This year the Society has obtained a photocopy of a 1908 guide book1. The guide was published for the “Carnforth Improvement Syndicate”, and is plainly an attempt to push Carnforth as a tourist centre. The book is called “Carnforth: Gateway to the West Country“. Its opening paragraphs state that while Carnforth is known mainly for its railway junction and for its
“very up-to-date Iron Works” it was becoming increasingly known for its “wonderful healthfulness, for the beautiful district of which it is the centre and its close proximity to the Lakes and a score of places of interest”.
It then lists these places. Among many which are still much visited today, such as Warton Crag, Levens Hall, and Arnside Knot, it places “Dunnal Mill Caves” in Nether Kellet. Visitors are advised to provide themselves with lantern or torch, and promised they will see “Weird winding caverns with overhanging boulders and fantastic shapes in stone“. The guide also assures its readers that “in dry weather the descent into the entrance cave is easily made even by ladies”. After visiting the cave refreshments might be had at a nearby cottage.
It seemed odd that such a dramatic sight was no longer attracting tourists. More especially as research in Lancaster Library showed that the caves had been known, as a sight to visit, long before 1908. In 1796 Father West had described Dunald Mill Hole in his “Guide to the Lakes”. Moreover he was quoting from an earlier description in the “Annual Register” of 1760. Lancaster Public Library was able to produce many more references from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
As these were studied an interesting sequence appeared. To the early visitors the cave huge and “horrible”. The Annual Register in 1760 describes the brook leadingto the cave as falling down “several beautiful cascades“. The entrance to the cave “has something most pleasingly horrid in it”. There were “vaults so capacious we could not see either roof or sides“. As the writer and his companions made their way through the cave the brook
“entertained us with a sort of harmony well suiting the place – for the different heights of its falls were as so many keys of music, which, all being conveyed to us by the amazing echo, greatly added to the majestic horror which surrounded us”.
and so the writer goes on, piling phrase on phrase.
In 1846 the caves were featured in a book of engravings2, what we might now call a coffee table book. The text speaks of Dunald Mill Hole as
“one of those curiosities of Nature that combine impressions of terror with those of grandeur and sublimity”, and of “capacious vaults, whose boundaries are not discernible”.
The illustration above shows the intrepid visitors dwarfed by the dark magnificence of the cavern.
By 1865 a more prosaic note has entered the descriptions. A clergyman, Mr Addison Crofton, and his two brothers visited the cave3. They kitted themselves out professionally, with tin holders in their caps to hold candles, with ten yards of rope, a bull’s eye lantern, a compass and a note-book. They put on flannel trousers and flannel shirts with sleeves rolled to the elbows. Like the previous visitors they entered the cave through the corn mill whose wheel was turned by the beck that fell into the cave, (carefully leaving with the miller their coats and braces). The caves still impressed. The three brothers found one of the caves
“a perfect paradise of white forms; hundreds of stalactites hung pendant from the roof … from the tips of which a continual shower of drops came down, very beautiful in their glistening succession”.
But they note, more practically, that the dropping water threatens to put out their candles and move on hastily. They listen to “the eternal drop of the stalactites … and their music in the pool below,” but they also experiment. They struck the stalactites with their hammers and found that some sounded in C and some in G. They are even prepared to be humorous; they noted that in one cave the stalactites, when hit,”gave a discordant yell of indignation”, which sounded to them like “cats on the house tops“.
In June, 1889 a party from the Geological Section of the Barrow Naturalists’ Field Club visited the caves. It was plainly an entertaining outing, The members walked through the lanes, enjoying the chance to pick botanical specimens, including bee orchids, they took group photographs outside the cave and finished up with “a substantial tea” at the Limeburners’ Arms in Nether Kellet. Yet the expedition was also the beginning of a season of serious study. In November of that year Mr J.P. Smith gave a full account of the work to the Barrow Field Club4. He produced a map of the whole complex, gave accurate measurements of all the caves and passages, and speculated on the course of the underground river and where it might emerge.
He was very careful to distance himself from the hyperboles of his predecessors. Measurement had shown him that none of the caves in the complex were so big as to have indiscernible walls. In fact he found none wider than 10 feet. Even he could not help being a little impressed at the “fine rugged entrance to the cave … in all its boldness and grandeur“, but he immediately draws back from such enthusiasm.
“It would be the correct thing I believe here to break out into rhaphsodies of the scene, and quote a few verses from the poets, &etc, but as this is a plain matter of fact paper, I must refer those who are of a poetic turn of mind to some of the previous descriptions which contain a great deal more poetry and flowery description than reliable fact.”
The 1908 guide book showed a slight lapse into the flowery, but since then Dunald Mill Hole seems to have been left to the geologists who have shown all the matter-of-factness desired by Mr Smith. Dunald Mill Hole has become “a primary phreatic [of or pertaining to a well. Underground water which may be reached by a well] network of tubes in solutionally widened joints5“.
Armed with this information your chairman and secretary attempted to visit the cave to make a report on it. Today the way to the cave is muddy and derelict. The cornmill is no more. Even when the Barrow Field Club visited in 1889 the mill had been out of use for some fifteen years, though the wheel and a pair of stones were still insitu. Now there is only a ruined wall, and a treacherous jumble of stones to be crossed. It is no path for a “lady”. Yet the cave is still there and the arched entrance still impressive, certainly evocative of something more than the entrance to “a network of tubes“. Perhaps the earlier writers had a feel for something in the landscape which had a little escaped Mr Smith and the geologists. Whether the caves inside in any way approached the drama of the 1846 engraving could not be checked. We had not the skill, or courage to enter even the outermost cave. TheBarrow Field Club had noted that dry weather was needed to enter the caves. At the time of our visit the beck, swollen by prolonged rains, fell over the rim of the cave into the darkness beyond in a way that did not invite casual exploration.
In 1760, the writer of the article in the Annual Register said that he had read no previous description of the cave, and added “its obscure situation I take to be the reason“. Obscure to whom? Mr Smith of the Barrow Naturalists’ Club had for a guide a local game-keeper. When he asked local inhabitants how far into the cave one could penetrate he received answers which he dismissed as guesses, but which showed that a number of locals had been inside the caves. An “obscure situation” is a relative thing. There was once, it is said, a man from the Hebrides who visited London. He had nothing to say against it, except that it was “so far from anywhere“.
Dunald Mill Hole is still known to those living close by. The very first passer-by on the road above the mill knew exactly how we should get to it. Moreover his uncle had once investigated the route of the underground river by the use of dyes. The present inhabitants of the cottage by the mill, when questioned, were able to refer us to the valuable collection in Lancaster Public Library. Once it was so much visited that Mr Smith, of the Barrow Field Club noted sadly how many of the stalactites had been chipped away by visitors. When did the caves slip from the tourist route? It is true they now lie on land belonging to Dunald Mill Quarry. Yet it seems that they disappeared from the knowledge of all but speleologists and geologists even before they were taken over by the quarry. It is hoped that some local person who may chance to read this article may be able to throw light on what happened.
Notes
- By kind permission of Mrs Dora Roberti. ↩︎
- The People’s Gallery of Engravings”, Vol.3, p.92, 1846 ↩︎
- Preston Chronicle, August 19th, 1865 ↩︎
- J.P.Smith, “Paper on Dunald Mill Hole”. Barrow Naturalists’ Field Club, November11th, 1989 ↩︎
- Ed. A.C. Waltham, The Limestones and Caves of North-West England, 1974, p.221 ↩︎