The discovery of hundreds of so-called ‘witches marks’ in a cave at Creswell Crags has recently been announced. Creswell caves are already known for some of the most northerly palaeolithic cave art in Europen but this discovery (or rather the realisation that they weren’t just graffiti from Victorian visitors) looks to be the biggest single collection of such marks in Britain.
 
These marks, strictly called apotopaic marks, include hundreds of letters, symbols and patterns carved, scratched and carved into the rock walls, specifically to give protection against witches or demons, to cancel curses and to avert the ‘evil eye’. In Britain they most usually date from the 15^th to 17^th centuries (when fears about witchcraft were most prevalent) but the idea of apotropaic magic - and thus the power of charms, magic symbols, ritual behaviours and votive offerings to avoid directed evil, or just plain bad luck - has been going strong for thousands of years.

Here’s the Press Release (15 Feb 2019) - The largest discovery of witch marks in Britain at Creswell Crags

…and here are some of the actual marks scratched into the walls of the cave.
 
 

 
Witches marks are known throughout Britain (and indeed Europe) where they are usually in buildings and particularly located to protect potential entry ways where witches or demons at least might be able to get in: doors and windows certainly, but also chimneys, cellars and wells etc.
 
I am aware of a few similar marks being identified a few years ago in Wookey Hole and Goatchurch Cavern (both well-known caves in Somerset) and also some possible marks in old Derbyshire lead mines particularly where mining activities broke into natural caverns. It is of course problematic distinguishing witches marks from the graffiti of casual visitors and tourists, or indeed ordinary miner’s survey, claim and tally marks. But thinking about it, and seeing the huge number of marks just in the Creswell cave (which isn’t particularly large) I’m surprised such marks are not more common in other caves or associated with similar prominent karstic features such as open potholes, dolines, resurgences and springs. (Or perhaps they are and, as until recently was the case at Creswell, they just haven’t been recognised for what they are?)  
 
The few known (to date) caves containing such marks are all what one would call open horizontal caves, fairly readily enterable without specialist equipment (other than a light). However many well-known, open, yet more impenetrable, caves and potholes have also long been associated with Satan, Hell, demons, fairies, goblins and witches. For example in the Yorkshire Dales there are several caves called Witches Cave or similar; there are many caves/pots that were known for the mysterious deep rumbling, gurgling, tapping sounds that echoed up from the depths and that were widely ascribed to boggarts, goblins or fairies; and there are open shafts that were popularly said to be entrances leading direct to Hell, such as Alum Pot (previously know variously as Alan Pot, Helln Pot, Hellen Pot).
 
In Derbyshire, as well as the caves at Creswell, there’s the large cave entrance of Giant’s Hole; the prominent Thors Cave (the name is a corruption of the Norse þyrs, meaning a type of goblin); there’s the 55m deep impenetrable pit of Eldon Hole (another shaft widely believed to descend direct to Hell); and there’s the large cave entrance of Peak Cavern, which was for centuries known as 'The Devil’s Arse' (until coyly renamed in 1880 for the visit of Queen Victoria). Again some caves, such as Peak Cavern are fairly readily enterable (indeed the wide entrance to Peak Cavern housed a rope works and the home of the family that worked it, until 1915) but many of the open potholes on the fells are palpably dangerous, impenetrable places (malevolent boggarts or demons aside). Most of the deep potholes were only first descended – at least intentionally and with an eye to getting back out – towards the end of the 19^th century.
 
Just to illustrate how impressive, fearsome and awe-inspiring some of these natural potholes are, here are a few of the better-known examples:
 
Alum Pot: the impressive entrance shaft  is 60m deep, albeit with a wide ledge about halfway  down, and the whole cave then descends on down further shafts to over 100m depth. Alum Pot was first descended successfully - using a bosun’s chair, a windlass, and a team of strong navvies - only in 1847.
 

 
Hurtle Pot is not nearly so deep but the bottom is fully occupied by a deep, sinister-looking pool, whose water level can fluctuate wildly and rapidly while sometimes emitting booming noises. It is supposedly inhabited by a particularly malevolent boggart who waylays travellers on the adjacent road and then drowns them in the deep pool.
 

 
Hunt Pot is an evil-looking vertical slit 30m deep. The name was once Thund Pot, presumably derived from þundr from the Old English denoting the roar of thunder.
 

 
Very close to Hunt Pot is Hull Pot, only 18m deep but 90m long and 20m wide. The old name is Thirl Pot derived from the northern dialect of the Old english, þyrel , meaning simply a hole, hollow or cavity.
 

 
In contrast to the quarry-like opening of Hull Pot, Long Kin West Pot is a small, unassuming L-shaped rift in a patch of bare limestone pavement, narrow enough to be casually stepped over … just don’t miss your footing as it’s a five second, 120m sheer drop to the bottom.
 

 
Or the grand-daddy of them all, Gaping Gill (or Gaper Gill). Here it is not advisable to try and look directly down the shaft … if you were to slip on the smooth, water-worn rocks at the lip, you would have have a full four and a half seconds of free-fall to consider your folly before you finally hit the rocky floor 360 feet/110m down.
 




... or looking up from the floor 110m below:


 
So given the impressive nature of many of these caves and potholes, the rumours and legends associated with them, and the obvious awe and fear they likely engendered in those who, however cautiously, dared approach, I’m surprised witches marks do not appear more often.
 
Or perhaps they do but just haven’t yet been recognised for what they are;
 
Comments anyone?

