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350,000,000 years ago. The cliff above the village of Langcliffe is composed of limestone, which was deposited 350,000,000 years ago. The Rev J E Field, an early Victoria Cave enthusiast, wrote an account of this geological event in his book, The Story of a Limestone Cave, 1876. In an ecstatic burst of purple prose he asks us to :-
‘Conceive the mighty caldron of this primeval chaos... foaming seas of molten and glowing minerals, are striving in one world - wide tumult to gain the mastery'.
'Down in the ocean bed a narrow aperture is cleft through the burning pavement by the contents of the subterranean furnace. A hissing lava stream is spirited upward from a vast depth below and rears its steaming summit above the waves'.
Geologist Jo Light gives a more measured account of this event -
Limestone is the result of shelly debris being deposited on the floor of shallow tropical lagoons. This accumulation of debris continues over a long period and results in beds of limestone. Complex earth movements cause the limestone to be lifted above sea level and so become part of the landscape. The limestone surrounding Victoria Cave was formed in this way. Continental drift moved it into its present position.
120,000 years ago. If you look at the present cave and imagine a line drawn across from the screes on either side, you are presented with a much narrower opening that would have served very well as a lair for wild beasts. 120,000 years ago, in an interstadial period between ice advances, the climate was much warmer and the rolling landscape stretching out before the cave was home to animals that we would now regard as exotic. At the entrance to the network of caves there were large deposits of hyena dung and evidence that the hyenas had scavenged on the abandoned prey of larger carnivores. In the lowest level of the cave were the bones of straight - tusked elephant, narrow - nosed rhinoceros, giant deer, red deer, oxen, bear and hippopotamus along with the bones of the hyenas, which had gorged on them.
This Eden did not last. This period was an interglacial interlude and the ice returned.
Imagine again this landscape locked in ice, only the top of Pen-y-Ghent is visible and the ice stretches to the Midlands. The climate eventually starts to change and the temperature rises a little. The ice starts to melt and huge glaciers grind their way from Cumbria down the North West to the sea. As they melt they deposit the great boulders known as erratics and scour out the valleys. Such a glacier grated past Victoria Cave filling its lower levels with debris. The hyenas' dustbin was hidden and wouldn't come to light for many years.The ice ebbed and flowed past the entrance to Victoria cave over the course of many years grinding up rocks and pushing the debris into the cave. The ebb and flow of this material created the laminated layers of clay on the cave floor. As the ice receded the cave became habitable again but the new tenants were creatures that could withstand the rigours of a near Arctic climate. Bears returned to the caves and herds of deer eked out an existence on the sparse vegetation.
12,000 Years Ago. When the ice finally retreated the landscape outside the cave resembled that of Siberia. It was a barren landscape with glacial rivers and lakes and scrubby vegetation. It was the habitat of grizzly bears, brown bears, foxes, badgers, reindeer, red deer, wild goats, pigs, horses and wild fowl. It was a good summer hunting ground for the new arrival - man. The hunter-gatherers were armed with harpoons and spears fashioned from antlers and stone. Their arrows were barbed with flint or chert. They lived in tents made of poles and hides or lean-to shelters roughly constructed from materials around them. They may have taken temporary refuge in the cave in times of desperate need but it was a wet, dangerous and uncomfortable place.
Through twelve millennia. The natural action of acid rainwater on the limestone covered the floor of the cave and its contents with flowstone. It also caused large blocks of limestone to fall from the roof so the evidence for the existence of these early inhabitants lay buried and blanketed until the arrival of the diggers.
162 Years Ago. The initial discovery of the cave in 1838 was made by Michael Horner,a local tinsmith and mechanic, while out rabbiting. I will let his grandson tell the story.
have often heard my aunt tell the story of how her father and two other young men went rabbiting above Langcliffe one Spring Morning 1838. They went to the Fox Holes, They had a dog that went into one hole and came out of the other. They thought it had got fast and so Michael Horner squeezed himself through the hole, which was only the size of a horse collar; he found a cave. For the next few weeks after, he explored the cave, finding, with other things, a bone brooch. These he gave to Joseph Jackson for whom he worked, when he told him about the cave and where it was'.'Michael Horner was my Grandfather and I
Craven Herald.
(There is still some dispute about the date of the discovery and Thomas C Lord, in his Biographical Sketch of Joseph Jackson, cites some good evidence for the date being 1837, the year of the accession of Queen Victoria).
