Cave Hunting / Researches on the evidence of caves respecting the early inhabitants of Europe

by William Boyd Dawkins

It is very significant that caves should be mentioned in this account; for the region of Craven is one of the very few in the country in which they are sufficiently abundant to allow of their being used as places of shelter on a scale sufficiently large to be recorded in history; and when we consider that one of the natural highways from Scotland into central England lies through that district, it seems to me extremely probable that the group of caves of which Victoria is one is that referred to. On this point it is worthy of record, that in the year 1745, when the younger Pretender was at Shap, and it was doubtful whether he would take the route through Ribblesdale or by way of Preston, the eldest son of one of the landowners near Settle, was hidden, along with the family plate, in a Cave close to the Victoria, in the belief that the Highlanders were in the habit of eating children as well as of laying hands on the precious metals. The historical notice tallies exactly with the geographical position, and is not inconsistent with the evidence offered by the coins and other remains. The date, therefore, of the occupation may probably be assigned as about the middle of the fifth century.

This, however, is not the latest date that can be assigned. In the year 449, the three ships which contained Hengist and his warriors, landed at Ebbsfleet, in Thanet, and the first English colony was founded among a people who were known to the strangers as “Brit-Welsh.”[65] From that time a steady immigration of Angle, Jute, Saxon, and Frisian set in towards the eastern coast of Britain, as far north as the Firth of Forth, until, in the first half of the sixth century, the whole of the eastern part of our island was taken possession of by various tribes,[66] whose names, for the most part, still survive in the names of our counties. The principal rivers also afforded them a free passage into the heart of the country, and the kingdom of Mercia gradually expanded until it embraced, not only the basin of the Trent, but reached as far as the line of the Severn. The river Humber afforded a base of operations for the Anglian freebooters, who founded the kingdom of Deira or modern Yorkshire; while the camp of Bamborough was the centre from which Ida, who landed with fifty ships in the year 547, conquered Bernicia, or the region extending from the river Tees to Edinburgh. The tide of English colonization rolled steadily westward, until, at the close of the sixth century, the hilly and impassable districts culminating in the Pennine Chain, and extending southwards from Cumberland and Westmoreland, through Yorkshire and Derbyshire, formed the barrier between the Brit-Welsh kingdoms of Elmet and Strathclyde on the east, and the English on the west. To the south of this the Brit-Welsh dominion was bounded by the river Severn, and included Chester and the whole of the basin of the Dee; while Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall, and the district round Bradford and Malmesbury formed the kingdom of West Wales.[67]

The long war by which the borders of England were gradually pushed to the west, at the expense of the Brit-Welsh, was one of the most fearful of which we have any record. The English invaders came over, with their wives and children and household stuff, in such force that the country which they left behind was left desolate for several centuries. Worshippers of Thor and Odin, and living a free life, equally divided between farming, hunting, and war, they were mortal foes to Christianity and to Roman civilization. They destroyed the Brit-Welsh cities with fire and sword; and the ashes of the Roman villas, which are to be found in nearly every part of the Roman province of Britain, testify to the keenness of their hate to everything which was at once Christian, Roman, and Celtic. Gildas forcibly describes the destruction which they wrought among his countrymen, by the metaphor that “the flame kindled in the east, raged over nearly all the land, until it flared red over the western ocean.”[68] In the conquered districts the Brit-Welsh were either exterminated or enslaved, and their civilization was wholly replaced by the rude culture of the English.

It follows, from the nature of this conquest, that any group of remains, such as those in the caves under consideration, must be assigned to the time before the English had possession of the district, and we must therefore see what historical proof is to be found on the point.

At the close of the sixth century the Brit-Welsh kingdom of Elmet (in the basin of the river Aire)—a name which still survives in Barwick-in-Elmet, a little village about seven miles to the north-east of Leeds—extended over the country round Leeds and Bradford, passing westwards towards, if not into, Lancashire, and northwards probably so as to embrace Ribblesdale, and forming a barrier to the westward advance of the English possessors of eastern Yorkshire. Its downfall will give us the latest possible limit which we are seeking for the Brit-Welsh occupation of the Victoria Cave. The two kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia had united to form the powerful state of Northumbria, at the beginning of the seventh century, under Æthelfrith, who carried on the war against the Brit-Welsh with greater vigour than his predecessors. In 607[69] he marched along the line of the Trent, through Staffordshire, avoiding thereby the difficult and easily-defended hilly country of Derbyshire and East Lancashire, to the battle near Chester, famous for the destruction of the power of Strathclyde, and the death of the monks of Bangor, who fought against him with their prayers. By this decisive blow, the English first set foot on the coast of the Irish Channel, and Strathclyde and Elmet, on the one hand, were cut asunder from Wales. On the other Chester was so thoroughly destroyed that it remained in ruins for nearly three centuries, to be rebuilt by Æthelflæd, “the Lady of the Mercians,” in 907, and the plains of Lancashire lay open to the invader.[70] This western advance of the Northumbrians was completed by the conquest of Elmet, in 616, by Eadwine, and the whole district from Edinburgh, as far south as the Humber, and as far west as Chester, became subject to his rule.[71] The latest possible date, therefore, that can be assigned for the occupation of these caves by the Brit-Welsh is determined by that event. It cannot be later than the first quarter of the seventh century, or the time when what remained of Roman art and civilization in that district was swept away by the ancestors of the present dalesmen. The relics in the caves must have been accumulated in the two centuries which elapsed between the recall of the legions in the days of Honorius and the English conquest. They are traces of the anarchy which existed in those times, and they tell a tale of woe, wrought on the Brit-Welsh, by Pict, Scot, or Englishman, as eloquently as the lament of Gildas, or the mournful verses of Talliesin. They complete the picture of the desolation of those times revealed by the ashes of the villas and cities which were burned by the invaders.

We have now examined the evidence as to date offered by the contents of these caves, and we have seen that it agrees with the contemporary history. It may therefore be concluded that it lies in the fifth and sixth centuries, possibly the first quarter of the seventh.

The Neolithic Stratum.

Fig. 26.—Bone Harpoon (natural size).

This occupation of the Victoria Cave by the Brit-Welsh is a mere episode in its history. It was inhabited by man in the neolithic age, at a time so remote that the interval between it and the historical period can only be measured by the rude method by which geologists estimate the relative age of the rocks. At the entrance the dark Romano-Celtic or Brit-Welsh stratum ([Fig. 20], No. 4; [Fig. 21], No. 4) lay buried, as we have seen, under an accumulation of angular fragments of stone which had fallen from the cliff. It rested on a similar accumulation ([Fig. 20], No. 3; [Fig. 21], No. 3) which was no less than six feet thick, and at the bottom of this, at the point where it was based on a stiff grey clay, a bone harpoon ([Fig. 26]) was discovered, as well as charcoal; a bone bead ([Fig. 27]), three rude flint flakes, and the broken bones of the brown bear, stag, horse, and Celtic shorthorn (Bos longifrons). The harpoon is a little more than three inches long, with the head armed with two barbs on each side, and the base presenting a mode of securing attachment to the handle which has not before been discovered in Britain. Instead of a mere projection to catch the ligatures by which it was bound to the shaft, there is a well-cut barb on either side, pointing in a contrary direction to those which form the head. Ample use for such an instrument would be found in Malham tarn, some three miles off, and very probably also in that which formerly existed close by at Attermire, but which has been choked up by peat, and is now turned into grass-land by drainage. The remains of the brown bear consist of numerous hollow bones and teeth, and the shaft of a femur with its articular ends broken off, has been polished by friction against some soft substance, so that its surface has a lustre like that of glass.