Weathercote Cave

Weathercote Cave was first described in detail by Richard Pococke who undertook a tour of Yorkshire in 1751. He said that it was "one of the most extraordinary and scenes I have ever beheld". It was drawn to the public's attention in 1780 by John Hutton in an appendix to Thomas West's "A Guide to the Lakes", who described it as "the most surprising natural curiosity in the island of Great Britain". Thereafter, it became a destination for those seeking the picturesque, and is featured in most later guide books of the area. J. M. W. Turner visited the cave in 1808, and made a number of sketches and painted a view from the bottom, and in 1816 he returned when he painted the view from the top…

The entrance lies in the floor of the Chapel-le-Dale valley below the Hill Inn, and is enclosed by a substantial wall. A path leads from a doorway in the wall to the open shaft, some 61 m long and up to 15 m wide. The underground Winterscales Beck emerges from a passage at the north end, and falls some 20 m down the shaft. The top of the waterfall is overhung by a massive wedged boulder known as Mohammed's Coffin. The name is an allusion to the legend that through the use of magnets or lodestones, Mohammed's coffin was suspended in mid-air in his tomb in Mecca. At the near end of the shaft, a flight of 51 steps descends beneath a natural rock arch, to the bottom, where a number of short…