The Land of the Lune

Chapter 8:  The Greta Headwaters

Ingleborough from Souther Scales

The River Greta (Chapel Beck) ...

Right: Batty Moss Viaduct

      Little Dale Beck absorbs Hare Gill and Foul Gutter from Blea Moor before crossing under the railway line, 1km north of the Ribblehead Viaduct, to become Winterscales Beck. This viaduct was originally called Batty Moss Viaduct, in keeping with the tradition of naming viaducts after what they cross (Dent Head, Arten Gill and Dandry Mire). Its renaming, along with that of Batty Green Station to Ribblehead Station, is a triumph for the tourist industry of Ribblesdale.
      The source of the Ribble is 8km north at Newby Head in Widdale. Standing under the viaduct, it is hard to tell whether water will flow southwest to the Lune or southeast to the Ribble, precisely because the viaduct was built over the watershed. If anything, it looks more downhill to the southwest and, certainly, the largest beck of any size that is close to the viaduct is Winterscales Beck, which flows to the Lune.
      It is too late to claim the viaduct for the Lune but there is every justification for calling it Batty Moss Viaduct, as I will, not least because its actual existence here may be a little batty. The Settle-Carlisle railway line is now absorbed into the romance of the Dales and we may marvel at the skill and energy that produced the scenic section from Batty Moss Viaduct to Dandrymire Viaduct, via Bleamoor Tunnel, Dent Head Viaduct, Artengill Viaduct and Risehill Tunnel. But we might pause to ask: Why? Why was it necessary?
      Imagine yourself to be a railway engineer in 1870, standing at Selside in Ribblesdale. The Settle-Carlisle line will proceed north up Ribblesdale and south below Wild Boar Fell. How would you bridge the gap? Would you go over the watershed to Dentdale and then out again to Garsdale rather than through Widdale (the present B6255 route), knowing that the line from Hawes to Garsdale, completed in 1878, was already planned? I am not a railway engineer but it seems to me that this route requires no large viaducts and no tunnels.
      Anyway, let us be grateful, for if they had so decided all of the Settle-Carlisle line would be outside Loyne. However, we should always remember that the “thrilling story of this magnificent engineering enterprise”, as Wainwright’s Walks in Limestone Country puts it, involved a few thousand people working here, under appalling conditions, for six years (less for the two hundred or so who died). The Batty Green shantytown sounds jolly but it must have been a hard, tough life here in the cold, wet, muddy desolation. I hope that the workers’ sacrifices were not in the cause of some vainglorious adventure.

Left: Winterscales Beck near Winterscales Farm

      Today, we may admire the results of their labours. The Batty Moss Viaduct is the most spectacular of all the engineering works on the Settle-Carlisle line and an awesome sight from Whernside and other vantage points. Its 24 arches are made from local limestone and the embankment from earth excavated from Bleamoor Tunnel. The viaduct is 32m high and 400m long and the spans are 7m wide, with each sixth pier thickened to help prevent collapse. Its gentle curve seems fully in keeping with the surroundings, now that the shantytown has long gone.
      Winterscales Beck makes its way intermittently southwest, repeatedly disappearing through its limestone bed and being re-created by resurgences, of which the largest is from Gatekirk Cave. In summer much of its bed will be dry but it is obvious from the erosion that after heavy rain this is a ferocious torrent. In places, one can stand in the dry bed and see debris in the trees several metres above.
      After Winterscales Beck disappears, a series of potholes and caves continues its line until the emergence of Chapel Beck below Chapel-le-Dale. Some of these potholes are described in the overblown prose of John Hutton, vicar of Burton-in-Kendal, who in 1780 wrote a 49-page pamphlet considered to be the first-ever book on caving. He considered Weathercote Cave to be “the most surprising natural curiosity of the kind in the island of Great Britain … a stupendous subterranean cataract.” Hurtle Pot, however, was “one of the most dismal prospects we had yet been presented with … [and he viewed] with horror and astonishment its dreadful aspect.”
      Like many rural hamlets, Chapel-le-Dale is known for its pub and its church. The Hill Inn was long regarded as a rowdy base for potholers. St Leonard’s Church is a more sombre resting place for the “many men, women and children … who died through accident or disease during the construction of the Settle-Carlisle railway and who were buried in this churchyard”, as a millennium year memorial plaque puts it. Sadly, the plaque does not list the two hundred names given in the burial register. The church itself is neat, with mullioned windows and bellcot, built in the 17th century and restored in 1869.

