Beneath

They still dream dreams here of a savannah-land: 
The cave echoes to lion-growl, 
hyena-cackle in the dark.
Deep time. 
Above, in the sunlit world, the day moves on: 
sheep graze, hikers pass; 
A lark spirals, singing, into the clear high sky.  

				

About

In the hills above Settle, there is a cave. Climb out of the town, heading north towards Langcliffe on an old sheep track; swing east when you meet the road. Just past the old sheepfold, turn south, heading back on yourself through a steep fold in the hills. The track is narrow, running alongside a wall. The hills rise above you on your left-hand side. If a burbling reaches your ears, stop and look up, until you can find a dot in the sky. Skylarks nest up here, on the sheep-grazed ground, and the males rise straight up into the sky in noisy display flight.

Maybe, whilst you’re looking up, you see a cave.

The entrance is a dark hole in the limestone, cut in the Victorian period as part of its excavation. They called it after their monarch and empress, as they did everything in the nineteenth century – Victoria Cave. In archaeology, it’s moderately famous. The sediments discovered there stretch from the Roman period back to 130,000 years ago. Bones of hyena, hippo, and elephant were found there, remnants of an almost-unimaginable Yorkshire past. The United Kingdom was an upland peninsula off the continent of Europe, still attached by the great plains of Doggerland. Global temperature was, on average, a few degrees higher than today. Neanderthals co-existed with modern humans. Hyenas scavenged the bones of narrow-nosed rhinoceros in the Yorkshire Dales, and brought them back to their den to gnaw upon.

The cold came and went. At its height, ice sheets covered the cave and the remains of the hyena den. 12,000 years ago, a cave bear came in from the autumn chill and went to sleep for the winter. It never woke. A few years later – maybe ten, maybe a thousand – a person dropped a spear point made of reindeer antler. Time passed. The Romans visited. Then us.

Victoria Cave today has been fully excavated. There’s not much to see, and what there is is now in the Craven Museum in Skipton. But maybe the rocks hold the memory, maybe the depths of the earth still echo with animal growls. Maybe if you stand still and listen closely, you can hear the sound of the past.