Clapham Cave, 1946 to 1959
by A. N. Patchett
With the exception of some notes on an exploration on 10th May, 1930, little or nothing about Clapham Cave has appeared in the Journal since C. A. Hill’s excellent article in the 1913 issue. (Y.R.CJ. Vol. IV, No. 13, page 107). With this in mind I am attempting to bridge part of the gap by recording some of my encounters with the difficulties and hazards of this redoubtable cave system over the past twelve years.
I did little of note in the cave before the 1939/45 war but immediately after the war I made a solo effort. This was merely to renew my acquaintance with the various features, including the direction of flow of the water in the different sections, the disposition of sand in the Cellar Gallery, and so on. The results of my investigations were depressing to say the least, because there seemed to be no major exit from inside the cave to Beck Head Stream before the latter emerges into daylight. Why should there be ? The magnificent entrance is big enough to let out a stupendous volume in time of flood. On the other hand there must be a major inlet passage (or a large number of smaller ones) from the Gaping Gill main drain to carry the immense flood required to cause the water in Lake Avernus, and indeed the whole vast bedding plane system, to rise up into the upper series and flood it with such vigour from time to time. In September 1953 a veritable river swept out of the Main Entrance. The great quantities of stone, sand and gravel deposited on the slope outside the cave bore witness (and still do) to this.
The possibility of a large inlet passage then, seemed the thing to try and find, and early in 1947 I managed to muster a large party, many of whom were Bradford Pothole Club members. An invasion of the lower series was made ; one group headed for Lake Avernus and, having become thoroughly soaked and altogether frozen by long immersion in the icy water without discovering anything of note, decided that Clapham Cave did not attract them any more. Another group tried the upstream passage towards Gaping Gill. The remaining five of us crossed the stream at the foot of the slope from Giant’s Hall, and went up a slight slope which led to a filthy pool of water round which we contrived to climb. Beyond that point a bedding plane spread out before us. Keeping near its left wall we eventually reached an aven which afforded no small measure of relief, for we could then sit up. After a rest three of us decided to press on but the other two said that they would make their way out. The three of us then went forward down a very gentle slope on our stomachs until we reached an area of shallow pools and wet sand. At this point, which I called the Far Eastern Eedding Plane, my two companions waited whilst I went on a little further. Progress could only be made by.removing helmet and light and holding my head sideways. Soon I stopped and lay still and began to think how much more pleasant it would be to lie in the warm spring sunshine stretching my limbs on the soft green turf; slowly my breathing quietened and in the near distance I heard a low rumbling noise. I forgot the soft green turf and pressed on with the job—ahead of me was a swiftly flowing stream. My aching legs and half frozen feet rebelled against further immersion and I returned to report to the others.
On our way back to the aven two lights suddenly appeared coming towards us ; their owners proved to be the two men who had left us at the aven half an hour previously. They proclaimed that they were on their way out and were making for Giant’s Hall ! We were quite certain that we were doing the same ! ! Since it was three to two our little party prevailed and we escorted them to the aven to prove our point. Having reached it none of us was quite sure that it was the right one. In the end we established that it was and pressed on again only to become involved in countless side-tracks. Eventually we huddled together for warmth, turned out our hghts and allowed our thoughts to settle. In about ten minutes we heard a dull booming sound. Its direction ? No one could even guess. We called out but there was no reply. Then we made individual sorties and it was on one of these that I stumbled into the main stream of Lake Avernus and, on returning to report to my companions, saw far over on the left one of the lighted candles we had left as a guide. At that moment I heard another ” boom”, the voice of the Hon. Photographer who was blithely taking flashlight photographs of elephants’ legs, coffee pots, and pools of reflection !
That summer Frank Butterfield and J. Leach (N.P.C.) completed a survey of the area below Giant’s Hall ; later in the same year they fired my enthusiasm enough for me to organise another siege. Elaborate preparations were made and all manner of gear, food and drink were taken to Giant’s Hall. A small army of men descended from the Hall and, after leading the way across the river I stood aside and with devilish glee pointed the way through that horrible pool of filthy water. On they came with balls of string and candles and, cursing their way through the pool, disappeared into the unknown of the Far Eastern Bedding Plane.
Beyond disturbing the sandy floor the siege had little effect except that it gave the Bradford Pothole Club men a better idea of what they were up against, not one reported that he had come across my stream beyond the bedding plane.
It took three years to whip up enthusiasm again, but this time the siege was to be from without. Through the courtesy of Mr. J. Farrer a tiny foxhole was enlarged, about 30 yards up the dry valley, by Charles Salisbury, Frank Briggs and other Bradford Pothole men, till eventually they were able to squeeze a way down to the Beck Head Stream which they found ran in a sizeable passage.
