scenery that we agreed to call the "Bowling Alley," it might well be named after this.