Joseph Jackson was a plumber and glazier who, at the age of twenty-one, was already running a successful business. He was an enterprising young man and won the contract for the glazing of the new church at Stainforth. Despite his heavy business commitments he developed a life long passion for the exploration of the cave. He returned to the cave many times and made further discoveries.'The entrance was nearly filled up with rubbish, and overgrown with nettles. After removing these obstructions, I was obliged to lie down at full length to get in. The first appearance that struck me on entering was a large quantity of clay and earth, that seemed as if washed in from without, and presented to the view round pieces like balls of different sizes. Of this clay there must be several hundred wagon loads, but abounding more in the first than in the branch caves. In some parts a stalagmite crust has formed mixed with bones, broken pots etc. It was on this crust I found the principal part of the coins, the other articles being mostly embedded in the clay. In the other cave very little has been found. When we get through the clay, which is very stiff and deep, we generally find the rock covered with bones, all broken and presenting the appearance of having been gnawed. The entrance into the inner cave has been walled up at the sides. In the inside were several large stones lying near the hole, any one of which would have completely blocked it up by merely turning the stone over. I pulled the wall down, and the aperture was now about a yard wide, and two feet high. On digging up the clay at about nine or ten inches deep, I found the original floor; it was hard and gravelly, and strewed with bones, broken pots and other objects. The roof of the cave was beautifully hung with stalactites in various fantastic forms and as white as snow.
Jackson, after collecting a considerable number of finds from the cave, sought some expert guidance. He wrote to Charles Roach Smith, a noted Roman archaeologist, who edited Antiquarian Notes for the Gentleman's Magazine. Roach Smith's notes on the finds were read to the Society of Antiquaries in April 1840 but it was another thirty years before a funded excavation of the cave was organised.
Jackson continued his own excavations during this time. His Romano-British finds included some fine decorative pieces but it was the discovery the jaw of a spotted hyena which excited the interest of Dean Buckland , Professor of Geology at Oxford University. Professor Buckland, the foremost authority on cave research at that time, travelled to Settle to see Jackson and examine the collection of finds. The site was now recognised as an important resource and Professor Mckenny Hughes set up The Settle Cave Exploration Committee in 1869.
The subscription list, which was opened to raise the funding for a major excavation, includes the names of many noteworthy local families, academics and the aristocrats. Joseph Jackson, the Settle plumber was appointed as site superintendent.The British Association for the Advancement of Science supported the enterprise and between 1872 and 1879, R H Tiddeman of HM Geological Survey issued reports on the finds and their significance. Some interpretations were hotly disputed and caused serious rifts in the committee. The description of the ice ages and the consequent dating of some artefacts in the sedimentary layers raised an issue between Professor Boyd Dawkin and Tiddemann. Another 'bone of contention' was a human femur which was later identified as that of a bear. The desire to find evidence of human and ice age mammal co-existence seems sometimes to have clouded the objectivity of the scientific research.
The massive amounts of clay that covered the lower levels of the cave made the excavation an expensive business and much painstaking work was needed to recover and identify the finds. There were periods of inactivity when funds ran out and the labourers who were laid off went haymaking. Throughout the seven years new appeals were launched to meet the main expenses of labour, tools, powder, candles, printing and photographic work.
Illustration of profile of cave.
The excavation yielded the following results.
LOWER LEVEL about 120,000 years ago
The bones of:-
Brown Bear, Spotted Hyena, Elephant, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Giant Deer, Red Deer, a bovine,
Lion
UPPER LAYER about 12,000 years ago.
The bones of:-
Badger, Horse, Reindeer, Pig, Goat, Sheep, Grizzly Bear, Brown Bear, Deer, Fox
The bones of the domestic animals were heavily gnawed and suggested the presence of dogs and human settlers in the near neighbourhood.
BRONZE AGE AND EARLY IRON AGE FINDS 3000 - 2600 years ago.
Pottery sherds and decorated stones.
ROMANO BRITISH LAYER. about 1500 years ago.
The Romano British layer of the cave contained a large number of artefacts.
Among them were:-
- over a hundred coins which had been minted between 83 BC and 346 AD .
- brooches ( Trumpet, Head stud
, Dragonesque, Disc and Annular).- bracelets of twisted wire.
- rings, earrings and buckles.
- a coin balance.
-ivory and bone armlets, spindle whorls, needles, and tool handles.
- curiously pierced bone spoons.
