The Seventieth Anniversary

by J. Geoffrey Brook

THE CLUB having reached the respectable age of three score years and ten, it was felt that some appraisal of its activities over this period should be made.

I must stress at the outset that this short history is not meant to be a comprehensive record of seventy years of Yorkshire Rambling. Much has necessarily had to be omitted. The full story can be found in the pages of the Journal, written by the men who made that story. Perhaps this brief digest—and this seems to be the age of the digest—will have justified itself if it sends members back to the source to read for themselves the absorbing chronicle of sport and adventure made by the Club and its Members, above and below ground.

The first move to form the Club was made on July 17th, 1892, when G. T. Lowe, H. H. Bellhouse, J. A. Green and H. Slater met in Leeds and as a result of their discussion another meeting was called at the Skyrack Inn, Headingley on October 6th of the same year. George T. Lowe, being the leading spirit, was elected to the chair and thus became the first President.

The choice of a suitable name for the new club was naturally an early problem to be settled. “The Leeds Pedestrian Club”, “The Three Peaks Club” and others even more unlikely than these were considered, but all of them were felt to imply a limited scope for the infant’s activities. We cannot doubt that the ultimate decision was the happiest that could possibly have been found and in spite of some agitation a few years ago that the name rather suggested a party of benevolent old gentlemen going for a Sunday afternoon stroll in the country and should therefore be toughened up in some way, there is little doubt  that we shall still be Yorkshire Ramblers in 1992, and proud of it.

Before the second meeting, held on October 18th, 1892, twenty members had been enrolled, and it was resolved to hold two meetings during each winter month for the reading of papers and one each summer month for arranging expeditions.

The first meet was held at Blubberhouses at Christmas 1892, and the following year the Club Library was formed, a modest start to the splendid collection of books on the shelves today.

In less than a year the Club was firmly established, thus being, after the Alpine Club, the oldest mountaineering club in England and the fourth oldest in the British Isles.

In addition to the ordinary members it was decided to elect honorary members and the first of a distinguished roll was Edward Whymper. The author of the classic Scrambles Amongst the Alps made one contribution to the Club Journal on the rather unromantic subject of “The New Mountain Aneroid Barometer”, and this was in fact the corrected version of a letter to The Times. Whymper, however, always maintained a keen interest in the Club’s activities and on his death left a hand¬some legacy. Other great names of the past to be found on the roll of honorary members are C. T. Dent, Charles Pilkington, Sir Martin Conway, W. C. Slingsby and G. Winthrop Young.

The Club, whilst respecting tradition, has never been hide¬bound by it, as witness the printing of a fecture given to the Club by Pilkington, in the first number of the Journal, on “Mountaineering without Guides”, a practice then regarded as rankly heretical.

It was the age of the public lecture and the Club, not to be outdone, inaugurated its own series, Lowe setting the ball rolling at the Philosophical Hall in November 1893 with a discourse on “Rock Climbing and Ice Craft”. The following February Whymper lectured on his climbs in the Andes.

In July 1899 the first Journal appeared edited by Thomas Gray, its title page graced by the names of distinguished contributors. This first Club Journal set a high standard, but) nevertheless a standard which has been steadily maintained by Gray’s successors.

The Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club was now fairly on its feet, and its members were naturally looking around for something which would test as well as amuse them. It was almost inevitable that their attention should turn to the county’s unique geological feature—the largely unknown and unex¬plored system of caves and potholes of the Craven district.

It was in this field that the Club first achieved distinction, and it was the spectacular mouth of Gaping Gill that mainly aroused curiosity. This was of course still spelt Gaping Ghyll— Roberts had not yet arrived. After John Birkbeck’s visits of f 872 the pot seems to have been left severely alone until 1895. On January 8th of that year Calvert and a friend, descending from Ingleborough in deep snow, almost made an involuntary descent of the hole. The snow had drifted and piled, reducing the normal 40 ft. opening to a mere 8 ft. Calvert and friend unwittingly walked on to this but fortunately the cornice held! Thereupon Calvert decided that a voluntary descent of the pot would provide an appropriate baptism for the young Club, and discussions were started immediately with that ceremony in view.

But alas, the Club was robbed of what could have been its first and finest hour. One fine Monday in August 1895 members opened their morning papers to read the exciting but disconcerting news that the first full descent of Gaping Gill had that week-end been made by a Frenchman, Edouard Alfred Martel who, on a cave exploring tour of England and Ireland, had reached the bottom by ladders. This was a sad blow, but far from being a discouragement it was a goad that stirred the Club to determined activity. For many years after this one pot-hole after another fell to the pioneers of the Y.R.C.

