Henry's Hole Dig
For more information contact Mike Salt.

Report by Mike Salt - January 2002
Back in the summer of ’97 myself and Daniel Hibberts were spending a lot of time going up and down ropes at Bob Dearman's house. Countless hours were spent learning knots, making brews and knitting in the trees.

Anyway, being young, enthusiastic, (Stupid??) and having quite a lot of time on our hands, the two of us decided that we wanted our very own dig... "I know just the place for you two!" said the boss one afternoon as he started to describe a glacial filled pot on Hartington Moor, Infact, that afternoon, he took us there for a look at what is now widely known as Henry’s Hole (Henry being the name of the local farmer who owned the field).

The entrance is a water washed shaft set on the far side of a small shakehole approximately 8 meters deep and conveniently, only about 150 meters from the road. The shakehole has since been puddled and provides water for the farmers cattle. The shaft dropped down about 3 meters to a small glacial filled tube of approximate dimension 0.5x0.5m (See Picture below, right)

The interesting thing about Henry’s hole is that it lies very close to a geological fault which runs from the nearby Ludwell Resurgence approximatly 1 kilometer away and over 100 feet lower.

After the first year of digging, Alan Rowlinson, a new aspirant member of Eldon joined the team - which was lucky because the extent of the cave no longer lent itself to being dug by two.

In the spring of 1998 myself, Alan and Dan were digging in there and Dan was sat at the bottom of the entrance shaft on 'Kibble duty'. Getting board, he thought he would have a wriggle at a boulder in the wall. 'Ooops, I think Bob's gonna shout at me!' I heard as I crawled out to the entrance shaft.

He had infact uncovered a small void which contained a couple of boulders in uncertain stability. A quick & gentle squeeze into the void and it was apparent that this side of the cave certainly had a different characteristic to the end of the cave which we had been digging, it still contained some glacial fill but contained more boulders. A small hole went off in the floor for a couple of feet and that was that. Digging continued sporadically but we paid very little attention to Dan's little find.

Following the wet floods in the autumn/winter of 1998 Bob visited the surface of Henrys one day to see if any of the water from the pool was going into the cave. His instinct was rewarded by a stream, about the size of the one going down P8, overflowing from the pond down into the entrance shaft with no signs of backing up.

A few hours later and Bob had been in touch with professor John Gunn of Huddersfield University to arrange a dye test. Dye was put in at Henry’s Hole and detectors were placed at Ludwell Resurgence and also Sprink Resurgence, a smaller but still impressive resurgence in the riverbed about 300 metres lower down than Ludwell.

The results of the dye tests were positive although not quite as expected. No dye was picked up at Ludwell Resurgence, but there were indications of dye in the Sprink Resurgence which first appeared 2 days after the dye was placed. The dye continued to register for the following couple of days with decreasing potency, thus suggesting that the water lies static somewhere for quite some time.

On the 19th December 1999, I had a phone call from Dan, who, having nothing to do for the day had decided to pop down Henry’s on his own to have a quick tat. Looking into the small void at the bottom of the shaft he got quite excited to say the least.

The 'Claw'

Mike in the breakthrough

By all accounts, a reasonable sized void had opened up and voids could be seen between the mud and boulders. I got home that night to find a very muddy Mr Hibberts sat in my kitchen drinking tea and chatting about his find to my mother. I do have to admit that at this point I was getting a bit anxious to get up there and have a look for myself. So I did exactly that.

The entrance shaft contained a large pile of mud and boulders, someone had been busy! A couple of hours later, and we had carefully removed a large quantity of water washed boulders which were blocking the way on.

Squeezing through a tight and loose constriction, we entered a reasonable sized void within the collapse. The place seemed to breath as small draughts made their way through the ongoing choke. One spectacular feature was the water washed rock which hung down like a claw (see picture). We carried on digging for a while, before being joined by Al, and then leaving rapido style to catch last orders in the Quiet Woman, Earl Sterndale. The beer, as usual, was good and thoughts and plans were bounced back and forth regarding our next actions.

The following weeks saw various return trips where we dug in the bottom of the choke. I remember returning on one occasion and the place seemed to have grown somewhat! It appeared that Tony Revell had recently been down there having a look and teaching Dan how to hilti cap. Dan had subsequently returned with Alan for a practice. I think that he had got carried away somewhere along the lines!

Anyway, before long, the foot and mouth epidemic hit, and out of courtesy to the farmer, we left the place well alone.

The pictures in this article were taken on a recent return trip (October 2001), still an interesting place which John Taylor has kindly offered to survey - watch this space!