Devis Hole Mine

Last night we drove up to Swaledale and after dropping our stuff off at the Low Row Bunk House, where we were staying for the weekend, we joined Brian Potts and Pete Wagstaff in the Buck Hotel at Reeth just as local caver and mine explorer and also Orpheus member, Pete Roe, arrived.

In the morning, the remainder of our group for the day, Keith and Phil Walker, also arrived just as we finished breakfast not long after 09:00.

Once Pete Roe had also returned, we drove the short distance to a track where we parked up and got changed into caving gear while Pete Roe tried out a deck chair he had brought in his land rover!

The walk to Devis Hole Mine's entrance was quite short and we all carried short lengths of wood to bring into the mine for Pete as they would be needed to shore up his dig.

The entrance was a square excavated shaft near the stream bed with a cover and about 3 meters deep. We clambered down the shaft which was a bit slippery with remaining traces of the recent snow. It was an early start, for the Orpheus, as it was only 10:45!

This led to a short wet and muddy crawl and then walking passage with sections of stooping height passage with a few junctions.

There were odd remnants of old mining artefacts here and there and we eventually arrived at a large shaft (or “sump” in mining terminology which had a few bolts on the adjoining wall as belay anchor and an old iron rail laid across the top to which a sling could be attached to provide a rebelay immediately over the shaft.

Keith dropped down first and went second.

We dropped down about 15 metres to a passage which led from the shaft. The shaft continued but was below but was flooded and there were two crossed old iron rails arranged level with the passageway to assist in getting off the rope and into the passage.

There were actually two adjacent passages here, and once everyone was down the pitch, we followed the left-hand passage which had an in-situ rail track for ore tubs. There was sign placed here requesting that you walk on the rails in order to preserve the clog prints left behind long ago gy the miners who worked down there but Pete told us that the sign had been ignore and the clog prints had been obliterated a long time ago.

Pete pointed out various features and the names of other passages as we passed them.

We arrived at a section of natural limestone cave which the miners had broken into. This area was a literal maze of passage (which Phil had called “an amazing maze”, to coin a phrase!) and had sparkling sections of gypsum crystals, various type of fossils including the best fossil coral I have ever seen and pieces of chert.

After making our way through the maze, we arrived in another mine which adjoined the natural cave.

We continued on through this mine and eventually arrived at a short section with unstable rocks and a gap through which you had to pass and drop a short way down. Pete had warned us to take care here and it looked like I would be able to get through with no problems but I may have problems coming back and might thrash about a bit which was a bad idea. So I opted to wait here while the others continued on to Graffiti Corner, which was only 10 minutes away there were back after 20 minutes.

We had a short rest here and then began the return journey to the surface.

We returned to the maze section and took a slightly different route through and then basically reversed our route back to the entrance after an excellent and interesting trip, reaching the surface at around 16:45 after around 6 hours underground.

We said our “good-byes” to Pete as he had something arranged for the evening and later we all returned to the Buck Inn in Reeth for an evening meal along with Mike Child who had arrived in the evening.