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Most overlooked UK karst area?

jockr said:
Not UK, but still.. there is a lot to be found and researched just over the border NW Ireland,  Sligo/Leitrim, check out the Bricklieve Mountains, most of the uplands north and west of Lough Allen, Geevagh, Benbulben etc, etc.

According to the Irish Geological Survey, every county in the Republic except Co. Wicklow has at least some limestone outcropping - although Co Wexford & Co Carlow only have small bits. All other counties have had karst features recorded - but there are quite thick soils overlaying the limestone bedrock in some areas.

So sounds like there ought to potential for quite a lot of undiscovered stuff over there.
Map here: https://www.gsi.ie/images/images/karst%20in%20ireland%20map%20800px.jpg
 

David Rose

Active member
I don't think you will find much round Oxford. The holes that do exist here are very small. Compared to other areas which have been mentioned, the potential is negligible. 
 

Andy Farrant

Active member
It depends if you are interested in karst features or physically enterable caves. There are loads of undocumented stream sinks in the Chalk, particularly in Berkshire and the Chilterns. The Cotswolds and Jurassic limestone outcrops further south again have plenty of karst features including stream sinks, sinkholes and big springs. However, in the Jurassic limestones, the Chalk and the Permian Magnesian limestones, caves will be relatively few and far between, not because of the rock strength, but due to the lithology, fracture density and porosity of the rock. High fracture densities and porosity means that conduit development that progresses to the scale of enterable caves only occurs in very favorable conditions. For the Chalk in particular, the soft weakly consolidated Palaeogene sands and clays that overlie the Chalk means that any caves that do form often get infilled with sediment. Same goes for some of the Jurassic limestones. Some units such as the Cornbrash are probably too thin.

In my opinion, the 'overlooked' area with the best potential for new caves in the UK is probably Pembrokeshire, particularly around Pendine and west past Llanteg, but also Manorbier & Tenby, although here the caves may be quite small.
 

Kenilworth

New member
Thank you Andy, that's quite helpful. I am interested in non-cave karst, but would obviously welcome the possibility of caves. Very small caves are my specialty of sorts, and while finding big ones is fun too, I won't have time to be worthy of anything extensive.

Ideally I will walk a lot and look at lots of interesting non-cave features with a realistic hope of running across a small cave or two.
 

Fulk

Well-known member
How much potential is there for caves in the chalk of the coastal area of Yorkshire north of Hull ? Specifically around Flamborough Head? There are quite big sea caves there, which clearly means that the chalk is capable of supporting underground cavities ? but what about the potential for ?proper?, as it were, caves formed by the ?normal? process of water sinking underground?
 

ZombieCake

Well-known member
Thinking the same of the Isle of Wight. Map says there's stuff to the west, on the southern side below the Alum Bay tourist trap, i.e caves marked. Anyone have clue? Wandering over there soon-ish. Any info most welcome.
 

AR

Well-known member
I don't think there's much, if anything, on the East Riding chalk - see Andy Farrant's comment above about the "wrong" geology for passage formation.
 

Les W

Active member
ZombieCake said:
Thinking the same of the Isle of Wight. Map says there's stuff to the west, on the southern side below the Alum Bay tourist trap, i.e caves marked. Anyone have clue? Wandering over there soon-ish. Any info most welcome.

I believe the "Caves" marked along the cliffs at Alum Bay are sea caves.
There are some tunnels around the Needles Battery though but they are very man made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Needles_Battery
 

Andy Farrant

Active member
Isle of Wight - there is a small ephemeral stream sink just east of Newport, around St George's Down  - not sure where it flows to, probably Shide, and some very small (cm scale) conduits exposed in some of the Chalk quarries. Downend Quarry in particular has some spectacular sediment filled dissolutionally enlarged pipes and 'caves' exposed in the face. Boreholes in the Chalk between Calstone and Brighstone indicate sediment filled cavities at depth, and there is a large buried sinkhole infilled with Palaeogene sediment exposed on a forestry track on Brighstone Down. There are some sediment filled dissolution pipes in the top chalk surface at Alum Bay but these may be Palaeogene in age, ie palaeokarst. Some voids can be seen in the cliffs between Freshwater Bay and the Needles, but only visible from offshore.

Flamborough Head. Lots of sea caves. I suspect there are lots of small scale conduits in the Chalk of the Yorkshire Wolds, as there is evidence of very high transmissivities and rapid flow from tracer tests, but few caves. The chalk is much harder, but is very well fractured (fracture and bedding spacing on the cm scale rather than metres as in the Carb Lst) and the area is cut by numerous faults (not shown on the map). Some quarries around Langtoft have dissolutionally open fractures, but no enterable caves. Around Flamborough itself the cover of glacial till does generate some possible stream sinks and sinkholes - important hydrogeologically,  but I doubt of there will be significant 'open' cave, possibly a shaft or two. There are few other sinking streams in the Wolds, the exception being the Gypsey Race around Wold Newton, which sinks into its bed at various places. It is possible that there may be some larger voids developed on more persistant flint bands in the Burnham Chalk, but finding these will be tricky! There is/was evidence of large freshwater springs in the Humber estuary (around Hessle Whelps). There is a large 'gull' fissure north of Thixendale which may be a collapsed windypit.
 

Graigwen

Active member
There is an estavel in an ox-bow on the River Mole in Surrey.

A couple of dozen swallow holes have been noted along the course of the river between Mickleham and just north of Dorking.

.
 
Not sure what an estavel is but I presume many people have heard of the Policeman's Hole in Mickleham, where the local policemen saw a large tree swallowed suddenly  into collapse depression. This collapse is possibly related to the cave which is theorised to exist in the area-water travelling underground from the River Mole sinks to the rising at Leatherhead.
. This story is mentioned  in the Chelsea sites of the South East. I believe that the site was dug briefly after it happened in 30-40's but I imagine nothing since. I have never visited Mickleham myself but live fairly nearby. I don't know if anything remains of this site, maybe as happens to many possible sites it has been filled in. I would be interested to find out.
 

Graigwen

Active member
adrian paniwnyk said:
Not sure what an estavel is but I presume many people have heard of the Policeman's Hole in Mickleham, where the local policemen saw a large tree swallowed suddenly  into collapse depression. This collapse is possibly related to the cave which is theorised to exist in the area-water travelling underground from the River Mole sinks to the rising at Leatherhead.
. This story is mentioned  in the Chelsea sites of the South East. I believe that the site was dug briefly after it happened in 30-40's but I imagine nothing since. I have never visited Mickleham myself but live fairly nearby. I don't know if anything remains of this site, maybe as happens to many possible sites it has been filled in. I would be interested to find out.

An estavel is a hole in the ground that sometimes acts as a sink and sometimes act as a resurgence.

It was Harry Pearman of Chelsea who first sent me to the Mole Gap in the 1960s. I have been back a couple of times since and saw the estavel in action in about 2006, it was amazingly unspectacular, the flow rate just a couple of litres a minute but I arrived just as it was reversing. It is well worth having a look at the River Mole but don't bother bringing a lamp, you won't get underground. If I can remember exactly where I went, I'll PM details - I recall crossing the river by a footbridge on the side of a railway bridge.

.
 
Thanks for the information. Another question can an estavel exist underground?
Concerning the Mole there certainly appears to a good depth of chalk above it.
 
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