Gunnerfleet Cave

[Pitlamp]

I am a bit puzzled.  Is this the Eli Simpson of BSA fame?  and what was he doing with the speleothems?  Was the cave about to be quarried away?

That's a very good question. Maybe there are clues about his purpose in a BSA publication around the time or soon after? I don't think there was much likelihood of the cave being lost to quarrying, the nearest proper quarry being at Gauber, almost a mile to the south east. (This quarry didn't finish extraction until 1958 but it's very unlikely to have been even a vague threat to Gunnerfleet Cave.)

Cymmie was a true speleologist; he had a strong (fairly authoritarian) vision for caving which came to be at variance with other members of the caving community as the war came and went. From what I know of him (and admittedly this will be less than some forum users) I cannot imagine he would have done a stal removal exercise on this scale without a good reason. I like to think it would at least have been for study purposes.

Remember the great furore over Cymmie's efforts to keep Lancaster Hole lidded soon after its discovery? That was mainly for conservation reasons.

Langcliffe makes a very good point above that the Gunnerfleet story might have provided at least some of Bob Leakey's possible motivation for starting the Cave Preservation Society.

I always feel uncomfortable when someone gets pilloried for something when they have passed away and thus have no opportunity to give their side of a story. But I suspect Cymmie would have written something somewhere which might help us understand his reasoning.

He died (from memory) in 1962 or 1963. Much of his collection of written material is in the BCA Library but does anyone know what happened to his mineral collection? I think there are photographs of this in the Cragdale days. (There might be clues in any notes with that.) Craven museum at Skipton, maybe? I think it's due to reopen soon; if anyone's passing through, why not go in and ask?

 

[Pitlamp]

This years edition of the North Craven Heritage Trust Journal (published 2 or 3 months ago) contains a feature on the late Jack Myers. It's illustrated with some of Jack's own images, including a "selfie" in Gunnerfleet Cave, which looks nicely decorated. Without digging it out I can't remember the date of this image but it would be interesting to learn whether this was before or after the dastardly deed alluded to above.

Just a further thought on this; Langcliffe tells us the Peter Binns extract, in his original post, was dated 1935.

Jack Myers was borne in 1925, so unlikely to appear in a "selfie" photograph as an adult in Gunnerfleet Cave until well after the deed in question. So the photo which I mentioned illustrating the NCHT Journal, showing a nicely decorated Gunnerfleet Cave, must have been taken after the alleged 1935 desecration.

Should we bear in mind there may be a possibility (however vague) of a whiff of rodent? I realise that might be a controversial suggestion but I think all avenues should be taken into account if trying to get to the bottom of this one.

I'll try and find that photo to post here, if possible.

 

[langcliffe]

Just a further thought on this; Langcliffe tells us the Peter Binns extract, in his original post, was dated 1935.

Jack Myers was borne in 1925, so unlikely to appear in a "selfie" photograph as an adult in Gunnerfleet Cave until well after the deed in question. So the photo which I mentioned illustrating the NCHT Journal, showing a nicely decorated Gunnerfleet Cave, must have been taken after the alleged 1935 desecration.

Should we bear in mind there may be a possibility (however vague) of a whiff of rodent? I realise that might be a controversial suggestion but I think all avenues should be taken into account if trying to get to the bottom of this one.

Mmm... Let's think about that one.

My contention is that I have a transcription of a diary written by Peter Binns during a summer caving holiday at Easter 1935, when he would have been about 18 years old. The diary was transcribed by his son Michael.

The possibilities are:

1. I may be telling porkies, and I have no such transcription.

2. I do have something purporting to be a transcription, but Michael Binns constructed it from nowt.

3. There was a diary, but Michael Binns changed the contents when he transcribed it.

4. It is an accurate transcription, but Peter Binns write the document years later for some devious reason.

5. It is a diary written at the time, but Peter Binns filled it with porkies.

6. It is an accurate diary written at the time.

Which possibility would you say is most likely, Pitlamp. Or can you think of any further viable alternatives?

 

[Pitlamp]

I'd say that, of 1 - 5, none is likely (especially No.1).

Option 6 is by far the most likely.

You are about the last person I'd question the judgement of, Langcliffe.

I'm fairly familiar with the cave in question, having extended it a bit in 1999. I don't remember noticing remains of 4 ft stalagmites having been sawn off but that's over 2 decades ago and, of course, memory is fallible.