Another aspect to all this is whether the witches marks – both in caves or more generally in homes, barns, byres, stables, cellars etc. were associated with any particular rituals .. when they were first made, at dangerous times of the year (eg on All Hallow’s Eve) or when it was felt their magic needed to be renewed? Indeed when one considers caves in particular, why go in there at all, unless it was specifically to either drive the demons out or to try and keep them bottled up in their hole?

Throwing tokens or gifts into pools and springs – either for good luck, or to avoid bad luck - is culturally common, as evidenced by the piles of ready cash dredged annually from even man-made springs such as the fountains in Trafalgar Square in London or the Trevi Fountain in Rome. People also still seem complelled to toss a pebble or two into potholes, whether for luck or simple curiosity, regardless of the hazard to any cavers who might be exploring below. Going back into history, hundreds of votive offerings have been recovered from the Roman spring at Bath, and even earlier there’s the Pre-Roman 'celtic' practice of casting weapons and jewellery into specific, watery places, which is well attested by archaeology (eg all the iron-age weapons, coins and jewellery dredged from the Thames around London Bridge, or the similar offerings cast into the river Witham near Lincoln, but only at very specific places, within the whole ritual/religious landscape). Remember also the legend of King Arthur and the significance of the Lady of the Lake and her control of kingly power/authority through Excalibur.

I wonder then, were caves and potholes similarly used in this ritual/religious way?  It is certainly not hard to see that a prominent open pothole swallowing a stream could be seen to combine the elements of earth, water and air, and as being some sort of magical point of access to the spirit world, no?

The Yorkshire Dales were really only cleared of trees when they were increasingly used for sheep from the middle ages onwards, and so it could be argued that many open potholes were hidden in broadleaf forest or at least dense scrub (today after centuries of the fells being used for sheep grazing, trees of any size are often only to be found around the shafts of potholes where they have been able to grow, perched somewhat precariously over stygian depths, but at least safe from being munched) . But the biggest and most impressive sites must have been long known. Gaping Gill is just over a kilometre from the prominent, long-maintained iron-age Brigantean hill fort on the top of Ingleborough (the site was also possibly later used as a Roman signal station too). They must have known about the nearby mysterious 'bottomless' hole in the ground where Fell Beck - or whatever they called it, but it’s a sizeable stream at which they likely watered their animals especially when they took the easiest and most direct route up the hill from the south - ,just disappears down a hole, swallowed up by the earth.

Similarly the huge open shaft of Rowten Pot was evidently known to the Norse descendants who farmed the Kingsdale valley (the dael, ie valley, where the kyen, cows, were kept). The farm/hamlet of Braida Garth (literally 'big/broad farm' – and it’s still a working farm) on the east side of the valley is directly opposite Rowten Pot on the west, and less than a kilometre distant. It was probably the inhabitants of Braida Garth, or their neighbours either further up or down the valley, who at at some time in the ninth, tenth or eleventh centuries, gave Rowten Pot (or Rowting Pot or Routing Pot) it’s name - using the Old Norse adjective rauta, meaning a roaring sound, but particularly that of the sea, a river or a waterfall.


Rowten Pot

Does anyone know of any written, or archaeological, or whatever, evidence for the ritual use of potholes?

Really interesting posts, MM - I just wish I knew something about the subject! Superb photos, too.

I hope this isn't a daft question, but is there any evidence that these places - especially the ones that were never explored until the last century - were once used as places of execution? I wonder if, way, way back, outcasts were literally "cast" into these fearsome gaps and holes? If so, there would be a fear and a horror associated with them, as there still is in remote country areas (even today) about the crossroads where men were hung and their bodies left to rot. Just an idea and, as I said above, possibly an utterly daft one. Have (ancient) skeletons ever been found in the potholes?

How you used to explore these places I do not know - terrifying enough to venture into, even those without "witches' marks"!

PS Found this, but have absolutely no idea how reliable the site is. 


https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/kebokwes-cave-botswana-0011464

Witches and Evil Spirits in Kebokwe’s Cave

The caves are impressive in themselves and they are set in some beautiful and rugged scenery. This cavern is very spacious and has some impressive stalactites and rock formations. However, it is most famous for the part it played in Botswanan life and especially in the history of the Bakwena people. According to local folklore the cave was a place that was long associated with black magic and sorcery. One legend has it that witches and sorcerers were executed near the mouth of the cave. There is a rock which is called ‘execution rock’ where it is believed that they were killed on the orders of the local king or Kogis of the Bakwena.


From execution rock, the witch or wizard was flung to their deaths. One story recounted is that one condemned witch by the name of Kebokwe was thrown from execution rock but was able to use a spell to cushion her fall and survived. The cave is named after this fortunate witch. The local people also believe that dark spirits, who have taken the form of monstrous serpents, live in the depths of the cavern. Traditionally, many Bakwena people have been wary of visiting the caves and the surrounding hills because of these serpents.

Temperance and MM,

I started to look a bit around about the context not only of caves, but as I knew from the Chinese, Indian, Jewish, Christian signs at the entrances also  more for a general entry...
And after looking first to the BBC entry about the case, which is in concordance with MM's,
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-47242603
I found in my eyes this interesting general study.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/215561621_Reminders_of_home_A_survey_of_the_semiotic_signs_related_to_human_dwelling-places
"A survey of the semiotic signs related to human dwelling-places" thesis by Tami Satcliffe for a Californian university.
I started to read it and I agree it is a bit academic, but from my former reading from you I thought to understand that you will be interested as it goes on the first sight also about the relationship of the individual with oneself. And I thought that you alluded to it in your reply to nordmann in the Holocaust thread...
Temperance, I have only some hours in the evening to read the entries, books and compose my messages (and in English and in French as a Dutch speaking one). For the rest I have the typical family "business".
All that to say that I will need some time to "absorb" the whole book before giving comments.
But I think it will be interesting for you, as for Priscilla and MM...and perhaps nordmann too (that was teasing )
And of course many times I lose a lot of time with futilities as yesterday my search for "tabbaard, night gown, caleçon,"kamerjas" (salon shirt, "vest?")...

