Creswell Crags EarthCache

Creswell Crags is a spectacular limestone gorge, honeycombed with a network of caves and smaller fissures. Creswell Crags are famous for being the home of hunters during the last ice age 50,000 to 10,000 years ago and the only known site of Palaeolithic cave paintings in England. This multi-stage earthcache explores the geology and the history of the gorge.

A 3D rendered view of Creswell Crags 60,000 years ago

History of Creswell Crags

Creswell Crags lie within the Permian Cadeby Formation (once the Magnesian Limestone), where a wide ravine cuts through a low wooded ridge east of a small fault scarp. These limestone crags were formed when the great ice sheet, which stopped just north of Creswell melted and a huge river was formed which carved out the gorge and cave system as it raced downstream. It's worth noting that the lake which is here today was made in the 19th Century by the local Duke who owned the site; he also made good use of one of the caves and used it as his boat house. The stream here never ran underground, but restricted dissolution of the dolomitic rock has merely etched out fissures and rifts along joints that lie near the surface, and especially in those that open into gorge walls.

So the Creswell Crags are liberally punctured by caves along the walls on both sides of the stream; and all are short caverns, sealed by mud at the back, with dry floors and arched roofs. They made ideal dwelling caves for man or animal.

Following Anglian ice retreat, the Creswell caves were occupied mostly by hyenas - scavengers who would drag large chunks of carcasses back to their cave dens. Discarded bones survived inside the caves, thereby creating a collection of the remains of almost all the large animals that had been there in the Pleistocene. There were mammoths, woolly rhinoceros and reindeer from the colder periods, when glaciers occupied valleys not far to the north, while hippopotamus, horse and lion were left from times of warmer climates.

Bone-rich sediments were metres deep in some of the caves, and made quite decent “cave earth” floors for subsequent human occupations. During warmer interludes in the early Devensian, itinerant hunters periodically took shelter in the Creswell caves, leaving behind crude stone tools.

The Ochre Horse

Then, about 12,500 years ago, after the main Devensian cold stage was over, cave dwellers returned to Creswell’s rock shelters, especially those along the north side of the gorge where they could catch more of the warm sunshine. These were more sophisticated people; they were even into producing art. A fragment of rib bone, just 7 cm long and beautifully engraved with a horse’s head, is perhaps the most famous of the many artefacts that have led to the distinctive post-glacial culture being named the Creswellian. It was found in 1876 among the floor debris in the fancifully named Robin Hood’s Cave, which lies in the southern wall of the Creswell Crags, and is therefore likely to have been one of the occupied caves in Creswellian times.

A 3D rendered view of Creswell Crags 100 years ago.

Many years passed before the the next people entered into the caves and these were the Victorian antiquarians, who relished sites where they could excavate huge quantities of well-preserved bones from what had been simple hyena dens. In the southern wall of Creswell Crags, Church Hole was excavated in the 1870s. Removal of huge amounts of bones and debris lowered the entire cave floor by more than two metres, though still did not reach a rock floor. The cave walls of Creswellian times were therefore left out of reach up near the ceiling. The Victorians had seen nothing of interest on those walls, and later visitors could not get close to them.

The efforts of Creswellian artists were not seen or appreciated until 2003. Only then did a small group of specialists visit Church Hole during their nationwide search for cave art. They had a lucky break when one of them looked at just the right angle at a piece of wall that was side-lit by daylight from the entrance. Shadows picked out a few lines etched into the rock, which they recognised as the work of a bygone artist. They looked further, and found the remnants of more than a dozen artworks in that one entrance chamber. A bison and a stag, each two metres long, appear only as engraved outlines, while the distinctive beak of an ibis is cut deeper into a fine bas relief. But the relatively soft and friable dolomitic limestone has weathered badly in a cave chamber long open to the weather. Perhaps once the engraved lines were the outlines of paintings, but no colour survives.

The church hole engraving of an ibex - a goat-like animal.
The outline has been super-imposed as it is hard to spot on the picture.

In Church Hole you have to be shown the right spots and then need to look very carefully to see the cave art. Dating of a thin stalagmite coating that covers some of the engraved lines, and of associated charcoal, both indicate ages of about 12,000 years, so this is definitely Creswellian art, and it is the most northerly cave art yet found. Already significant, Creswell Crags is now a site of even greater note, and a landmark within the East Midlands.

Visitor Information

Following the 2003 cave painting discovery the site was regenerated. A new visitor centre was built, a road through the gorge diverted and the crags are now a dedicated country park with SSSI status. Therefore, please respect the area when you visit, many thanks to Natural England for allowing the placement of this earthcache. The caves are all closed with locked grills to conserve the important archaeological history. The gorge is open all the time with public footpaths through. Tours of the caves take place at weekends and local school holidays.

The most significant caves are –

·         Mother Grundy's Parlour which has produced numerous flint tools and split bones and was occupied until Mesolithic times.

·         Robin Hood's Cave, the location of a bone engraved with a horse's head and evidence that its occupants hunted and trapped woolly rhinoceros and Arctic hare.

·         The Pin Hole, the location of the Pinhole Cave Man, a human figure engraved on bone and discovered in the 1920s, and an ivory pin with etched lines.

·         Church Hole with more than 80 engravings on its walls and occupied intermittently until Roman times.

Questions to Answer

To log a find on this earthcache you need to take a walk around Creswell Crags and answer the questions below. Please then send me the answers (ideally using the e-mail option rather than the new messenger option). You should send your answers at the same time as logging your find, or within a few days. If your answers are not received within a week of your find being logged I would have little choice to delete it, however, I would contact you first.

Relevant waypoints for the question locations have been provided, but there are many other caves and crags you will see as you walk around so do please look at them all. Although there are a number of questions, all of them should be fairly straightforward to answer. I have rated the terrain as 1 because I believe all stages of the earthcache are wheelchair accessible. You cannot get to the cave entrances with a wheelchair, however, you should be able to answer all the questions from the main paths.

Questions 1 - 3 need to be answered whilst visiting the gorge, the other questions could be answered from the visitor centre or notice boards but can also be easily researched at home.

1. Using your GPSr take an altitude reading at Boat House Cave. Then take another reading when you reach Dog Hole at the western end of the gorge. What is the difference in height and what does this tell you about the formation of the gorge?
2. Church Hole Cave is one of the larger caves. Estimate the size of cave entrance (height / width). Also, estimate the total height of the limestone crag at this point.
3. As you have walked around what would you estimate was the highest point in the gorge and roughly where did you find it (the closest cave)? Is there a big difference in the height of the gorge generally or not?
4. ​Explain how and why this unusual collection of caves and crags formed in this gorge? What natural element was responsible and what effect did it have on the rock to cause this to happen?
5. Why does the natural element you have identified above have this effect on limestone?
6. The Devensian age is often more popularly known by what name? This should be easy to research.
7. Who came up with the term ‘Creswellian culture’ and in what year? Again, this information should be easy to research.

The last two questions have been asked purely to increase your understanding of the text above.

It would be further evidence of your visit to include a photograph or yourself or your GPSr somewhere at Creswell Crags. Please include photographs if you wish of any interesting caves or crags you pass. The inclusive of photographs is optional.