      Above Chapel-le-Dale soars Ingleborough, the supreme peak of the Yorkshire Dales. Although second in height to Whernside, its isolated location and proud profile make it seem higher from almost every direction. Its position at the head of the Greta and Wenning valleys means that it oversees, and can be seen from, much of Loyne.

Ingleborough from White Scars

      Its name alludes, perhaps fortuitously, to two early roles. The word ‘ingle’ is from an old Gaelic word for fire and no doubt, because of its domineering position, Ingleborough was often in the past the site of a beacon. The ‘borough’ (as we saw with Low Borrowbridge and Over Burrow) may be associated with an old fortification. In fact, the Ordnance Survey is bold enough to mark ‘fort’ on its map. The fort is variously believed to have been built by the Romans, by the Brigantes (against the Romans) and by pre-Roman Iron Age settlers. But David Johnson, in his 2008 book on Ingleborough, doubts that it was a fort at all. He does not consider that the remains of the wall, which some call ramparts, that run round the rim of the summit plateau are substantial enough to indicate any defensive role. Also, the lack of water on the plateau makes it an implausible defensive retreat.
      This fact also leads Johnson to doubt that the score or so of circular remains that can be seen on the plateau are those of hut circles, as is usually stated. Ancient people were hardy, but not necessarily masochistic, as they would need to have been to choose to live here, completely exposed to the elements, of which there are many on the top of Ingleborough. He considers the remains to be those of ring cairns and that in ancient times the top of Ingleborough served symbolic or ceremonial functions rather than military or residential ones. Much like today, in fact.

Left: Ingleborough top (with no people!)

      These ancient remains should not be confused with the great pile of stones on the western rim. This was a hospice-cum-tower-cum-shooting-box. It was left to fall into ruin after damage was caused at a boisterous opening ceremony in 1830. Recalling this event in the Lancaster Guardian in 1897, Joseph Carr described the tower as “one of the wonders of Lunesdale” – note the Lunesdale. Still standing is the cross-shaped wind shelter erected in 1953. This provides endless entertainment for, sitting in one quarter, one cannot help eavesdropping on conversations in the other three quarters. These are often disputes over the identification of distant peaks. One can hardly intrude to point out the view indicator in the middle of the cross.
      Ingleborough’s distinctive profile is a consequence of its geology, which is similar to that of Whernside and Wild Boar Fell. The top 30m or so are of hardwearing millstone grit. This sits atop 250m of conglomerate rocks (the Yoredale series), mainly shales and sandstones, with a little limestone, all covered with peat except where exposed on the crags. Below this is a 200m layer of limestone (the Great Scar limestone), which is visible on the lower slopes of the mountain. These are all sedimentary rocks of the Carboniferous period that have not been distorted much from their horizontal layers. Below the 250m contour are the much older Silurian slates and grits, which have been folded and contorted. And the whole has been much shaped by glacial action.