MM, your interest in caves, is that a remaining of your own...how do you call it again? I recall that you once told us, that you together with a group was closed up in a cave...coincidentally we had here last week an experienced (and now I recall the term ) speleologue, remaining some two days in a narrow tunnel trapped because of a fall and they had to widen the tunnel to pass with the stretcher...

Kind regards to both from Paul.

Temperance wrote:

I hope this isn't a daft question, but is there any evidence that these places - especially the ones that were never explored until the last century - were once used as places of execution?

I wondered about that too, I also wondered if they might have been used for ritual sacrifice, in much the way that some of the preserved bog bodies seem likely to have ended up in bogs. Human skeletal remains, dating from all sorts of ages from the paleolithic up to Romano-British times are known from enterable horizontal caves (as opposed to vertical potholes) but most of these seem to have been deliberate burials, sometimes accompanied with grave goods, and that in itself suggests that caves were seen as special, spiritual places - besides also being simply places of refuge or even just a convenient place to set up home. From memory there was one iron-age skeleton found, in Scoska Cave in Yorkshire I think it was, which was identified as being of a youngish woman who had suffered a serious, deliberately-inflicted skull wound and had then been either dumped in the cave or had managed to crawl there herself before expiring, as the body was not neatly laid out but curled up in a corner.

I'm unaware of any human remains - or ritual offerings for that matter - being found at the bottom of vertical potholes. However potholes are not the best places for the long term preservation of remains as they often take active streams, and the streams, rather than depositing nice gooey anoxic mud (great for preserving things), tend rather to wash in stones. Deep potholes are however generally immune from the activities of scavanging animals or grave robbers. That said I don't think anyone has really tried to dig into the talus cone of rubble, stones and fallen branches, plus the occasional dead sheep, that typically covers the floor of most open potholes.

In the past potholes were often seen as convenient places to dump dead livestock, until it became realised that in caves water is not really filtered but rather flows rapidly through the rock to resurge lower down the hillside. Consequently dumping animal carcasses down potholes on the hills wasn't a good idea as it served to pollute the water emerging from springs along the valley floor which were where the farms tended to be. But potholes have certainly served as convenient places to dump human bodies out of sight. The French caver, Robert De Joly, in his 'Memoirs of a Speleologist' mentions a couple of cases where he was involved in recovering the bodies of people who had been shot by the Nazis and then dumped down deep potholes, and I can well see any such places acquiring the reputation as places of ill omen. And in terms of these places being remembered, the Grotte de la Luire in the French Vercors, which was used as a field hospital by the Resistance and was the site of a massacre/atrocity by the Nazis, while nowadays being a showcave with the usual calcite formations has also become a place of memorial for the Resistance.

The legends of malevolent cave-dwelling boggarts often have them trying to lure be-nighted travellers to their doom in the boggarts 'home' pothole. I wonder if this aspect of the tale is partly folk memory of long-past accidents or crimes where someone once ended up dead and their body unrecoverable down a pothole. Certainly the idea of the boggart being the restless spirit of someone who had died in this way occurs several times in fiction. Even nowadays open potholes do still occasionally claim the lives of passing hill-walkers and tourists, either through them being lost in fog or snow, or simply slipping while trying to take a selfie.

Temperance wrote:

Witches and Evil Spirits in Kebokwe’s Cave

https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/kebokwes-cave-botswana-0011464

Further to your mention of the witches and evil spirits in Kebokwe’s Cave ... the Maya of Central America certainly saw cenotes (classic limestone potholes but now partly flooded by a risen water-table) as being sacred sites into which the bodies of their sacrificial victims were deposited, along with other offerings in gold, obsidian, shell, pottery etc.

Here's the sacred Cenote Xtoloc at Chichen Iza:




And while we're talking about bodies down potholes ... somewhat closer to home is Noon's Hole (or Noone's Hole) in Fermanagh (Ireland) which has an impressive 80m entrance shaft - albeit fairly modestly hidden amongst trees, ferns and mossy boulders - that was previously called simply the 'Sumera' meaning 'abyss'. It was generally considered as "bottomless" and was duly regarded by locals with supernatural suspicion and fear. The cave gained its current name and some notoriety in the 1820s following the murder of Dominick Noone whose body was thrown into the cave.

From wiki:
Dominick Noone was originally from the Ballinamore area in the east of County Leitrim. Whilst in Derrygonnelly, he became a member of an illegal Catholic organisation known as the Ribbonmen, an agrarian reform group, but subsequently became an informer for the British Crown. It was on his evidence in 1826 that a number of fellow members were 'transported' to Australia. Despite police protection, he was invited to a wedding party, but then kidnapped and murdered and his body thrown down into the depths of the Sumera. The authorities suspected that his body lay in the shaft, and a man named Cavanagh from Castlecoole, a townland on the outskirts of Enniskillen, accepted a substantial reward to descend the shaft in a rope and creel. Noone's body was found at a depth of 190 feet (58m), and retrieved [his body must have been on a ledge, the complete shaft wasn't descended until 1912]. The body was then carried to a chapel for a wake but local people blocked the doorway preventing entrance. The murderers of Noone were never caught despite the offer of a £100 award.

