Derbyshire Bone Caves 4: Waterfall Swallet

I have always been fascinated by our ancient ancestors. Recently I began looking into – quite literally – the Palaeolithic caves of my local region, the Peak District.

A good source of information is Andrew Chamberlin’s (2020) “Gazetteer of Caves, Fissures and Rock Shelters in the English Midlands”, Containing Human Remains”. He lists a cave at Eyam – Waterfall Swallet – as the site of a find of human and animal bones.

The cave at Waterfall Swallet – Waterfall Hole. N Barden June 2020.

The entrance to Waterfall Hole N Barden June 2020.

Looking out of Waterfall Hole. Wife in distance gives scale - she is 5' 7''. N Barden 2020

Chamberlain (2020) also gives references (see other sources below). These however proved hard to obtain or very short and unhelpful.

A wider trawl of the internet brought up nothing from the Heritage Gateway, Pastscape, Megalithic Portal or The Modern Antiquarian. Only an Ariadne (2020) record had any information whatsoever: “Cave excavated in 1999-2000. Few details available as yet, but human remains representing a single individual plus animal bones were found. No dating evidence as yet.” The contributor was listed as Historic England, but I was unable trace any record of the site on their website.

In desperation I followed the only clue I had left, that the excavation was carried out by D. Webb & the Masson Caving Group, in 1999-2000.

Lo and behold I found an article by Webb (2000a) in the Derbyshire Caver! The club had been digging opposite the known cave system to see if any undiscovered caves existed in the area. After digging out an earth-filled entrance passage, a shaft led downwards, a further drop led to an old mined level. Webb describes their discovery: “The slot led to a climb down past respectable formations into a narrow passage which to the right, (west), soon led to a short handpicked coffin-shaped level through sediments. Here we found two rotting stemples [mine cross-members used for support], and what, was later identified by archaeologists from Sheffield University, as a human arm bone! It is still unclear how the old lead miners entered, but they left empty-handed.”

Elevation of Crock Pot showing the location of the human remains found, adapted from Webb (2000a). Position (in red) is the estimated find spot for the human bone.

One would think that Webb was right: the find of the human bone at the junction of the miner’s level and the natural cave and the presence of pit props surely means a poor soul lost his life while working underground by candlelight. Or was he?

The presence of human and animal bones is highly suggestive of an archaeological site.

If the human arm bone did not come from an unfortunate miner, what are the possible sources?

I visited the site in June 2020. It consists of a large tree lined collapse doline on the north side of the road from Eyam to Foolow. Waterfall Swallet was sold to the National Trust in 2013 and now has a little gate and path down to the massive amphitheatre that hosts the cave. I mistakenly assumed that the large cave on the north side of the deep depression must be the site of find. I later found out that the correct location – Crock Pot – lies at the eastern end, close to the waterfall.

The eponymous waterfall. From this viewpoint, Crock Pot, the site of the human remains is almost directly behind you.

The waterfall is fed by a stream that runs ENE along the shale boundary from the uphill Eyam sandstone benches and gritstone plateau beyond. The other source is explained by Kirkham (1964): “On the south side of Bretton Edge Road, a few hundred feet east from where the Camphill road to the gliding club leaves it, an old green trackway runs south-east, and here the treed enclosure of Silence Mine runs downhill. The tail of the sough is in the middle of the field below this, where a small hollow in the ground has been walled on three sides, and a stone-lined space sunk in it to receive the water from a small piped hole in the walling. When it was a sough it would have had a larger entrance. About 1950, the farmer and a companion opened the sough between the tail and the bottom of the wood. The interior was only crawling height, the roof was of flat shale, propped with larch poles every few feet.

The water from the tail sinks into a slab-covered drain which goes southwards for about 1700ft to Piece End, the narrow strip of land on the west side of Bradshaw Lane, south-east of Swevic House. From here the drain goes south of east along the fields to the stream which goes to Waterfall Swallet.”

Sketch map by Beck (1975) with the shale boundary, and hence much of the stream course leading into Waterfall Swallet seen at top left.

This the stream and its uphill continuation as a drain pass close to Long Low bowl barrow, a known burial site. Excavated by Bagshawe, in 1863 this is therefore a plausible source of the bone, which was subsequently carried downstream to end up in Crook Pot. Other possible sources for transported bones include, an unknown barrow, a burial in Waterfall Hole (the cave opposite Crook Pot) or an accidental fall into the amphitheatre by some unfortunate wayfarer at any time since the Ice Age. I realise that these speculations sound unlikely, so I’ll ask you a question: “So where did the animal bones come from?” What no answers? Well it has to be water transport. And if you admit to that, so you must, as a consequence admit that the human arm bone may not be that of an unlucky miner and may belong to an ancestor of ours dating to any time from the Late Upper Palaeolithic, the Bronze Age, Iron Age or to the Medieval period.

The bone in question is housed at Sheffield University. I hope one day they will carbon date it.

Update 03.07.20

Whilst researching an entirely different project, I came across the following by Barker (1999):

“When Derbyshire got a good soaking last October, it was noticed that much of the water filling the Waterfall Swallet shakehole was vanishing down a previously unknown hole. This rift which is opposite the entrance gully, some 5 metres above the floor and to the left of the waterfall took a lot of water and draughts. lt lies beyond the western limit of Waterfall Hole and could lead into a continuation of the cave in this direction (if

we're lucky!) Mark Noble and John Beck began the dig by removing some tree roots and following the main rift down through soil and clay..”

It therefore seems that surface runoff in really, wet weather can fill the shakehole with an unimaginably large volume of water! Consequently, it seems even more plausible that the human arm-bone and animal bones were transported by water into the cave, as I suggested above.

References:

Ariadne (2020) at: http://ariadne-portal.dcu.gr/index.php/page/14723257 accessed 04.06.20

Barker, I (1999). Derbyshire Potterings “Innominate Pot” Derbyshire Caver no. 101 p12.

Beck, J. (1975) The caves of the Foolow-Eyam-Stoney Middleton area, Derbyshire and their genesis. Transactions of the British Cave Research Association 2: 1-11.

Chamberlain, A. (2020) Gazetteer of Caves, Fissures and Rock Shelters in the English Midlands “Waterfall Swallet” at: http://caveburial.ubss.org.uk/midlands/waterfallswallet.htm accessed 02.07.20

Kirkham, N. (1964) Notes on Silence Mine. Derbyshire Miscellany Volume 2 Part 12 pp 445-455.

Webb, D. (2000a). Crock Pot (or Pot of the Crocks) Waterfall Swallet: Eyam,

Derbyshire. Derbyshire Caver no. 108 p1-3.

Other sources

Barker, I. & Beck, J.S. (2010) Caves of the Peak District. Hucklow Publishing, Derbyshire.

Webb, D. (2000b) The pot of the crocks. Descent 156: 20-22.

Technical Speleological Group (TSG): Journal TSG 11 (1985) Waterfall Swallet, Foolow, Derbyshire