Stone shelter on Whernside

[Pitlamp]

It's a good question Robin. Maybe because, on such a steep hillside, with thick scree, it'd be easy to chavel into it a few metres to build a lime kiln with a reasonable vertical height twixt air inlet and chimney to give a good updraught? The possibility of all necessary consumables being nearby may have influenced positioning. And it'd be relatively easy to get the product downhill to the main pastures.

All of which is pure conjecture on my part, I'm afraid.
I'm hoping David Johnson will be able to point us in the right direction.

 

[andrewmcleod]

At the bottom of a layer of limestone, on a spring line? I suspect the archaeologist is right (enhanced natural spring).

If you drive along Oddie's Lane from Ingleton, once you get up onto the flatter bit you drive along the spring line at the bottom of Twistleton for some time and I have vague memories of seeing similar things (i.e. little stone entrances with springs coming) along the road.

 

[alanw]

At the bottom of a layer of limestone, on a spring line?

The Grid Ref given earlier is on the 1900 foot contour, and the hole seems to be a bit lower. To the north east, there is a spring line between 1850 and 1900 feet.

From the OS 6" map at https://maps.nls.uk/

 

[Pitlamp]

At the bottom of a layer of limestone, on a spring line? I suspect the archaeologist is right (enhanced natural spring).

If you drive along Oddie's Lane from Ingleton, once you get up onto the flatter bit you drive along the spring line at the bottom of Twistleton for some time and I have vague memories of seeing similar things (i.e. little stone entrances with springs coming) along the road.

The only fly in the ointment with this possibility is a complete absence of any water emerging from the hillside, anywhere nearby. There's no evidence of water having flowed through the tunnel behind the walled entrance either. As we've had the most miserable wet 6 months for a long time in the Dales, with several named storms, any spring would surely have made its presence felt.

The hillside is so steep along this part of the Whernside ridge that the area of outcropping limestone (and therefore any underground catchment) is negilgible. The spring line further north is at the bottom of a much larger area of exposed limestone. There's a substantial limestone bench behind Greensett Crags, where the eponymous cave is located (at the northern [down dip] end).

I must admit to being completely perplexed.

 

[IanWalker]

I just noticed the stone feature is just above a stone enclosure (sheep pens? workers' hut?) and about the same level as a faint feature (path, dyke, drain?) starts heading north east.

Three red dots for the three features. Side-by-side with Digital Terrain Model

 

[Pitlamp]

Nice one Ian!

 

[Pitlamp]

The Grid Ref given earlier is on the 1900 foot contour, and the hole seems to be a bit lower. To the north east, there is a spring line between 1850 and 1900 feet.

From the OS 6" map at https://maps.nls.uk/
View attachment 18102

Just for completeness, I looked at that spring at lower left in the above image a couple of years ago. It's quite close to the little used footpath up Whernside (the very steep one from above Gunnerfleet). There's quite a lot of water comes out of the spring on a wet day. By pulling out a couple of sandstone slabs a cave entrance was revealed but the passage behind it was too small to get along (for me, at least). All the springs along the base of the Greensett Crags are tiny. There are many shakeholes on the Greensett limestone bench, some quite large, However, none is particularly appealing fo further work (although one has an immature shaft in it maybe 3 m deep). It appears that the only decent sized cave development is right at the north east end of that limestone bench (the Greensett Cave system).

Dave Allanach's excellent large scale survey and article about this cave and area in the 1972 CPC Journal (Volume 4 No. 6, pages 303 - 306) is particularly helpful. However, it doesn't include the part of the Main Limestone outcrop where the walled entrance lies which was flagged up by HannahB.

 

[AR]

I'm still baffled by the length of the structure; it's far more effort to build it than you need for a limekiln and as we all know, upland farmers don't waste time and effort. All you really need is a stone-lined bowl with an open front, if you're intending to use it more than once you might add a raking arch but you don't really need much in the way of extra draft to make lime.

A spring culvert on the face of it seems more likely but as Pitlamp says, after the deluge of the past few months you' expect it to be flowing.

 

[Pitlamp]

Not heard back from David Johnson yet. Just saying . . .

 

[Flotsam]

No one has mentioned it but could it be an ancient burial, inhumation site, something like a cist? Possibly unfinished.

 

[AR]

No one has mentioned it but could it be an ancient burial, inhumation site, something like a cist? Possibly unfinished.

Not a cist (they're basically stone-lined pits) but the nearest known prehistoric structure type that's anything like this is a souterrain. Only known to occur on the western fringes of the British Isles, so if this is one then it's a real anomaly!

 

[phizz4]

Could it be something to do with rabbits. Either a Rabbit Smoot, described below, or a rabbit trap, similar in idea to those found on Dartmoor. Could rabbits have been trapped in their and then killed by the farmer or Warrener with their ferrets?
Smoots allowed rabbits and hares to from the outlying pastures (fells) into the intakes (fields). Rabbit were part of the countryman’s diet and would have been eaten if captured. Sometimes stone-lined pits were dug below the smoot with a wooden counter-weighted trap door above which the rabbits or hares would fall into.