In 1879 a long ballad was composed about the event. The penultimate verse goes:

Within the mountain nature made,
A deep and dismal cave,
That suited well the murderers said,
To be a traitor's grave,
They flung the lifeless body below -
A groan they thought it gave.

Noon's Hole ... the unassuming entrance; about halfway down; and to give some sense of scale, in vertical section the shaft is compared to Belfast City Hall.

   

The mention of hawthorn trees over on the 'Known and unknown trees ...' thread (n'er cast a clout 'til May is out), made me think of Clootie wells ... that is wells or springs, almost always with a prominent tree growing beside them, where strips of cloth or rags are left tied to the branches of the tree as part of a healing or rememberance ritual (a 'clout' or 'cloot' being a strip of cloth or rag.) The practice of tying rags to trees at special ritual sites (which still goes on today judging by the new-ness of the cloths) is very much like the ancient pre-Christian practice of leaving votive offerings in wells or pits.


Clooties tied on a tree near the Madron Well in Cornwall.

I see little practical difference between tying a clootie on a tree next to a spring, and tossing a coin 'for good luck' into a spring or well. And further I see little difference between tossing a votive offering, such as a coin, into say, the prominent and much-visited resurgence pool in the manicured gardens next to Wells Cathedral (note the city's name, although be aware that like the nearby city of Bath, Wells was a 'Celtic' then Roman religious site, long before it acquired its first Christian church and its current, Saxon, name) ... to throwing the same coin, or a similar offering into the rather lesser-known but equally impressive and indeed rather more forbidding resurgence of Keld Head, located in the remote wilds of the Yorkshire Dales.  


The karstic resurgence adjacent to Wells Cathedral.


The karstic resurgence of Keld Head in Kingsdale. 

Like the spring at Wells the prominent pool at Keld Head has no surface streams flowing into it, but nevertheless has a fairly substantial river flowing out. At Keld Head the water in the resurgence pool is often clear enough to see a large gaping cave mouth underwater, leading off under the hill. It's quite a spooky place despite being located just a few metres from a minor road, which although these days doesn't even seem to have B-road status, was at one time an important drove route for moving animal herds over the moors. This ancient road leads eventually via a remote pass over the fells, into Cumberland, and I can well envisage many a traveller tossing a coin or other offering into the pool whist offering up an earnest prayer for their safe voyage over what was until recently a fairly hazardous route (and even today, although metalled, the road is just single-track, unfenced and sometimes blocked by snow in winter).

Keld Head is the resurgence for several prominent potholes on the moors above (Rowten Pot, mentioned above being one of them). So again, as a ritual or spiritual site, I see little difference between the prominent place where water 'miraculously' emerges from the earth, and that where it suddenly and mysteriously disappears underground.

Having been born and raised in Sussex, I'm rather embarrassed to admit that I've only just come across knucker holes. These are unassuming pools along the Sussex coastal plain at the foot of the South Downs, that never run dry, never freeze, and are supposedly 'bottomless'. Moreover each one is said to be the home of a knucker (or nucker) - a dangerous water monster.

The word comes from the Old English, nicor, and it crops up several times in the OE epic poem, 'Beowulf'. For example, when Beowulf first arrives at Hrothgar's hall he describes how, in addition to his other accomplishments, he has 'killed nicors in the sea waves', so here it might have been intended to mean whales, orcas, walruses or even the mysterious kraken. Later on however the monsterous giant Grendel is also described as a nicor, and his lair, a deep pool in 'the wasteland, the fen and fastnesses', as his nicor-hus.

The OE nicor would seem to be cognate with the nykr, nec, nokk, nix, nixie, nixy, nokken and other similar names of Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Estonian and German folklore, where they all refer to types of malevolent goblins, demons or monsters typically associated with water. These often appear as beguiling maidens (like the Lorrelei in the Rhine) or wizened old men or crones, and also sometimes as carnivorous horses (like the Scottish kelpie) although they are usually capable of changing at will between all these forms. Sussex knuckers are a little different as their form seems to always be as a reptilian dragon or monstrous snake. Dragons and large serpents often feature in Sussex folklore but although real snakes are not uncommon in the county they are no larger than elsewhere, however I wonder if the prevalence of dragon stories was initiated by the discovery of large fossil dinosaur bones in the rocks of the Sussex Weald long before they were formally brought to scientific attention in the early 19th century.

So far I have only discovered the whereabouts of five knucker holes in Sussex all located between the River Arun in the west and the River Adur, 25km to the east. Two of these knucker holes now seem to have been lost amongst modern road schemes, drainage systems and general urban development (one was under what is now the Ham Bridge trading estate near East Worthing railway station, while the other was close to the existing 'Sussex Pad' inn on the A27 just beyond the northern boundary of Shoreham airport). However the other three still exist and appear largely unchanged from centuries ago.

The three existing knucker holes are those at Binsted, Lyminster and Sompting:


Binsted knucker hole.


Lyminster knucker hole.


Sompting knucker hole.

As can be seen these look like fairly unassuming field ponds, however they are surprisingly deep. That at Lyminster has been dived to about 10m depth while the one at Sompting was dredged in 2014 to 5m deep (the limit of the mechanical digger's arm) with no solid floor being found. Amongst items dredged up at Sompting were some worked flints and a few bits of pottery, which it is tempting to imagine might have been medieval offerings to appease the monster, but may just come from a Victorian villager disposing of his empties.