- beads of amber and glass, bottles and flasks.
- stone whetstones and burnishers.
- many sherds of Roman pottery.
1880 - 2000 AD.
Between 1937 and 1939, Tot Lord of Settle undertook further excavations and discovered a part of the spotted hyena bed.
In 1977/78 Mr Alan King recovered a pennanular brooch and a single coin. In 1980 Dr Mel Gascoyne undertook the uranium series dating of the flowstone covering the bones from the lower cave. The date of 120.000 years ago was confirmed.
In 1998 Martin J Dearne and Thomas C Lord published a review of the Romano-British artefacts. In the chapter on the Romano British usage of the cave Martin Dearne comments on the number and quality of the finds from Victoria Cave.
He considers that large numbers of brooches and coins found in the cave are incompatible with a small rural settlement and suggests that there were commercial dealings with nearby garrisons. Where were these garrisons?Between AD 78 and AD 83 the Roman commander Julius Agricola subdued and garrisoned the north of England.
During the course of the next century six forts were built within a 25 mile radius of the cave (Elslack, Bainbridge, Ribchester, Lancaster, Burrow in Lonsdale and Ilkley). Each fort carried a garrison of 500 men. The demographic and social effect of the imposition of 3000 men on a sparsely populated area must have been significant. Small settlements developed around the forts, (vici), and a villa was built at Gargrave, (10 miles SE). The local people were taxed in kind, the younger men recruited into the army and captured rebels worked as slaves. Aerial photographs of the area reveal evidence of Roman activity above the cave and in the valley field systems between Langcliffe and Stainforth. Some Roman pottery was retrieved from the spoil heaps of the lime works by Tot Lord.The coins from the cave date from 83 BC to 350 AD and indicate a long period of sustained activity in the area.
How was the cave used over this period?
WORKSHOP ?
The cave itself was not suitable as a workshop since it lacked natural light, was very wet and had little headroom. The plateau outside the cave, however, did show evidence of fires and could have been a seasonal outdoor workshop. This sort of workshop though was unlikely to produce the fine crafting found in the recovered brooches.
STORE ?
The wetness of the cave precludes the storing of foodstuffs. The distribution of the artefacts does not suggest a store nor the assemblage of pottery. Some of the pottery appeared to have been brought into the cave as sherds.
SHRINE ?
In A Review of Archaeological Work in the Caves of North - West England, Alan King makes a case for ritual use and the depositing of votive offerings in the local caves. Wells ,springs and grottos were holy places to the Celts.
The inner cave with its stalactite formations, drip water pools and a large well would have appeared, especially by the light of a small lamp, to be a spiritual place. The access to it was difficult and demanded stamina and courage. Was the entry to the chamber an initiation rite? Were the brooches deposited in the pools as offerings to some unknown Romano - Celtic deity?Martin Dearne states that some of the objects in the cave, the brooches, the spoons and the toggles could have been votive offerings. There are pottery sherds with evidence of sooting after breaking. Were these improvised lamps ? There is a larger number than would be expected of mortaria, (bowls in which substances are ground and mixed), in the pottery finds. What substances were prepared in them?
300 years is a long time and the cave may have been used for all these activities. There are no witnesses other than the artefacts. The cave itself, now a gaping hole in the cliff, is silent save for the dripping of water.
In 1995 Lancaster University undertook a survey of part of the cave which was being colonised by rabbits. There were no finds. Some dangerous blocks of stone were removed during the survey.
Today, the cave and the land around it are in the care of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority.
THE CAVE IS STILL DANGEROUS AND THERE ARE FREQUENT ROCKFALLS FROM THE ROOF AND THE CLIFF. PLEASE TAKE CARE.
Acknowledgements
BRAYSHAW COLLECTION, Barbara Gent, Giggleswick School.
BROWN Geo H Victoria Cave 1903
DEARNE Martin J
LORD Thomas C The Romano British Archaeology of Victoria Cave Settle. 1998
FIELD J E The Story of a Limestone Cave. 1876
KING A A Review of Archaeological Work in the Caves of North-West England
1974 Chapter 10 Ed A C Waltham. Newton Abbot.
LORD Thomas C A Biographical Sketch of Joseph Jackson 1997
Lower Winskill Archaeology Centre.
TIDDEMAN R H The reports of the committee…. 1875 -1878 British Association for the Advancement of
Science.
WHITE Robert Yorkshire Dales 1997 English Heritage, B T Batsford
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