Thoroton, in his history of Nottinghamshire, 1797, gives an illustration of rock-dwellings at Sneynton, adjoining Nottingham, but they have recently been cleared away for railway extension.
The sanitary authorities have done their best to sweep the tenants out of the Nottingham cave habitations, but in Staffordshire at Kinver there are still troglodytes.
Holy Austin's Rock is a mass of red sandstone, a spur of the bluff of Kinver Edge, that is crowned by the earthworks of what is supposed to have been a camp of Penda. But it has been broken through by wind and rain and perhaps sea, and now stands out unattached. It is honeycombed with habitations. I have been into several. They are neat and dry, and the occupants are loud in praise of them, as warm in winter and cool in summer. They are in two stages. At Drakelow also there are several, also occupied, somewhat disfigured by hideous chimneys recently erected in yellow and red bricks. One chimney is peculiarly quaint as being twisted, like a writhing worm, to accommodate itself to the shape of the overhanging rock. Another series of these habitations is now abandoned, but was occupied till a comparatively recent period, and other houses have their stables and storerooms excavated out of the rock.
Although Derbyshire abounds with caverns, some natural, some the work of miners, from Roman times, they do not appear to have been inhabited, at least since prehistoric times, except as occasional refuges. But there is a rock hermitage at Dale Abbey that has been lived in till recently, and when Mr. St. John Hope was excavating the Abbey ruins, one of his workmen informed him that he had been born and bred in it.
A writer in The Cornish Magazine gives the following account of some Cornish cave-dwellers.
"People in the habit of frequenting the shore of Whitsand Bay, between Lore and Dowderry, are familiar with the sight of a couple of women moving about among the rocks exposed at low tide. They are shell-fish gatherers, who live in a small cave a little to the west of Seaton. The illustration shows almost the extent of this cleft in the shady cliff, and any one who examines the place must wonder how two human beings can exist there. Along one side is a strip of sand, and from that the floor slopes upwards at an angle of about sixty degrees. Whether by years of practice the women have attained such perfection in the art of balancing their bodies that they go to sleep on the slanting rock without fear of falling, or whether they rest on the sand (wet when I saw it from a late storm), I was not informed; but it is evident that they know no comfort at any time. When I came suddenly upon the cave one morning in October, the smouldering ashes of a drift-wood fire, a kettle, a teapot, and two cups were dotted about just inside. Further up the floor their 'cupboards'—a couple of iron boilers—were standing, and in a niche near the fire was a pipe—short, dark, and odorous. The women who have made this their dwelling are Irish widows, 'born in Ireland and married in Ireland,' as one of them said. They are between fifty and sixty years of age, and for the last thirty years have managed to gain a subsistence by gathering limpets week after week and taking them to Plymouth. When the sea is rough they obtain few or no fish, but under favourable circumstances the two sometimes get fourteen shillings a week between them. In fine weather, when from Rame Head to Looe Island the sea lies calm and glistening under a summer sky, this smoke-blackened cave is an uninviting hovel; and in the winter, especially when there is a gale from the south-east, the women must be almost blown out of the hollow or frozen to death. On such occasions they are forced to leave the cave, and then they go to a disused pigsty near by. In talking with them while they dexterously chipped limpets from the weed-mantled rocks, I mildly remarked that workhouses were now very comfortable. Immediately the younger woman stood erect, and with something akin to pride and determination, exclaimed in a voice more than tinctured by the Irish patois, 'Never, sir, will us go to the workhouse while us can get as much as an crust in twenty-four hours.' Hitherto I had seen her only in a stooping attitude, and I was surprised to see how tall a woman she was, and what strength of character was indicated by her features. As she stood there amongst the sea-weed, with feet and legs bare, and her hair confined by a handkerchief, beating the palm of one hand with the knuckles of the other to emphasise her words, it dawned upon me that I had named the thing against which these two women had fought grimly for more than a quarter of a century." [Footnote: The Cornish Magazine, i. (1878), pp. 394-5.]
[Illustration: DRAKELOW IN KINVER, SHROPSHIRE]
[Illustration: AUBETERRE. One of the subterranean excavations at Aubeterre on the Dronne, serving as stables, storehouses, etc. At the side on the right may be seen an oven for bread, scooped out of the rock.]
Sir Arthur Mitchell describes some troglodytes in Scotland.[Footnote: "The Past in the Present," Edin. 1880, pp. 73-7.] "In August 1866, along with two friends, I visited the great cave at the south side of Wick Bay. It was nine at night, and getting dark when we reached it. It is situated in a cliff, and its mouth is close to the sea. Very high tides, especially with north-east winds, reach the entrance and force the occupants to seek safety in the back part of the cave, which is at a somewhat higher level than its mouth.
"We found twenty-four inmates—men, women, and children—belonging to four families, the heads of which were all there. They had retired to rest for the night a short time before our arrival, but their fires were still smouldering. They received us civilly, perhaps with more than mere civility, after a judicious distribution of pence and tobacco. To our great relief, the dogs, which were numerous and vicious, seemed to understand that we were welcome.