The profile, depth and the fact that they rapidly refill if drained and never run dry, suggests to me that they are flooded sink holes formed by solution of the underlying chalk rock, with the subsequent collapse/erosion of the overlying clay and alluvium, and constantly fed with water welling up from the underlying chalk aquifer. Unlike in the Great Scar limestone country of the Yorkshire Dales, open caves and potholes are not a major feature of chalk countryside as chalk is generally too soft and easily eroded, but they do exist. For example there is a small cave about a 150m long in the chalk cliffs at Beachy Head. This is a natural solution cave formed by percolating ground water and certainly not from erosion by the sea as its entrance is about about 5m above high tide level and it ends in a small freshwater pool with the passage continuing underwater but too small to enter. There are also several dry collapse sinkholes at Mickleham near Box Hill in Surrey, associated with the River Mole, a tributary of the Thames, where it partially disappears down fissures in the river bed as it cuts its way through the chalk ridge of the North Downs. The 'blue clay' mentioned in the sketch above I take to be London Clay formation, which in this area overlies the chalk (unconformably) and outcrops at several places along the Sussex coast (in particular on the foreshore just a km or so to the south of both Sompting and East Worthing) although it is rarely seen as it's usually covered over by sand and shingle piled up on the beaches by the action of the sea.

It also might be significant that all three of these knucker holes are within a stone's throw of a very old church: the churches at Binsted, Lyminster and Sompting all have 11th century Saxon origins. It's likely, as with say the large spring adjacent to Wells cathedral in Somerset, which was a pre-Roman religious site, that these mysterious pools also have a long religious association, possibly dating from well before Christian times. Of course it could be argued that a permanent spring of fresh water is simply a good place to establish a settlement, however these knucker pools are not really ideal as domestic water sources as they are quite hazardous to approach whether by thirsty animals or humans. Here's the pool at Sompting before it was cleaned out in 2014:



Remember that this small pond is actually over 5m deep, with a steep-sided, funnel shape and, before it was cleared out, the deceptively 'solid' banks actually comprised a raft of compacted dead reeds that were effectively floating on the water surface. Perhaps that's why the legends of the malevolent water monster, ever ready to drag the unwary down into his watery lair, have persisted so long - as a warning to keep well away.

Fascinating stuff - had never heard of the expression before.

In Norway, as you said, the equivalent would be "nøkk", a supernatural creature associated with water, particularly rivers, and which indeed has a reputation for luring people in the dark to a sorry end through accidental drowning. It does it through unnatural screeching - the person instinctively running in the opposite direction straight into a water hazard. To "holde ansikt mot nøkken" (turn towards the source of the screech) is therefore an expression meaning it is better to face one's fears than run from them.

I did some asking around, MM, and found a marvellously close parallel here in Norway. A friend who teaches geology in Blindern informs me that some areas, particularly Telemark, are dotted with what people used to call "nøkkehull" (holes of the "nøkke") and which today some people still refer to as "nøkkelhull" (key holes) - a great example of how language develops as much through mishearing things as from actually understanding things.

These are in fact pot-holes, or more precisely kettle-holes, formed at the end of an ice age when a calved glacial segment gets marooned in an area where it eventually becomes surrounded by sediment and other detritus while its one-time parents retreat. When this sediment becomes rock and the calved glacial bit within it melts then one is left with a cavern or, more usually, a partial cavern as the weaker sedimentary rock above it collapses. If this then fills with precipitation, or even melt-water from a subsequent ice age (some of these are incredibly old) then the result is what looks like a tiny pond, or even a puddle, but which is in fact an entrance into a much larger and deeper underground reservoir.

They are incredibly treacherous at particular times of the year, especially spring time when snow and ice cover begins to melt and they are indistinguishable from surrounding solid terrain. Larger examples of them are found around the Northern Hemisphere, but because of Norway's particular terrain areas feeding sediment along narrow valleys down to sea level tend to produce smaller apertures over narrower and deeper reservoirs, situated exactly along the very same routes people and livestock use when moving between winter and summer habitation so - inevitably - encountered frequently enough for their deadly nature to have entered folklore.

Smoo Cave, Durness in Sutherland, geologically an interesting cave as the front cavern was formed by the action of seawater, while caverns two and three were created by freshwater:



Folklore associates the cave with the Devil, the 1st Lord Reay reputedly got the better of a witch in an encounter in the cave, forcing the witch to provide a faerie construction workforce. The faeries proved to be workaholics, so Lord Reay had them build a sand bridge across the Pentland Firth, impossible as the current kept sweeping the sand away.

400 years ago the sinkhole above the second cavern was the supposed place where highwayman Donald McMurdo dumped his 18 victims. McMurdo himself is buried nearby at Balnakeil



In the mid 18th century, two Excisemen were killed in the cave while searching for illicit stills. The boatman, almost certainly involved in whisky making, rowed them into the falls and capsized the boat, while he himself, a strong swimmer, escaped unscathed.

The name is believed to derive from the Old Norse "smuga", meaning a hiding place.

Triceratops wrote:

The name is believed to derive from the Old Norse "smuga", meaning a hiding place.

