The Village of Ingleton in North Yorkshire

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Ingleton, surrounded by magnificent countryside with caves, waterfalls, and mountains. Ingleton lies on one of the main East-West routes across the Pennines used from prehistoric times, in the foothills of Ingleborough on the very edge of Yorkshire’s Dales. The village was a quarrying and coal mining village, quarrying continues but coal mining has stopped, the only sign being the in the area known as New Village which was built for the miners and their families. It is famous for walking, hiking and caving. Favourite walks are The Ingleton Waterfalls Walk and the climb up Ingleborough which is one of the famous Three Peaks. Directly from the village visitors can ascend the 2,373 feet of Ingleborough and take in a view of the Yorkshire Dales from its summit. The more experienced try the Three Peaks Challenge, with Ingleborough, Whernside and Pen-y-ghent offering 25 miles of outstanding natural beauty.

Through history, Romans, Celts, Vikings and Normans have left their mark on Ingleton and its surrounding area. Set against a backdrop of wooded valleys, caves and glens, the village nestles at the foot of Ingleborough - probably the most easily recognised of the Three Peaks. Full of character and fascinating history, Ingleton is a thriving tourist attraction. Nearby are the White Scar Caves and Ingleborough Cave, show-caves popular with tourists, and Gaping Gill, whose 365 ft cavern can be visited by tourists on Spring and Autumn bank holidays when a winch is set up. For more experienced cavers, the area has a labyrinth of challenging potholes and caves. This is due to the 300 million year old limestone rock of the area, which has gradually been dissolved by groundwater.

White Scar Cave takes its name from the limestone outcrops or scars which overlook the entrance. The 'Three Peaks' - Ingleborough, Pen-y-ghent and Whernside - dominate this part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Their distinctive shapes are due to their structure: nearly horizontal layers of grit and shale which rest on the Great Scar Limestone. White Scar Cave was formed under Ingleborough between 400,000 and 100,000 years ago, in warmer periods which occurred between the Ice Ages. Water flowed through the cracks in the limestone, dissolving and eroding the rock to produce the caverns, passages and formations that we see today.

The formations in White Scar Cave are of great variety, but they all depend on the same chemical process for their creation. The rainwater which trickles through the cracks and fissures in the limestone is acidic, because of the carbon dioxide dissolved in it from the atmosphere and the plant debris in the soil through which it has drained. It therefore attacks the limestone, taking some of it into solution as calcium bicarbonate

Where the water seeps into a cave and comes into contact with air again, another chemical reaction takes place. Some of the carbon dioxide diffuses into the air, leaving the water less acidic and therefore able to hold less of the calcium bicarbonate. Some of this comes out of solution as a whitish mineral called calcite, which is a crystalline form of calcium carbonate. Black and grey discolouration of the calcite is due to traces of carbon and manganese. Red and yellow indicate the presence of iron.

The calcite deposits develop into characteristic cave formations. Stalactites grow downward where drips of water are released; stalagmites grow upwards where drips land (the Greek word for drip is stalagmatia). The rate of growth depends on local conditions, but a typical average figure is about one centimetre every 200 years. 'Straw' stalactites are hollow: fast dripping water leaves tiny rings of calcite which build on the tip, forming a thin tube. Water rippling over a surface produces flowstone, and great banks of this have formed at many points in the cave.

In August 1923 two young men, Christopher Francis Drake Long and J.H. Churchill, were spending a holiday together in the Yorkshire Dales. They were both students at Cambridge University, where both had taken up the study of geology as a hobby. Their enthusiasm for this science prompted them to follow up a discovery they made of a slight fissure on the slopes of Ingleborough. This, they reasoned, might be a former outlet of the underground stream that supplied the nearby village of Ingleton with water.

Christopher Long decided to investigate. Wearing only his summer walking clothes of shirt and shorts, and lighting his way with candles stuck in the brim of his hat, he crawled into the low passage. Spurred on by the distant roar of water, he struggled over jagged rocks and through pools, until eventually he found himself at the foot of a waterfall. White Scar Cave had been discovered. He continued along a stream passage to a cascade and then returned to the surface to announce his find.

On subsequent expeditions, Long explored as far as the subterranean lakes (now bypassed by Bagshaw Tunnel). Undeterred by the cold water, he swam across them. A massive boulder, subsequently nicknamed 'Big Bertha', lay wedged in the passage beyond. He squeezed past, only to find his path blocked by a boulder choke ( a jumbled mass of rocks). Long intended to open the cave to visitors, but in a fit of depression in September 1924 he committed suicide.

The first manager of the cave, Tom Greenwood, found many further galleries and passages in the 1930s. In 1971, cavers led by John Russom literally dug their way upwards through the treacherously slippery and unstable boulder choke, and found themselves in a massive cavern. It was so vast that their helmet lamps could not penetrate the gloom to the far walls. The roof had great voids, or avens, which soared into mysterious darkness. Thousands of delicate straw stalactites hung in great curtains. They hurried back to the surface to break the news of this major discovery. Subsequent visits established that the cavern was over 330 feet long, and hence one of the largest known cave chambers in Britain. It was called the 'Battlefield Cavern' because the cavers, on seeing its boulder-strewn floor, imagined giants fighting there in prehistoric times. The name has stuck.