Rumbling Hole

Rumbling Hole was mentioned in 1842 by Jonathan Otley in his A Descriptive Guide to the English Lakes, and Adjacent Mountains. Balderstone described the entrance shaft in detail in 1881 in Ingleton – Bygone and Present, and plumbed it at 150 ft. He thought it an impressive place: <blockquote>"There lay an abysmal gulf most certainly ; but its head was festooned with long and trailing, or rather pendant locks of ivy. One could have wished to have been so beauteously enwreathed. The verge was adorned with holly, hawthorn, and bilberry, whilst rocks and ledges were carpetted with moss, polypody, blechnum, and oxalis, as well as other plants"</blockquote> The first descent of the entrance shaft…

The entrance shaft descends some 50 m, and the way on is through the water descending from Rumbling Beck Cave above into a fault passage. Four further pitches descend into a chamber to a low canal passage. Upstream gets too low after some 60 metres, but downstream has been forced round some awkward bends and through some ducks into Rumbling Hole Inlet in Lost Johns' Cave. This section of cave is about 250 m long. An alternative route begins from a passage entered a few metres below the west end of the entrance shaft. These passages are, in the main, tighter and more complex than the main route, but the main passage descends an alternative set of pitches to a sump which is believed to be the…