... which is, I think, the same etymological root for the modern English verb, 'to smuggle'.

nordmann wrote:

I did some asking around, MM, and found a marvellously close parallel here in Norway. A friend who teaches geology in Blindern informs me that some areas, particularly Telemark, are dotted with what people used to call "nøkkehull" (holes of the "nøkke") and which today some people still refer to as "nøkkelhull" (key holes) - a great example of how language develops as much through mishearing things as from actually understanding things.

These are in fact pot-holes, or more precisely kettle-holes, formed at the end of an ice age when a calved glacial segment gets marooned in an area where it eventually becomes surrounded by sediment and other detritus while its one-time parents retreat. When this sediment becomes rock and the calved glacial bit within it melts then one is left with a cavern or, more usually, a partial cavern as the weaker sedimentary rock above it collapses. If this then fills with precipitation, or even melt-water from a subsequent ice age (some of these are incredibly old) then the result is what looks like a tiny pond, or even a puddle, but which is in fact an entrance into a much larger and deeper underground reservoir.

Thanks for your comment and for taking the trouble to ask your geologist friend. I've seen an online article (albeit concerned more with folklore than geology) which suggested that the Sussex knucker holes were also kettle holes formed when masses of glacial ice, calved off the retreating ice sheet, became buried in alluvial deposits. However, in the case of the Sussex Knucker holes I don't think this can be the correct origin

At its maximum extent, which was during the Anglian advance of 480,000 ya, the ice sheet extended no further south than just north of the current Thames valley. What is now the county of Sussex was never glaciated, although it was an area of permafrost with persistent snow caps on the tops of the South and North Downs, and on the sandstone ridges of the High Weald between them. The Sussex knucker holes are all along the junction of the South Downs and the coastal plain (which was of course considerably broader during periods of ice advance due to a lower sea level) and so where they are located was shielded by these uplands from post-glacial floods when the ice sheet melted. I think that what distinguishes these distinctively deep Sussex knucker holes from all the other shallow springs that abound along the base of the South Downs is due to the dip of the permeable chalk and that it is sandwiched between two impermeable clay formations: older Gault Clay below and the younger clays of the Reading and London Clay formations above. Here's my simple sketch of the situation as I see it:


A schematic South-North section through the South Downs with simplified stratigraphy. Note that I have greatly exaggerated the vertical scale and so the true dip is generally only a few degrees from horizontal.

To the north, the base of the steep scarp slope of the downs forms a prominent spring line where the water table is forced to the surface by the impermeable Gault Clay, for example the powerful spring at Fulking.


The prominent spring next to the 'Shepherd and Dog' pub at Fulking. The natural spring is now contained in a basin with a pumphouse to the side which was once used to raise the water up to a tank in order to give sufficient head of water to feed the whole village, but originally the water just flowed out of the hillside and ran away in a stream northwards with very little by way of a natural pond.

On the southern, more gently inclined dip slope of the Downs, there is again a line of springs where the chalk aquifer dips under overlying sands and clays of the Reading and London Clay formations, as well as more recent alluvial deposits on the top. By contrast to the north side of the Downs, here the springs are generally not so clearly defined being often just boggy areas in woodland from which sluggish streams flow away southwards across the flat coastal plain to the sea a few km away. The knucker holes here, few in number as they are, are rather different again and I think that is because they were formed as sinkholes collapsing into solution fissures and cavities in the underlying chalk. As such they are more or less directly connected to the chalk aquifer and that would explain why they are particularly deep and also why they never run dry.

Two other points.

To the north-east of Lewes in East Sussex there's another powerful spring which has been referred to as a knucker hole: I don't know if it has a specific local name and it doesn't as far as I can see have a legend linking it to a resident monster. But the geologic situation is essentially the same as the others, with the spring being in alluvial deposits but right at the foot of the chalk downs. This one seems to be particularly powerful, again probably because it taps directly into the chalk aquifer, although I can't find out if its particularly deep or indeed where it is exactly.


The spring near Lewes which is described as a knucker hole on the Tingle's Way web page.

The name knucker - or similar forms such as nucker, nicker, nickor etc, - occasionally crops up throughout England particularly for distinctive or forbidding pools. Some of these may be similar in structure to the Sussex knucker holes, others may be glacial-remnant kettle holes, some true karstic resurgences, while others may owe their origins to yet other reasons. For example there's a Nykarpole, Nychar-pool or Nicarpool at Lincoln which was located at the junction of the Sincil Dyke and the Great Gowt (canalised streams that have become absorbed into the overall canal/flood prevention systems that, ever since the Romans first dug the Foss Dyke to link the rivers Trent and Witham, have developed into the city's substantial inland docks) and so this particular Nicar-pool was presumably, at least in part, man-made. The name was first recorded in 1409 but probably derives from older legends, and it is interesting that it is close to the area of ancient waterways and fens around the river Witham, which recent archaeological excavations have shown was once an extensive pre-Roman landscape of artificial causeways linking specific pools where votive offerings were ritually cast into the watery depths.

Meles meles wrote:

The name knucker - or similar forms such as nucker, nicker, nickor etc, - occasionally crops up throughout England particularly for distinctive or forbidding pools. Some of these may be similar in structure to the Sussex knucker holes, others may be glacial-remnant kettle holes, some true karstic resurgences, while others may owe their origins to yet other reasons. For example there's a Nykarpole, Nychar-pool or Nicarpool at Lincoln which was located at the junction of the Sincil Dyke and the Great Gowt (canalised streams that have become absorbed into the overall canal/flood prevention systems that, ever since the Romans first dug the Foss Dyke to link the rivers Trent and Witham, have developed into the city's substantial inland docks) and so this particular Nicar-pool was presumably, at least in part, man-made. The name was first recorded in 1409 but probably derives from older legends, and it is interesting that it is close to the area of ancient waterways and fens around the river Witham, which recent archaeological excavations have shown was once an extensive pre-Roman landscape of artificial causeways linking specific pools where votive offerings were ritually cast into the watery depths.

