User:Langcliffe/Ingleborough

Ingleborough Cave is a show cave close to the village of Clapham, North Yorkshire, England adjacent to where the water from Gaping Gill resurges.

That part of the cave which is open to the public follows a fossil gallery for some 500 m. The passage is spacious, and well decorated with stalagmitic formations.

Beyond the show cave, the fossil gallery continues until it meets the main stream. The water can be followed upstream through passages under Trow Gill, to where it emerges from a sump at Terminal Lake which has been connected by divers to Gaping Gill, and followed downstream into Lake Pluto which has been connected by divers to Beck Head Stream Cave]].

A connection has also been made with Fox Holes, a cave near Trow Gill.

A small stream in the show cave drops into a rift called the Abyss. An underwater connection has been made between the passage at the bottom  and Beck Head Cave, the resurgence for the Gaping Gill water.

Nineteenth Century Explorations
Until 1837, the known cave was only 55 m long, terminating in a calcite barrier holding back a deep lake. In September of that year, the owner of Ingleborough Estate, James Farrer, directed Josiah Harrison, a member of his staff, to break through the barrier. This he did with three labourers, draining the lake behind. Over the course of the next few weeks the cave was explored as far as Lake Avernus by members of Farrer's family, including Viscount Encombe who was later to become the second Lord Eldon, members of the estate staff, and guests. This was a considerable feat for its time, as it involved a section of flat-out crawling through the underground watercourse with only candles for illumination. Most of the formations in the show cave, and the passages were given the names by which they are known today during these early explorations. Giant's Hall, originally named Baron's Hall, was found by James Farrer in 1838, probably after flooding had washed away a sandbank that obscured the entrance. The new cave had a number of prominent visitors in the first couple of years including the geologists John Phillips and Adam Sedgwick. It was established as a showcave by 1838, with an iron gate barring access to the casual visitor. Josiah Harrison was appointed as the first guide - a role which he fulfilled until his death in 1850. In a description of the cave published in 1858, Walter White notes that the tour went as far as Giant's Hall, although it should be noted that the shallow lake that now exists in Cellar Gallery did not appear until after a great storm in 1872.

James Farrer commissioned Hodgson and Taylor, a firm of Lancaster surveyors, to survey the cave as far as Giant's Hall, and in the autumn of 1938 they published a detailed and accurate survey which included a cross section, and which named the passages and calcite formations. A version was published in John Phillips's Rivers, Mountains, and Sea Cost of Yorkshire in 1852, making it one of the first cave surveys to be published. The outline of the survey was to later feature on the Ordnance Survey 1:63,360 map of the area - the only example of an underground feature being marked on an Ordnance Survey Map.

Lake Avernus to Beck Head Cave
In 1951 Bradford Pothole Club dug under the scar fifty metres up the valley from Beck Head Cave where water was known to resurge in times of flood. They broke into a long section of stream cave, Beck Head Stream Cave that traversed a considerable length of the gap between the end of Lake Avernus where the water disappeared into flooded passages, and the resurgence at Beck Head. At the end of the new cave the stream emerged from a deep sump pool. This was dived in 1953 by Bob Davies and John Buxton who managed to penetrate the submerged passage at a depth of 5 m for 114 m before their safety line ran out, a record breaking dive at the time. This was extended to 150 m by Oliver Wells and John Buxton on 1956. These explorations prompted a visit to Lake Avernus by the same team, and the sump at the end was passed into Lake Pluto, a deep 180 m long canal. In 1975 John Gardner and Dick Glover revisited Lake Pluto, and found the way on underwater, penetrating the new sump for 30 m to a large airbell, and a deep rift in the floor. Beck Head Stream Cave and Lake Pluto were finally connected in 1978 by Ian Plant, who descended the rift and followed a passage for 70 m where he intercepted the line that had been laid from the other end.

Terminal Lake and the connection with Gaping Gill
When exploration resumed in 1896 after a sixty year gap, Yorkshire Ramblers' Club spotted the entrance of the Far Eastern Bedding Plane which proved to be the key to the far reaches of the cave. This was explored in 1947, when a party of Bradford Pothole Club members traversed the 100 m of low crawl, until it descended into a low, aqueous passage with just a few inches of airspace - The Near Wallows. Arnold Patchett continued alone for a few metres until he could hear the sound of the underground river ahead. Being alone, he retreated. It wasn't until 1953 that on a solo trip, Bob Leakey passed Patchett's limit, and pushed through the low passages that take the river under Trow Gill to discover Inaugurations Caverns, and Terminal Lake.

Upstream of the Second Gothic Arch
In the same year, Leakey investigated the upstream section of the Giant's Hall Bedding Plane to the section of rift passage at the end. Free-diving 3 m to the left in a wide bedding plane, he reached Arrow Chamber, and diving to the right, he identified the source of the river, but without breaking through into air surface.

Description
The entrance shaft descends some 50 m, and the way on is through the water descending from Rumbling Beck Cave above into a fault passage. Four further pitches descend into a chamber to a low canal passage. Upstream gets too low after some 60 metres, but downstream has been forced round some awkward bends and through some ducks into Rumbling Hole Inlet in Lost Johns' Cave. This section of cave is about 250 m long.

An alternative route begins from a passage entered a few metres below the west end of the entrance shaft. These passages are, in the main, tighter and more complex than the main route, but the main passage descends an alternative set of pitches to a sump which is believed to be the upstream sump of the inlet canal at the end of the main route. This set of passages, known as the Dead Dobbin Series is about {{convert|350|m} long.

Rumbling Beck Cave is the source of the water which enters the entrance shaft 8 m below the surface at the east end. The normal entrance is where the stream sinks 50 m east of the Rumbling Hole. The main passage starts off as a crawl, but develops into a trench before reaching the shaft. A roof passage starting some 20 m from the end leads to an alternative window in the shaft. Rumbling Beck Cave is about 100 m long.

Geology and Hydrology
The cave is a solutional cave formed in Visean Great Scar limestone from the Mississippian Series of the Carboniferous period. Its development has been largely determined by a vertical fault. The stream which flows through the cave enters Lost Johns' Cave as a tributary, and eventually emerges from the Leck Beck Head spring in Ease Gill.