It was on a Sunday evening in June 1951, when I was wallowing in a hot bath after a day’s gardening, that the telephone bell rang. ” We’ve broken through ! ” the voice said, and such was the enthusiasm that a Club meet was arranged for the following Wednesday evening. We left Bradford at 5.30 p.m. and by 7 o’clock some of the party of twelve had already begun to squeeze their way into the entrance. The vertical squeeze led to a horizontal squeeze, thence to the beck which ran swiftly down a passage about five feet square. The water runs obliquely across rift after rift in the floor. To the right we saw a vast bedding plane which looked full of possibilities. After about 170 yards twin waterfalls pour down through water-worn gaps in an extraordinary false ceiling. These were christened Broad-bent Falls, Johnny Broadbent being the first man to set eyes on them the Sunday before. We easily climbed up the side of the falls and through another gap in the ceihng to gain the floor of a high level passage down which the water flowed. The passage continued roughly in the same direction as its lower counterpart but it contained numerous oxbows. Finally, some 70 yards from the top of the falls, the passage came to an abrupt end, but to the right we found a narrow pool 30 ft. long and 16 ft. deep from which the water overflowed and formed the beck. It was an extraordinary pool for it was situated in a lofty rift at right angles to the main passage. At water level thin water-worn wafers of rock extended from the sides. This wafer-like rock was identical with that found at the head of Broadbent Falls. Here the water welled up through the gaps and at the falls it poured down through them. It seemed obvious that the water feeding the pool came from a low level passage and was forced up by pressure from behind. A large block of limestone therefore, some seventy yards long, rested, so to speak, on the lower stream bed so that the water had to rise up the pool, overflow, and run along the top of the block, regaining the lower level via Broadbent Falls. We came out just before midnight after a very thrilling exploration.
Many visits followed this and all the bedding planes were forced as far as they would go but with little success. Eventually in May 1953 I had the pleasure of arranging a joint meet of the Cave Diving Group and the Bradford Pothole Club with a view to diving the pool at the head of Beck Head Stream Passage. Dr. R. E. Davies and John G. Buxton dived with 385 ft. of life-line apiece while Don Leach and I held on to the ends. Down they went through a shoal of albino shrimps and we watched their lights grow redder and redder until they disappeared from sight. Then followed an eternal wait in Tilley lamplight, we managed to keep our apprehensions at bay with chocolate and wet sandwiches. After what seemed a lifetime I saw a faint glow of light at the bottom of the pool, then another—up they came all smiles. They had found, as expected, a totally submerged passage leading from the bottom of the pool. It was 30 ft. wide and the roof was like a small segment of a circle, the top of which was eight feet from the floor in the centre but gradually sloping down to nil at the sides. The passage went on, they said, for 375 ft. in a dead straight line—every inch of the line was used and the passage still went on.
In December 1953 a strong party of Cave Diving Group and B.P.C. members and I passed through the well-known iron gateway of the main cave on a fine but very dark Saturday evening. Every man was heavily laden and by 9 p.m. ‘ aflos’, food, rucksacks, rubber dinghies, bundles of candles and so on had been deposited at the diving base at the entrance to Lake Avernus. The following morning one party tried the upstream passage from below Giant’s Hall whilst Bob Davies and I concerned ourselves with Avernus itself. The dinghies were inflated and Davies, having put on his headpiece and breathing apparatus, walked along the floor of the lake with several feet of water above his head, the two dinghies, piloted by Arthur Clifford and myself, accompanying him.
About half-way along the lake the current slowed down considerably, so a small quantity of fluorescein was poured into the water ; the vivid green colouration was watched carefully until, nearly at the end of the lake, it swung over to the left-hand wall and disappeared ! We drew the dinghies together and watched Bob’s headlight disappear far below. Lights were turned out and we talked quietly of the thrilling prospects. Soon we heard the sound of Bob’s electric horn and by slapping the surface of the water as previously arranged, we attracted the diver back to the dinghies. He rose out of the water and as far as we could make out by hp-reading and gesticulations Bob had been in a rift-like chamber somewhat similar to the part of Lake Avernus in which we were floating at that moment, having reached it by means of short submerged passage. For a few moments he thought he had come to the surface of Lake Avernus itself to find that we had vanished!
A further dive was made, and again we watched the underwater headlight grow fainter and fainter until it finally became lost to sight altogether. As we counted the minutes the safety line was being paid out and out, yard by yard; two minutes, four minutes, six minutes . . . and still the unmistakable pull persisted on the line. There could only be one conclusion—the outlet had been well and truly discovered. And so it had, as Bob explained later when he was free from his headgear and the ‘ aflo ‘ had been safely stowed in a dinghy.
It appeared that Bob had gone through two rifts, each sealed off by water from the other but with an air space in each, and had then emerged into a really big rift 80 ft. long, 12 ft. high and 10 ft. wide. At the far end a lake stretched away to the right—a vast new lake, what name better than Cimmeria, now challenged us and we were already planning another visit whilst we sailed back to the base.
After a meal we wondered why we had decided to plan another expedition at a later date. The Lake was there, waiting. So we refloated the dinghy, filled it with Bob’s gear and off I sailed towing Bob as far as the submerged opening near the end of Avernus. Bob donned his headgear, dived and left me to my fate in the dinghy which had now developed a leak; all I had to do to ensure my safety was to keep on blowing. I was thus engrossed when Bob returned to report that the lake was far bigger than he first thought. So extensive had been his wanderings that I think he must have lost all track of time and it was only when he suddenly thought that I might have sunk to the bottom of Avernus that he returned. The new lake, it was estimated, covered about 5,000 sq. ft.; the length of Lake Avernus has been carefully measured and is 120 ft.