Fenlands do seem like unlikely locations for caves and this is generally true yet there are indeed caves in the vicinity of the Fens. These tend to be man-made, however, such as Grimes Graves the Neolithic flint workings near Thetford at the eastern edge of the Fens and Royston Cave in Hertfordshire at the western edge. The location of Royston Cave is intriguing because it lies where Icknield Way and Ermine Street meet. Ermine Street is a Roman road and Icknield Way is an ancient pathway which literally dates back to the mists of time and prehistory. The 1888 Local Government Act moved the administrative boundary between Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire a few hundred yards north so as to bring all of Royston within Hertfordshire. Previously the chalk ridgeway, along which Icknield Way winds its way, had also marked the county boundary and thus bisected the town right down the middle. The location is significant both in terms of human geography and physical geology.

The cave was unearthed in the 18th Century after having been filled in at an earlier unknown date. Dug out of the chalk escarpment, probably around the same time as Grimes Graves, it was found to include wall carvings of indeterminate age although they’re generally believed to be mediaeval. Some of the carvings give the dates of years in the 14th Century and depict Christian symbols, military imagery and also possibly heathen icons. There is a female grotesque or ‘sheila-na-gig’, the significance of which is unclear. Suggestions range from heathen goddess to fertility icon to chastity guardian to warder against evil etc.
   
The Fens have a long been associated with witchcraft. North of Royston is Warboys in Huntingdonshire scene of a witchcraft trial in 1593 in which the use of the word ‘yet’ was deemed sufficient to condemn the accused. A middling family, the Throckmortons from Worcestershire had moved into the village in the autumn of 1589 soon after which their daughters began to fall ill with sneezing fits and spasms. One might suggest that this was merely a case of fenland autumn ague but the girls themselves claimed to have been hexed by a local woman Alice Samuel. As the new squire in the village, Mr Throckmorton turned for advice to his patron Sir Henry Cromwell a member of the local gentry. If his name sounds familiar then that’s no co-incidence. Henry was the nephew of a Lord Chamberlain and also the grandfather of a Lord Protector (yes, those Cromwells). His wife Susan sought to use her good standing in the community to mediate in the case but herself fell ill after a meeting with Alice and died. During the meeting, however, Alice was overheard to have said to Lady Cromwell – “Madam, why do you use me thus? I never did you any harm as yet." Those unwise words would see Alice Samuel hanged.
   


(Warboys Town Football Club logo featuring an image of a witch)

The aforementioned 1888 Local Government Act would see 3 of the smallest administrative counties in England all lined up together – Rutland, the Soke of Peterborough and the Isle of Ely. While Rutland had always been its own county, Peterborough now seceded from Northamptonshire while Ely seceded from Cambridgeshire. Peterborough and Ely, however, had long established rights of self-governance and the act merely gave de jure status was was already a de facto state of affairs. Located right in the middle of the Fens, the city of Ely is surrounded by villages and hamlets the very names of which would raise the hairs on the back of the neck of anyone familiar with terms relating to witchcraft – Wardy Hill, Coveney, Witcham, Witchford, Prickwillow, Chittering and Wicken. One wouldn’t want to get lost along those misty, fenland lanes on a dark night in late October.

As you say natural caves are few and far between in Hertforshire and indeed much of south-eastern England but there are quite a few deneholes; mysterious vertical shafts that descend through surface loam, clays and sands, into the chalk rock underneath. The shafts are typically up to about 20m deep and a couple of metres in diameter and then often bell out at the bottom to form a sizeable chamber carved in the chalk. Deneholes occur in a belt across southern England where chalk rock is hidden at shallow depth beneath more recent surface deposits, with the majority being in Essex and Kent, although they are also to be found (or at least the surface traces of them) in Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Surrey, Berkshire and Wiltshire.

They all seem to be man-made, often with steps having been cut in the walls to allow access and sometimes with pick marks evident in the walls and roof at the bottom. It has long been debated what their function might have been, with suggestions that they were flint mines (although the chalk where they were dug often contains little flint), animal traps, were for storage or refuge in times of strife, or were associated with smuggling or other illicit activities, However the consensus now is that they were dug to extract chalk to be spread on fields to improve soil fertility, the process being known as marling, or to be burnt to make lime for cement. Most of the existing deneholes seem to date from the middle ages when marling was a common agricultural practice, although archaeological evidence shows that at least some deneholes were being exploited during prehistory. The name is most likely from the Old English, den, meaning simply a hole or hollow in the ground, but locally this has often been corrupted into danehole, frequently with some supposed link to Viking invaders. Other deneholes have legends associating them with the fabled gold mines of Cunobeline, the 1st century "King of the Britons" (those near Thurrock in Essex), the first arrival of the Saxons (Vortigern's Caves at Margate) or the religious rituals of the Druids (at Chislehurst caves in Kent).

