18th – 21st May 1907
The Whitsun meet was at Curzon Lodge Farm, Brassington, near Matlock. A water swallow in the neighbourhood was explored, and members also climbed on the Brassington and Harborough dolomites, and visited Dovedale.
H. Bishop
Exploration of Water Low Cavern – By W. Smithard
Between the splendid west Derbyshire dolomite ridges of Harborough and Longcliffe, there is a portion of Brassington Moor, known as Water Low, where some of the rocks are of inferior quality and arranged in a peculiar fashion. A layer of good mountain limestone lies between beds of dark coloured dolomite, or dunstone as it is called locally, of a sandy and easily disintegrated nature, and there occurs here a very interesting cavern to which little or no attention has been paid hitherto.
To gain access thereto, you have to descend a vertical shaft after pulling down a large cairn of limestone boulders which covers it. Here ventured recently, some members of the Derbyshire Pennine Club, accompanied by several residents eager to know more of the underground wonders of west Derbyshire.
The shaft is one that was long ago made in an abortive attempt to reach a good vein of lead ore. It is 30 feet deep and rectangular, with sides 6 feet long and 4 feet wide. There are the remains of vertical ladders of oaken stemples on the shorter sides of the shaft, but the crosspieces are so decayed that they are no longer serviceable.
This being so, we fixed a plank across the mouth of the shaft, and over it suspended a double rope, down which we climbed hand over hand, getting also such slight occasional foothold as could be found on the crumbly sides of the shaft, where the coarse sand falls in showers at a touch, and pieces of rock come away with very slight pressure. At the foot of the shaft there is a thin layer of very fine silver sand, and also a streak of soft white clay. These appear to be ‘scrins’ from the great clay and sand pits in the west Derbyshire limestone.
On emerging from the shaft, we found ourselves in a natural cave, which has many characteristic hollows that have been formed by the action of running water. It is about ten feet wide and 30 feet high. A sloping floor some ten yards long ends abruptly on the edge of a vertical rubble wall 16 feet high which the lead miners built. Another double rope had to be fixed here, to enable us to scramble down this wall, at the foot of which is a natural rock floor covered with red clay. A couple of yards higher, in the western wall of the cave, is a horizontal layer of white clay. Some of the rock here is of hard, close mountain limestone, which dips to the south east at a very steep angle, and rests on softer rock which has a very slight dip to the north.
Under the rubble wall is an opening 3 feet high and a narrow, low, water worn channel in a south easterly direction through soft, sandy rock. The floor of the passage is covered with a thick deposit of stiff marly soil, and the far end was blocked up with an accumulation of the same material. After some heavy work with the shovel, we succeeded in driving a narrow opening through the heap, just large enough for a man to squeeze through when lying down full length. When one’s head, and an arm, were thrust through this tight place, candle light showed a small low limestone cavelet, with a number of fissures radiating therefrom, none of which, however, was large enough to admit a human being.
At the other end of the cave, the floor narrows and slopes north west under an overhanging mass of solid rock, below which is just enough space to allow a small person to crawl in. This water worn passage is choked with loose angular lumps of fallen limestone, and this obstruction was removed, laboriously, piece by piece, until the road was cleared for a length of about 12 feet without any signs of the original terminus of the swallow being reached, although several hours were spent at the work.
At the northern end of the cave, there is a natural rock floor at a level about 12 feet higher than the main floor. A rather difficult climb up the walls of the cave brings you into a water worn passage a yard wide and 18 feet high. The sides are covered with hollows formed by running water. The grey dolomitised limestone shows in places through the thin covering of soft sandy rock, and in several places there are beautiful pockets of tiny pointed calcite crystals.
At the end of this level, we climbed down a narrow vertical opening ten feet deep. There is a lot of loose crumbly rock here, and we dislodged a big column of splendid calcite that was tottering dangerously. Its fall shattered it into thousands of separate shining white cubes. Here also, one of the party climbed up 15 feet into the roof amongst great boulders loosely wedged together in one of the feeders of the main swallow. From this point the ancient waterway continues to slope a little west of north, and its floor is strewn with big angular screes.
Further on is a circular chamber about 8 feet diameter and 7 feet high, where the waters have evidently swirled about a great deal. There were numerous chinks through which water could escape, but the main passage downward was filled with loose, broken crags. We spent a considerable time in removing these lumps of rocks, which were passed up the slope from hand to hand by a chain of workers. The largest piece must have weighed nearly a ¼ of a ton, and we had to attach a rope to it and pull it up the slope a few inches at a time. This work was not only laborious, but also somewhat dangerous, as there was no little risk of the loose upper screes slipping down as the lower ones were fetched out.
After we had deepened the circular chamber about 15 feet, we were able to continue horizontally along a narrow section of the cave for some distance further between water worn walls. Presently however, the way was barred by another slope of loose rocks going right up to the roof, and it was impossible to remove this lot, as there was no vacant space to which they could be transferred.
To all appearance the cave extends considerably further than we were able to penetrate, but owing to the obstructions that have been mentioned, it does not seem likely that anyone will be able to reach its extremities. As to the formation of the cave, it looks as though a fissure in the original limestone had been dolomitised, then filled up by a sort of tufaceous deposit heavily charged with grit, and afterwards opened again by the action of water washing away the soft sandy agglomerate rock.
It is situated on the lofty ridge that formed the watershed between the Dove and the Derwent, but there are now no waters up there to divide, though several dry valleys are evidence as to the presence of streams there in former times. Water Low Cavern could not have been formed under existing conditions, and it increases the indications of immense denudation having taken place in the neighbourhood before the landscape took its present form.
Derbyshire Pennine Club 