Only a month after Martel’s success (which the Club acknowledged as a magnificent feat) Bellhouse, Booth, Gray, Lund, Calvert and Thompson carted their tackle from Deep-dale Farm to the mouth of Gaping Gill, but the descent was temporarily given up after Calvert and Booth had reached the ledge 190 ft. from the surface, upon which John Birkbeck had first stood.

The attack was resumed in 1896 and on this occasion Calvert became the second man to stand on the floor of Gaping Gill. Martel had used ladders for his descent, taking twenty-three minutes to go down and twenty-eight to come up. Calvert’s party, however, made an innovation by using a boatswain’s chair which reduced the time to two minutes down and four up. The day following this first Club descent of the pot, Calvert, Gray, Booth and Cuttriss again went down and made a survey of the Main Chamber, in addition to exploring other passages.

The following Whitsuntide more recruits were enlisted and a large party carried the probe much further, but the hope that a party would succeed in breaking through to Clapham Cave and then surprise their friends at Gaping Gill by suddenly appearing from Trow Gill was not realised .

From this time until 1900 an intensive campaign was set in motion and many first descents and explorations were re¬corded, amongst them Long Kin West, Sell Gill, Rowten Pot, Boggart’s Roaring Hole, Cross Pot and Old Ing Cave. In 1900 the Club paid its first visit to Alum Pot and found that such plans as existed of the pot were far from correct.

But it would be a mistake to imagine that pot-holing was the sole interest of members in these early days. They were also making their mark on gritstone and in rock climbing generally. William Cecil Slingsby, for instance, before joining the Club as Honorary Member in 1893 had already made his most historic campaigns in Norway, including the traverse of the Horung Group and the first ascent of Skagastolstind in 1876. All this was an example and inspiration to the Club and the association between the Y.R.C. and Norway has been maintained ever since. Slingsby left his name not only on the British crags but also in the Alps on the Charmoz, the Requin and the Plan.

The Club has never lacked personalities, but the appearance of Slingsby just at that time and during the period of his Presidency must have made a profound impact on the new Club. Undoubtedly the impress of his unique individuality remains to this day.

Also at this time Puttrell was finding new ways up Scafell and, with George and Ashley Abraham made the Keswick Brothers’ Climb. Ramblers generally had wandered far from their native county to the Tyrol, Greece, Switzerland and Norway. The new century brought another man into the Club who was to make rock-climbing history—Fred Botterill. In 1903 he made a new route on Slanting Gully on Lliwedd, and also the great climb which immortalised his name, Botterill’s Slab on Scafell. A few years later he was on the first ascent of the North West Climb on Pillar.

The turn of the century also brought new exploits in the underworld. The Club’s determination to produce a reliable plan of Alum Pot was realised in 1902. Gaping Gill was again tackled in 1903 when Booth and Parsons followed a branch of the South East Passage and after a two hours’ crawl found themselves at an opening thirty feet up the boulder slope at the eastern end of the cavern. More new passages were dis-covered on the expeditions of 1905 and 1906, full details of which can be found in the Journals of those years. In 1904 Jockey Hole was explored and surveyed and another un¬named pot quite by chance noticed, descended and christened Rift Pot. But this was not all, the same year saw descents of Sulber Pot, Juniper Gulf, Pillar Pot and others.

Ireland has been a favourite venue of the Club ever since 1907 when the first visit was made and a party of four Ramblers left Enniskillen in a wagonette loaded with men and tackle. They were bound for Marble Arch caves, but again not for a first exploration for that ubiquitous Frenchman Edouard Martel had been before them. But the pattern had been set and the Club has returned to the Emerald Isle again and again.

It may not have seemed so at the time but probably the most momentous event of the year 1908 in the Club was the election of a new member, a certain Ernest E. Roberts, who, as it turned out, was to have an influence even more potent than that of Slingsby on the character and fortunes of the Club. Roberts initiated a long life-time of pot-holing activity by joining one of the Club’s early visits to Mere Gill. This became a challenge which kept him and the Club launching attack after attack until success was won in 1912. The Siege of Mere Gill, Roberts’ splendid account of this long tough engagement is surely a classic of pot-holing literature.

The year 1909 was made memorable by the trapping of a Club party for forty hours in a flooded Gaping Gill. Shortly after this Flood Entrance was discovered, so named in the belief that it could provide a means of escape to a party flood-bound in the cave.