 

[IanWalker]

Ingleborough has an Iron-Age hill fort so the soutterain idea is not outlandish. People were living in the area, and up to the highest peaks, at the time soutterains were being built elsehere.

Large univallate hillfort on Ingleborough Hill., Clapham cum Newby - 1008876 | Historic England

List entry 1008876. Grade Not applicable to this List entry. Scheduled Monument: Large Univallate Hillfort On Ingleborough Hill.. May include summary, reasons for designation and history.

historicengland.org.uk

But is 400 by 400 mm big enough to navigate with a body? I would expect them to have larger passages for ease of use. Or a small entrance with a larger passageway beyond. Plausible if they were just burying the skull / bones etc.

Or the odd cheese. Cheese cellar for a cheese seller? Again awkward to navigate. If you're building it to crawl along why make it so small?

 

[Pitlamp]

David Johnson has kindly replied to my query, as follows:


Let's start by discounting various suggestions made:

1. lime kiln - absolutely not for various reasons
2. connected with peat cutting - not up there and I see no connection between the feature and anything to do with turbary
3. storage - it's just too high up, too damp and far too remote for this
4. shelter - too small in all dimensions. There are several such shelters below The Arks and one below Gragareth and umpteen elsewhere and they are all very different from this feature
5. rabbit smoot - a rabbit smoot is a low passage through the base or near the base of a drystone wall most often originally with a trap on one side to catch bunny unawares

I hesitate to say what I think it might be without having seen it in the flesh and, more importantly, seen it in its wider context so if someone can let me have an 8 or 10-figure grid reference I will go up sometime and have a look for myself. However ... and this remains a hypothesis at the moment ... I have surveyed on the ground (and published) six long leats or cut channels that fed water in a controlled manner from the fells to particular points of use - farmsteads or water mills. The engineering employed to create them is awe inspiring - to get the water flowing but not too fast. One fed Burton in Lonsdale water mill and Bideber water mill en route; one fed Philpin off Ingleborough; one fed Bleak Bank off Little Ingleborough; one fed Know Gap and Clapdale off Little Ingleborough; one fed the Scales farms at C-le-D off the base of Whernside near Ellerbeck; and one fed Broadrake off Whernside. The feature under discussion is too far 'off course' to have fed Broadrake's leat, and I have found no trace of it on the hillside, but I wonder if the feature was the start of a leat feeding Scar Top (formerly Top Farm) in the past. To ensure they worked well throughout the year the source point(s) were carefully designed and maintained.

David has a lot on his plate at the moment but he said he'll try and get up there at some stage and let me know what he thinks, so I can post further information on here. (I've explained exactly how to find it.)

He mentioned Scar Top; that was where the late Albert Chapman (YRC) lived for several decades. I knew Albert well and I'm sure he'd have been able to shed some light on this mystery walled entrance. He used to be up on Whernside all the time, often using it to train for Himalayan adventures. Sadly, we lost Albert not so long ago.

He also mentions artificial water courses elsewhere and in the vicinity. Regular forum users may remember we had a discussion topic about Grey Wife Sike and Know Gap Sike (on Ingleborough) during Covid lock down:

A question about Grey Wife Sike on Ingleborough

Here's one to exercise your grey matter (no pun intended) whilst we're all grounded during the coronavivus lockdown. Grey wife Sike (a small stream west of Cote Gill) was artificially channelled in the past, to avoid it sinking in various shakeholes where it meets the Great Scar Limestone at...

ukcaving.com

Anyway, thanks David; we'll look forward to learning more, when you get the chance to take a look.

 

[georgenorth]

I was wondering if it was built as an (attempted?) water supply for the sheep fold just down the hill.
Sheep folds seem to be pretty much always built near a stream or spring, and there’s nothing else obvious nearby for that one.

 

[Pitlamp]

Thanks George; the problem appears to be that there's no water emerging in the vicinity, as far as I could see (even in wet conditions). There's no evidence of water having flowed along the tunnel either. Interesting riddle this one. I'm sure when David Johnson gets chance to look at it properly we'll learn a lot more.

 

[georgenorth]

That’s definitely the conundrum isn’t it! It seems entirely possible a small spring could dry up over the course of several hundred years, but you’d expect to see evidence of water having flowed in the past.

That’s what made me wonder if this was a failed endeavour. Maybe a small spring used to rise at this point in the past - a culvert was dug to try and capture it but this was unsuccessful. At some point between then and now the spring dried up altogether.

Complete speculation of course… 😉

 

[zzzzzzed]

Somebody could ask the farmer. If they've been around for generations they'll probably at least have a theory.

 

[Pitlamp]

Somebody could ask the farmer. If they've been around for generations they'll probably at least have a theory.

Good point; problem is it's above the highest walled field, so there may not be a specific farmer. But if anyone knows otherwise maybe you could send a P.M. then I'll go and ask.

 

[zzzzzzed]

Philpin Farm

You could ask here if they know who the best person to talk to is.
They have a campsite and a cafe on the 3 peaks route so they're ptobably used to daft questions from the public