I'll make a special effort to try and locate Jack's post 1935 Gunnerfleet photograph, for comparison. Leave it with me for a bit . . .

 

[Pitlamp]

This is the picture of Jack's taken in Gunnerfleet. Not that useful after all, in the context of this topic. But at least it shows there was plenty of delicate stuff in the roof after Cymmie's dastardly deeds.

 

[Ian P]

This still does not answer one of my original questions:

"what was he doing with the speleothems? "

Maybe he sold them to ?The North Face? ?

 

[Speleofish]

Or exported them to mendip for use in Waterfall Cave...

 

[langcliffe]

For anybody who may be interested, Peter Binns's journals are now online, together with some interesting material relating to the BSA.

https://archives.bcra.org.uk/binns.html

More material will be added to the Binns archive over the next couple of weeks.

 

[Pitlamp]

Well done Langcliffe! 

 

[Pitlamp]

That's the best explanation of the use of a "tail line" to help recover a ladder I think I've ever seen!

 

[langcliffe]

Should we bear in mind there may be a possibility (however vague) of a whiff of rodent? I realise that might be a controversial suggestion but I think all avenues should be taken into account if trying to get to the bottom of this one.

There have been a couple of well-respected cavers who have been sceptical about the story of Simpson and Gunnerfleet Cave, which I can well understand.

However, Binns was accompanied for much of the time by a schoolfriend, Peter Longbottom, who also kept a diary. This is currently in the safe-keeping of the Bristol Exploration Club, but Jenny Potts has unearthed an article written about it in 1976  by Steven Craven for the William Pengelly Trust Newsletter 76, which includes a partial extract of Longbottom's account of the same incident  (same date, same cave):

"We took a few stalactites down and packed the smaller ones in one of the boxes of saw-dust and the larger ones we wrapped in sacking between the two boards... Mr. Simpson had taken some stalactites down and had packed them in the second tin of saw-dust and had nearly cut a large stalactite".

Other reports of stal-bashing under the guidance of Simpson appear in the same diary.

According to the article, Longbottom claims that he later saw speleothems displayed in cabinets at Cragdale, the then BSA headquarters.

 

[Jenny P]

I have been trying to follow up on this since BCL was made aware of the "harvesting" of stals. recorded in Peter Binns' Diaries.  This is also substantiated by notes in Longbottom's diaries for the same period and he also referred to seeing Simpson "at his house, Cragdale".  It wasn't, of course, "Simpson's house", it was the BSA HQ and Simpson was living there at the start of the War but it had to be relinquished as there wasn't sufficient money coming in to pay the rent and Simpon moved to live in smaller premises nearby in Settle.

The mystery of what happened to all the stals. Simpson was collecting remains. Mary Wilde, our Librarian, has done a search in connection with the collections in the Sheffield museums as there was a thought that they might have ended up there along with Puttrell's geological collection from the Peak District. So far she's drawn a blank but is continuing to follow this up. It's not as if they were small items either - one "mite" at least
was said to be 4 ft. long - so this would not have fitted into the small display cases shown in the photo of the BSA exhibition at Buxton (the photo is in the Binns Archive). They certainly weren't left behind in Settle after Simpson died and there seems to be no record of anyone seeing them in the later years of his reign at BSA, so I'm beginning to wonder if he sold them to defray his expenses during or immediately after the War.

Reading the two diaries it is clear that there was a very considerable quantity of stal. and some of it was in quite large chunks so it would be strange if, after all that effort, they were just dumped.  They were probably on display at Cragdale originally as it was intended to be a museum, at least in part.  Once Cragdale had been relinquished there would have been nowhere for Simpson to keep them in the smaller premises he moved into.

So we'll keep checking museums where the collection might have ended up to see if it's possible to locate the items, or at least find out what happened to them.

 

[Pitlamp]

Could they have been passed to Tot Lord to augment the Pigyard Club collection at Settle? (Maybe Tom Lord would know?)

As a youngster I remember all this Pigyard material being on display in Settle, in a small building with a shop front on the south side of Chapel Street (between Cragdale and Chapel Square).

I still think the Craven museum is a possibility, which I believe opens today.

 

[Jenny P]

Thanks for the tip.  That's another place to investigate - the Craven Museum does seem a likely home for them.