White Scar Caves

White Scar Caves
Yorkshire
Formations in the show cave
Location:	Chapel-le-Dale
	SD71287452
Co-ordinates:	54°9’56"N, 2°26’29"W
Length:	4 miles
Access:	Show cave
Hazards:	Water
Geology:	Carboniferous limestone
Website:	whitescarcave.co.uk

White Scar Caves is a capacious cave near Ingleton in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It bores beneath Ingleborough in the Chapel-le-Dale valley of the Yorkshire Dales and within the National Park. The cave is opened as a show cave.

Technically, the cave is a solutional resurgence cave formed in Carboniferous limestone. The whole cave is some four miles long.

As a show cave, the entrance is from the Ribblehead to Ingleton road on the west of Ingleborough, with tours being run throughout the year. It is the longest show cave in Great Britain, the open trail extending for one mile underground; a tour takes about 80 minutes.

The visitor facilities include a shop and café.

The waterfall

The first waterfall

Within the cave is a stunning waterfall, which is particularly spectacular after wet weather, falling from a fissure from the surface down into the cavern and thundering into a rocky pool. It is part of the visitor trail. In full spate the weight of water cascading down each minute is about fifty-five tons.

The waterfall was the first feature discovered by Christopher Long in 1923; the noise of it drew him to explore the fissure through which he discovered the first cavern.

Exploration

Whate Scar Cave was first explored in August 1923 by two amateur geologists, Christopher Long and J.H. Churchill, but further discoveries have been made since then including The Battlefield, at 100 yards long it is one of the largest known cave chambers in Great Britain. Originally accessed through a vertical boulder choke, an access tunnel has been cut to include it on the visitor trail.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about White Scar Caves)

• White Scar Cave

References

• Survey: cavemaps.org