Another remarkable discovery was made earlier in 1953 by R. D. Leaky who not only reached the stream that I discovered beyond the Far Eastern Bedding Plane in 1947 but fully explored it. This stream passage is a very fine one, 335 yards long, but it still keeps many of its secrets.
The following year, 1954, two more important discoveries were made; the first was quite remarkable. In the early days it was thought that Lake Avernus water travelled roughly parallel to the dry valley but later explorers stated that the compass showed the lake to point West-North-West, it therefore passes under the upper series almost at right angles. All plans of Clapham Cave have for many years shown this and nobody has apparently ever troubled to check the direction until early 1954 when, on two separate occasions, I was confronted with the news that the Lake Avernus water did in fact run in a south-easterly direction. How then could it run under the upper series’? At the first opportunity I took a compass and, standing astride the rapids at the very start of Avernus facing downstream, I was astonished at what I saw. The compass pointed quite definitely to within a few degrees of south-east! It was now clear that many long-held theories would have to be scrapped, in fact it now seemed certain that Lake Cimmeria could only be a comparatively short distance from the end of the explored portion of the submerged passage beyond the pool at the end of the Beck Head Stream Passage.
The second discovery of 1954 was made when Bob Davies and John Buxton, assisted again by a party of Bradford Pothole Club men, including myself, dived the upstream passage below Giant’s Hall and reached a large chamber 10 ft. high with 8 ft. of air space some 70 ft. from the sandbank at the foot of the slope from Giant’s Hall. Beyond the chamber, Davies and Buxton went further upstream where the arched roof lowered but, making their way through a slit on the right, they crawled up a mud slope which led to a large cave passage with a rippling stream coming towards them. Beyond this point there were many routes, none of which needed breathing apparatus. The main route covered about 300 ft. on a bearing of 3150 magnetic, thus in the direction of Gaping Gill!
The next diving expedition took place on 26th September, 1954, but it was found that the water level was far too high, rain having fallen for several days previously, so the whole project had to be abandoned. Another dive by Cave Diving Group, with Bradford Pothole men assisting, took place in 1955; this time an attempt was made to join up the submerged passage beyond the pool at the head of Beck Head Stream Passage with Lake Cimmeria. Little progress was made but it must be recorded that the end of the submerged passage was reached about 25 ft. beyond the previous point. At the end it was found that a complicated mass of rocks existed and a difficult underwater climb seemed necessary if further progress was to be made.
In July, 1959, I again had the pleasant duty of arranging a joint meet of the Bradford Pothole Club and Cave Diving Group men, with the co-operation of Dr. J. A. Farrer and Mr. Arnold Brown, the cave guide. Avernus was the objective and this time we were favoured by the well-remembered drought. The water was very low but the task of dragging all the gear to the diving base was as painful as ever. Thompson and Dawe of the C.D.G. were in the lead, and were rapidly followed by several waterproof Bradford men. Soon a bobbing line of fairy lights was stretched out down the first 100 ft of Lake Avernus. Meanwhile at the base we made complicated plans with the divers John Buxton, Brian de Graef and Jack Waddon, to replace the wire fixed by Bob .Davies six years previously.
Soon a number of dripping figures returned to base and astounded everyone by saying that there was an air surface, that they had been through into Cimmeria and that they had found a deep water-filled canal whose end they could not see. A passage beyond Cimmeria! Three divers went to investigate saying that they would be away five to ten minutes. Forty minutes later they returned and confirmed that whilst there was an air space it was only two inches! However, once through there Lake Cimmeria was at their mercy and beyond it to the right was a long canal which seemed to run in line with Avernus. This newly discovered canal was really a continuation of Avernus, a huge mass of limestone dividing the two but Lake Cimmeria providing the link. The new canal-like lake, Pluto, turned out to be approximately 300 ft. long, nearly three times as long as Avernus. It was between six and ten feet wide and from the water level to the roof was between four and eight feet. The bottom could not be felt except at the very beginning and about halfway along where a few flakes of rock were touched. Buxton reported that progress was made for some distance by walking on a narrow underwater shelf, and later on, in water up to the arm-pits, by going hand over hand on a slender groove just above water level. Most of the rest of the journey was made either by swimming, floating or pushing oneself along on whatever minute projections offered themselves. For the last eight feet or so the left-hand wall appeared to be undercut. This seems to be an exact repetition of Avernus on alarger scale, even to the undercutting near the end at the left-hand side.
At the end the roof closed down a little but the narrow crack in the roof still went on; the walls closed in but could be felt to be opening up a little under water, the bottom could not be felt. One more sump and surely the top end of the submerged passage upstream from the final pool in Beck Head Stream Passage will only be a matter of yards.
Apart from actually making physical contact between Lake Pluto and the Beck Head dive, future work must lie upstream from below Giant’s Hall and in the series beyond the Far Eastern Bedding Plane, where much useful work over a number of years has been done by Bradford Pothole Club members, R. D. Leaky and others.