Another notable achievement in this eventful year was the discovery and exploration of Sunset Hole. In this pot the following year befell the accident to W. F. Boyd, which set in motion the first organised cave rescue, and which led to some hard thinking on the subject. The outcome of this was the formulation of those basic principles essential to safety in pot-holing. After all these years these principles might now be assumed to be commonplace but are still unfortunately neglected in some quarters.

Members were still paying regular visits to Almscliff and Ilkley Rocks and the 1911 Journal carried an illustrated guide to the latter crags. Surprisingly Almscliff had to wait until 1949 for similar treatment. But it was still the Craven pot-hole system that drew members like a magnet in these years before the Great War, and in addition to the great victory at Mere Gill others succumbed—New Year Pot, Braithwaite Wife Hole, Car Pot, Cowskull Pot and Greensett Cave.

In 1913 the Club reached its majority and judging by the Annual Dinner programme for that year, it was celebrated right royally. Then came the dark years of the Great War when the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club in common with others lost some of its finest young members, in addition to many of the old guard by natural death, F. Payne, Fred Botterill and R. J. Farrer. There had also been an inevitable lapse of seven years in the publication of the Journal, and when it reappeared it was under the virile editorship of E. E. Roberts, whose scholarship and meticulous attention to detail was to raise it to even higher standards. It was some time, however, before he opened his etymological campaigns and the word “ghyll” continued to make its appearance in the Journal until 1933 when Roberts finally decided that the poet Wordsworth had been responsible for the abomination and the offending word was banished for ever from the pages of the Journal. Henceforth it was “Gaping Gill!”, and woe betide anyone who departed from this spelling.

One day in December 1919 Frankland, Somervell and Roberts were near Pool on their way to climb at Almscliff when they were overtaken by a fair haired young man on a cycle who introduced himself as F. S. Smythe, a new member.  After climbing with him at Almscliff and in the Lake District, Roberts recognised the lad’s promise and in his own words reported that “a new star had risen”. There is no need to detail here how that star added lustre to the constellation of the Y.R.C. and to British climbing generally.  In 1931 Smythe reached the summit of Kamet, but this was not the first time that a Yorkshire Rambler had set foot on the mountain, for in 1911 Morris Slingsby had reached the height of 22,000 ft., and there is no doubt he would have returned to the attack had he survived the Great War.  Smythe also took part in the Everest Expeditions of 1933, 1936 and 1938, but here again he was following in the steps of other Ramblers, Bentley Beetham and Hazard.  In 1930 Smythe climbed the Jonsong Peak whilst on the international Dyrenfurth expedition to Kanchenjunga, from which he came back with some decided views on German climbing methods and mentality.

As mentioned earlier the Flood Entrance to Gaping Gill was explored in 1909, but no further efforts were made until 1920, when a strong party arrived at the pot. This group split itself into two, one section to tackle Gaping Gill itself, and the other Flood Entrance, the two to co-operate on the change over, thus enabling both parties to complete the through route. After some roping difficulties this was successfully accomplished and the lessons learnt were duly recorded for the benefit of future visitors. The Club was still breaking new ground in old pots, but by 1932 what Roberts called the Golden Age of Pot-holing was coming to an end and the era of Mass Excursions beginning.

In 1929 the Club lost one of its finest members by the death of W. C. Slingsby. In the early days he had instilled his own boundless enthusiasm into the young Club, and at his death he must have been happy to know that he left it with already a great tradition.

The 1930’s saw Ramblers climbing and pot-holing in almost every country and continent and then came again the grim repetition of 1914, with again the tragic loss of some promising young members. There was also the inevitable lapse in the publication of the Journal, which reappeared in 1947. The war also rolled over the Club Jubilee, which fell in 1942, thus making adequate celebration impossible.

The new Journal opened with a long obituary by Roberts on one whom he described as “the greatest of all in the underground world, to all pot-holers The Master”, in other words Edouard Alfred Martel, who had died in 1938.  It was undoubtedly his snap descent of Gaping Gill which spurred on the Club to its great early campaigns in the underworld.

The next important landmark in the history of the Club was the desire to possess a Club Hut, and out of this the eventual opening of the cottage at Low Hall Garth in Little Langdale.  Set in the quietest and loveliest part of Lakeland this delectable spot has become almost a second home to many members.  Against this happy event must be recorded the death in 1950 of Thomas Gray at the great age of 95, breaking the last link with the early days of the Club.

