Swinsto Hole, Kingsdale

THE CARBONIFEROUS Limestone outcrops of the English Pennines support extensive and spectacular glaciokarst landscapes (Sweeting, 1966). Within these areas, drainage is almost entirely underground via numerous cave systems, the greatest number of which lie in the Ingleborough area of northwest Yorkshire (Waltham, 1970). The morphologies and origins of those caves divide them into a number of types, and the study of their development is complicated by the fact that few cave systems are known in their entirety. Some segments have been eroded away, and others are blocked by sediment or permanently filled with water. This has led to debate where hypothetical models have been constructed in attempts to incorporate or distinguish different genetic forms of cave. Recent work in Kingsdale (lying 4 km north of Ingleton) has seen the mapping of a complete underground hydrological system, from a sink at Swinsto Hole to a flooded resurgence at Keld Head (Fig. 1). This is unique in that it is a major system completely explored from sink to rising, and yet it typifies cave development in the Yorkshire limestones by containing all the major different genetic cave types, including an extensive active phreas. The active and fossil conduits are also remarkably free from collapse, and their modes of formation are therefore more easily interpreted. Consequently it is proposed as a type example of cave development, in Yorkshire but also applicable to other karst regions with similar limestone structures. Kingsdale is a southerly draining glacial trough valley which was excavated in Pleistocene times. It is cut into the 170 m-thick Great Scar Limestone which dips north at a few degrees. On each side of the valley, broad limestone benches mark the top of the Great Scar Series, and above them slopes of mainly shale rise to the summits of Gragareth on the west and Whernside on the east. The gently graded valley floor is cut nearly to the base of the limestone, exposed behind the waterfall of Thornton Force at the mouth of Kingsdale. At the top of the limestone benches, numerous streams sink close to the limestone-shale margin, and all their waters flow to the single valley floor resurgence, Keld Head. Swinsto Hole is one of these stream sinks on the western side of Kingsdale. The cave passages between Swinsto Hole and the Keld Head resurgence are only part of a more complex and extensive cave system (Waltham and Brook, 1980), whose existence does not detract from the value of the Swinsto Hole and Keld Head model but merely adds the dimension of subterranean dendritic drainage

Archaeology · Cave · Geochemistry · Geography · Type (biology · Geology · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Karst Systems and Hydrogeology · Landslides and related hazards · Paleontology