Boxhead Pot facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Boxhead Pot |
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The Entrance to Boxhead Pot
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| Location | Leck Fell, Lancashire, England |
| OS grid | SD 67130 78337 |
| Depth | 105 metres (344 ft) |
| Length | about 10 metres (33 ft) |
| Elevation | 360 metres (1,180 ft) |
| Discovery | 1994 |
| Geology | Carboniferous limestone |
| Entrances | 1 |
| Hazards | verticality |
| Access | Unrestricted |
| Cave survey | cavemaps |
Boxhead Pot is an amazing cave located on Leck Fell in Lancashire, England. It's connected to Lost John's Cave, and together they are part of a huge underground network called the Three Counties System. This system is about 87 kilometers (54 miles) long and stretches across Cumbria, Lancashire, and North Yorkshire!
Contents
What is Boxhead Pot Like?
The entrance to Boxhead Pot is found in a deep hole in the ground called a 'shakehole'. This shakehole is about 30 meters (98 feet) south of another cave called Lost Pot.
From the entrance, you go straight down a narrow, vertical passage. This leads to the top of a 34-meter (112-foot) deep shaft. At the bottom of this shaft, there's a rocky ledge that isn't very stable.
Below that ledge, there's an even deeper shaft, about 68 meters (223 feet) deep! This large shaft takes you down to the very top part of Lost Johns' Cave. It's one of two big open spaces there, known as the NPC Avens.
How Was Boxhead Pot Formed?
The Rocks and Water Inside
Boxhead Pot is a type of cave called a solutional cave. This means it was formed by water dissolving rock over a very long time. The rock here is called Great Scar limestone, which formed during the Carboniferous period.
The cave's shape has been greatly influenced by a large vertical fault (a crack in the Earth's crust) and several other major cracks in the rock.
The water that flows through Boxhead Pot comes from small streams on the surface. This water then becomes the main source for the larger stream that flows through Lost Johns' Master Cave. Eventually, this water comes out of the ground at a spring called Leck Beck Head.
Ancient Passages
Today, the main exit for water at the bottom of Boxhead Pot is quite small. However, there are older, abandoned passages higher up, about 10 meters (33 feet) above the current floor. These are called the Tate Galleries.
Scientists believe that the deep shafts of Boxhead Pot were formed before the last Ice Age, known as the Devensian glaciation. They think these shafts originally drained through those older Tate Galleries passages.
Who Discovered Boxhead Pot?
Climbing from Below
The shafts of Boxhead Pot were first explored from the bottom up. This happened in the late 1980s when a caver named Mick Nunwick climbed them.
Finding the Entrance
Then, in the autumn of 1994, cavers from the Northern Cave Club found an open hole in a shakehole. This hole was unstable, but they managed to go down it. They ended up at the bottom of the NPC Avens, which are inside Lost Johns' Cave.
The cave was named Boxhead Pot to honor Alan Box. He was a member of their club who had sadly passed away in a Spanish cave the year before. The entrance to Boxhead Pot was made safer and more stable in 1995.
