Manor Vale (2) Cave in Kirbymoorside has been the subject of occasional exploration over the modern decades - since it was cut into by a quarry in Victorian times. Until recently; the cave was in a working council yard and had been used as a ?tip? by local people over a considerable period of time. The cave was also frequented by an occasional badger - which has been discussed on UK caving during the new phase of exploration.
When YCC / NYMCC and MSG members began focussing Wed?s night digging efforts on Manor Vale 2 the cave was in a truly shocking state. The entrance is behind a disused building and initially involved a flat out crawl through decades of accumulated general rubbish; including - glass; assorted ironwork and discarded paint cans - all topped off with delightful quantities of mud (not exactly ?glacial?); copious badger excrement & badger bedding.
While the ?working face? of the Manor Vale dig was splendidly free of rubbish and actually very cave?like the entrance approaches were dire. In order to improve access an extended clean-up was undertaken by members during ?rests? from digging activities. Once started; this became a bit of an obsession (amongst a few) and silly amounts of material were removed from the cave ? with the ever present risk of infection from cuts (Thanks must go to the Co-op in Kirbymoorside for the use of their facilities for one particularly nasty deep glass cut).
The clean-up unearthed some splendid examples of Victorian bottles which appeared to have been untouched since the 1850?s or so. In the floor we also got down to glacial mud after digging out well over four feet of rubbish and were therefore the first persons to see what the Rev Buckland saw (and documented in Reliquiae Diluvanae ? page 53) back in 1823.
The current position is that the entrance passage to Manor Vale (2) is a drop down into a standing height chamber with a ?grotto? and the continuation is a hands and knees crawl in the roof of an eight foot diameter phreatic tube which leads to two active dig sites - well beyond the previous extent of the rubbish.
The cave entrance is still behind a disused building; so is not very ?pretty? and ?Chalky? has started to use the nice new entrance passage & spacious ?grotto? for his usual assorted digging paraphernalia - which he will eventually be forced to remove in order to bring the cave truly back to its natural state.
For before and after pictures see link -
https://www.flickr.com/photos/74732072@N08/