Over all these years a large and comprehensive library had been collected. This had been housed for some time in a room at the Salem Chapel, not really a very handy place for members either to browse or to borrow books. The Committee therefore decided to loan the library to the Leeds City Reference Library for a probationary period of three years. This proved to be a wise and happy decision. The library is now situated in ideal, accessible surroundings in the Central Library and has the advantage of being in professional care.

The successful British ascent of Everest in 1953 seemed to act as a spur to climbers the world over. It was truly said “With Everest out of the way mountaineers can now settle down to enjoy the rest of the Himalayas”, and a succession of expeditions from all over the world began to move towards Nepal, their glittering objective the remaining unclimbed 8,000 metre peaks. The Golden Age of Himalayan climbing had set in. But the Himalayas were not the Alps and long holidays and still longer purses were needed to get there. But as we have seen, individual Yorkshire Ramblers had in years past been to Kamet, Kanchenjunga and Everest, and so it was almost inevitable that the idea of sending a Club party should begin to germinate. Very soon the idea was developing into a practical proposition, largely due to the generous help and information provided by Charles Evans. The whole story of how the team was picked, funds raised, the equipment assembled and the first purely Club expedition sent to the Jugal Himal can be read in the special Journal which was published in 1958. Unfortunately tragedy rather than triumph was the outcome of this inspiring effort when the leader, Crosby Fox, along with two Sherpas, was lost in an avalanche, the other member of the party, George Spenceley, having a miraculous escape. In spite of this shattering blow, and the consequent abandoning of the assault on the Great White Peak, the remaining members of the expedition carried on and did some useful mapping and surveying of the area. Despite the sad loss of Crosby Fox, great Yorkshire Rambler and fine mountaineer, no one could say that the effort was not amply justified. It pointed the way and many other small expeditions have followed.

But if anyone had thought that the mounting of this expedition, with its adverse outcome, had demoralised the Club, he would not have known his Yorkshire Ramblers. For in less than a year after the expedition’s return another plan, of a very different character, was being considered. This was none other than the establishment of a Club Hut in the pot-hole country of the Craven Highlands. Remembering that this area had been the Club’s spiritual home right from its birth it is rather astonishing that such a project had not been tackled years earlier. Be that as it may, the search for a suitable site was begun in earnest and eventually ended in a small copse near Clapham village. Here in the Lowstern Plantation was found a derelict old structure originally built as a golf house for the Farrer estate. With amazing optimism the Club decided to tackle this unlikely looking building. It was generously leased by Dr. Farrer at a nominal rent, week-end working parties descended on it, a miraculous transformation was effected and on November 16th, 1958, the new Lowstern Club Hut was officially opened by E. E. Roberts with a characteristic speech and an “Eighteen Carrot Gold Key”. The hut is now both a splendid acquisition and a tribute to the then President and all members who strove to make it a reality.

Less than two years after this happy event every member of the Club was shocked and grieved to learn of the death of Ernest Roberts. His presence had been taken so much for granted at Club functions and his influence had been so potent that many felt that without him the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club could never be quite the same, but Roberts himself would have been the first to scout the idea that any one individual could be indispensable to the Club.

Looking back over the achievements of these seventy years then, it can be safely affirmed that the Club has little to regret. An unrivalled record in early cave exploration and gritstone climbing, the possession of two Club Huts, a magnificent library on whose shelves rest the Club’s Journals, containing as they do so much of literary and historical value.

But the Club cannot rest upon seventy years of accumulated laurels. There is still much work to be done and in the Club plenty of young members to carry on the old tradition.

The Great White Peak is still there, unclimbed, in the Jugal Himal. There are mysteries still awaiting solution in Clapham Cave, “future work must lie upstream from below Giant’s Hall and in the series beyond the Far Eastern Bedding Plane”— (Y.R.CJ. Vol. IX, p.8.). The previous work of the Bradford Pothole Club and the Cave Diving Group needs carefully surveying, and why does the Club not dive? Lud’s Church in Staffordshire presents a challenge (see Chippings, and Country Life, 19th October, 1961), and there are countless caves in France and Belgium, where the local “speleo” clubs are delighted to welcome their British colleagues and where new and exciting discoveries are being made all the time. Even on the Moon the mountains are supposed to be 36,000 feet high and full of caves.

But above all this, and most important of all, the very reason for the Club’s existence, the comradeship engendered by the gathering together of kindred spirits and the fellowship of the outdoors. William Morris said that Fellowship is Life and Lack of Fellowship is Death. Assuming the truth of this axiom we may safely presume many years of life for the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club.