Here's the denehole in Hangman's Wood near Thurrock in Essex:



... and that at Darenth Wood near Dartford in Kent:

   

I have little personal experience of deneholes except for a few in Hertfordshire. In May 1986 when I was at Imperial College, we, that is the caving club, were contacted by Hertfordshire Police CID to investigate several holes and wells in connection with the case of Mrs Ann Lock, who had recently gone missing after leaving work in central London, and whose bicycle had been dumped close to the railway station at Brookman's Park in Hertfordshire where she lived. Needless to say we didn't find her (her body was later found on a railway embankment) but it was nevertheless an interesting afternoon with the police, going down deneholes and poking around other underground sites. In the Yorkshire Dales open potholes are fairly common out on the fells ... but it was a surprise for me to discover these completely unfenced, gaping 20-metre deep vertical shafts - lurking in lightly-wooded copses and obscured by no more than nettles, brambles and scrubby ash saplings - next to well-trodden footpaths, and close housing estates and playing fields in London's commuter belt.

Another site we investigated with Hertfordshire CID that day in 1986 was Water End at North Mymms, which is 6km north of the junction of the A1 with the M25 at Potters Bar and just a kilometre over the fields from Brookman's Park railway station (which was where Ann Lock's abandoned bicycle had been found in 1986).

Geologically Water End is interesting and rather unusual in that it is where an active stream (or actually two separate streams) sinks directly into the chalk into open swallow holes. At Water End the Mimmshall brook flowing northwards enters a wide shallow basin and sinks into fissures in the chalk. There are about fifteen sinks in total but three main ones. Meanwhile the Potterells Stream enters the same area from the North East and it too sinks into several swallow holes. The water from all these swallets has been dye-tested as flowing eastwards to finally emerge at a series of springs at Chadwell in Hertfordshire. These springs feed streams that flow into the River Lea (or since the 16th century partly into the artificial New River to provide drinking water to London) and so down the Lea Valley to finally enter the Thames at Tower Hamlets in East London. However in times of heavy rain the sinks at Water End cannot take all the water and the basin fills up to form a broad lake about 100m across and up to about 7m deep in places. This lake then overflows down a normally dry valley heading northwest to where eventually it flows into the River Colne and so then on westwards around London, to finally enter the Thames at Staines 30 km to the west of the city.

Here's a sketch map of the streams and swallow holes at Water End adapted from the North Mymms History Project: geology and landscape around Water End. You need to open the link to see the full key but I've coloured the surface streams in blue; the locations of the major sink holes as yellow dots; and the normally dry river overflow channel is the broken red line.



Most of the time there really isn't much to see at Water End other than several muddy hollows with the actual sink holes hidden under piles of flood debris (mud, leaves, branches and the inevitable piles of plastic rubbish) and obscured by waist-high reeds and nettles.


Water End sinkhole basin in dry weather (September 2008).

However when I was there (May 1986) I distinctly remember at least one swallet where you could clearly see the underlying chalk with the water flowing away into a narrow fissure in the solid rock. Whether the bedrock is still occasionally visible and if the basin still floods as spectacularly as previously might well have been affected by the recent construction of culverts and weirs to control the water levels and so reduce the risk of flood damage for properties in the the Mimmshall valley.

The swallets at Water End are immediately behind the pub in the village of North Mymms which was established there as a coaching stop on the Great North Road (which as its name suggests was the main coaching route from London northwards to York and thence on to Edinburgh). With the development of the A1(M) motorway, North Mymms has now been completely by-passed but in times past the phenomena of the mysterious disappearing streams and the suddenly appearing lake must have been well-known. I wonder what coins and other tokens or charms for good-luck used to be dropped down the fissures in the rock, or thrown into the swirling lake as it either rapidly flooded or just as rapidly drained away. I can't find any specific folklore associated with the swallets at Water End but Hertfordshire as a whole was known for its numerous holy and curative springs, but also for what were known as 'woe waters'. These were springs, streams and wells that were thought to presage sorrow to come in that they forecast calamities or disasters should they ever dry up, or alternatively for others, if they unexpectedly burst forth. With that in mind it would not be surprising for the watery phenomena at Water End be regarded with a degree of superstitious awe and careful respect.

Here's a youtube of a descent into Darenth Wood denehole. Actually acess is strictly restricted, hence the locked grill, as the site is an important roost for bats.

Deleted as pressed quote instead of edit because the formatting on this thread is completely bµg$ered up.

Merde, I've done it again.

Et encore ... pfft!

Anyone else been reading about the idea that's been put forward that some of the marks on the Lascaux cave paintings are a lunar calendar giving information about the fertility cycles of animals depicted there?  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jan/05/amateur-archaeologist-uncovers-ice-age-writing-system

Thanks for drawing my attention to that discovery LiR. It brings to mind several other prehistoric lunar calendars - if that is indeed what they are - carved onto pieces of animal bone found in the caves of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac (close to the Lascaux Cave) in Périgord, SW France. For example this one carved onto a small piece of reindeer bone, which some have interpreted as representing a tally counting the lunar cycle perhaps with even some attempt at representing the changing phases of the moon by either crescents or full dots:




Drawing after Marshack, A. 'Notation dans les Gravures du Paléolithique Supérieur' (1970).

Well done that amateur archaeologist for deducing that similar marks in paintings on cave walls were intended to be associated with the animal they are depicted with, and that they seem to represent a tally of the lunar months for the mating/birth cycles of specific prey animals. Although maybe it's a bit much to call it a "proto-writing system".

Here's another one that is very remarkably similar in both form and markings, found in the same system of caves. With the successive transverse lines of 6, 7 or 8 dots it is tempting to see it as counting nights for each phase of the moon, but that's probably just me trying to read far too much into it. Nevertheless it does appear to be tally of something.

That additional information is interesting, MM