Right: Whernside and the Batty Moss Viaduct from below The Arks, Ingleborough

      Some of the western slopes of Ingleborough and Simon Fell form a National Nature Reserve, although at the moment it is more a matter of reversing nature than of reserving it. Previously the land had been fertilised and over-grazed, preventing the growth of wildflowers and trees. The moorland areas are now being managed to restore lost acid-loving plants such as ling heather and bilberry, to join plants such as bog asphodel and purple moor-grass. The grazing regime on the limestone grasslands is intended to enable the flowering of different plants through the seasons: purple wild thyme, orchids, yellow rockrose, harebell, and so on. Within the grikes many woodland plants flourish but now trees and shrubs (ash, elm, hawthorn, hazel, sycamore) also have a chance to thrive. This process has been supported by the Dales-wide Limestone Country Project, which was partly funded by the EU and ran from 2003 to 2008. The aim was to improve biodiversity by moving from sheep-intensive farming towards mixed farming using hardy upland cattle breeds, such as the Blue Grey and Highland cattle that may be seen at High Howeth on the western slopes of Ingleborough.
      To the north, Scar Close has been protected for longer and gives an idea of the clint-and-grike flora before wood clearance and over-grazing. Ash, hazel and rowan trees have become established. Further north, the raised terrace of Howrake Rocks has formed a prominent rectangle of woodland, showing how different the Yorkshire Dales would look if left to revert to its natural state.
      Above the limestone terraces, there is a line of caves and potholes where becks running off the fells disappear underground. Great Douk Cave and Middle Washfold Caves are popular with novice cavers. Braithwaite Wife Hole (which Thos Johnson and Harry Speight, in their 19th century guides, rendered more intriguingly as Barefoot Wives Hole) is a huge shakehole, 60m in diameter. Raven Scar Cave, only discovered in 1971, was found to be a Neolithic burial site. Meregill Hole is 170m deep, with the mere that gives the pot its name visible 12m down – or so they say. The sound of a waterfall below, when the beck above was dry, was enough for me.
      There is a line of springs, particularly clearly seen after rain, in the green fields below Twisleton Scars, where the limestone meets the impermeable lower layer. Below God’s Bridge, several resurgences can be seen entering Chapel Beck – or in summer creating Chapel Beck, for then the bed is dry above the bridge. God’s Bridge, incidentally, is traditionally a name that denotes a natural, as opposed to man-made or devil-made, bridge but here it has been sacrilegiously cemented over.
      Chapel Beck runs below Oddie’s Lane, which is along the line of a Roman road that ran from Bainbridge to near Ingleton and then probably to join the road at Over Burrow. On the east bank is the site of the disused Ingleton Granite Quarry. It is, in fact, not granite at all but greywacke, an impure sandstone with a toughness that made it a valued stone for roads.

Right: Beezley Falls

      As Chapel Beck flows gently south-east, on the left a building comes into view that delivers exactly what it says on its roof, that is, caves – to be precise, the White Scar Caves. By the time Chapel Beck crosses the footpath from Beezleys it is wide and docile enough to require nearly fifty stepping-stones to cross. But it is only girding its loins for a tumultuous fall through Baxenghyll Gorge, including impressive cascades at Beezley Falls, Rival Falls and Snow Falls, between which the water lies black-brown in deep pools.
      The glen is a Site of Special Scientific Interest because of its geology and associated flora. It is also designated an Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland, ancient in this context being defined as pre-1600. Ancient woodland is scarce locally because of grazing but much of this glen is inaccessible to sheep or cattle, enabling oak and birch, with occasional hazel, holly and rowan, to flourish on the acidic soils that overlie the Silurian slate. The woodlands are also important for their mosses and liverworts, which thrive in dark gullies, and ground plants such as wood rush, dog’s mercury and wild garlic.
      The path alongside the falls provides views of several disused slate quarries, while from high to the east the stone-crushing noise of Skirwith Quarry may well intrude. This quarry continues to mine the Ingleton Granite previously mined upstream.
      As Chapel Beck emerges from the wooded glen it passes through the remains of Mealbank Quarry. It contains probably the thickest coal seam within an English limestone sequence, and the sediments are rich in fossils yet to be fully understood. The quarry also has the ruins of England’s first Hoffmann kiln, which operated from 1864 to 1909. This kiln had a literally revolutionary design, whereby material was burned in a continuous horizontal loop, rather than tipped into a vertical furnace.
      On the outskirts of Ingleton, Chapel Beck passes an outdoor swimming pool that a plaque proudly informs us has been ranked the 52nd such pool in the world. Just before the viaduct for the old Lowgill-Clapham line Chapel Beck is joined by Kingsdale Beck to form the River Greta.

Kingsdale Beck

Kingsdale and Whernside

Thornton Force

Ingleborough from Tow Scar

    © John Self, Drakkar Press