In a recent television programme, entitled Secret Britain, Matt Baker and Julia Bradbury visited limestone caves in Yorkshire. Some of our Craven underground systems lost the element of secrecy well over two centuries ago when a Kendal parson named John Hutton ventured into them and wrote “Tour to the Caves” as an appendix to his guide to the Lake District. Dr Bill Mitchell, of Giggleswick, writes about tourists who daringly went to ground following a local guide equipped with “lanthorn, tinderbox and candle”. Today, non-potholers should confine themselves to the show caves.

Thomas Pennant, antiquarian, was among the visitors to Limestone Craven in the 1770s, a period associated with the Romantic Age. Pennant, having toured the Lake District, took a close look at Ingleborough. He did not have time to set foot on the mountain, but was told “it was well worth the traveller’s attention on account of the immense caverns it abounds with”.

John Hutton, a Kendal parson, was the first visitor to take caves seriously. Hutton wrote a book about his experiences which was published in 1781. Well-versed in classical writings, he could quote verses from Virgil, Ovid, Addison and Milton.

The cave had been kept at the back of the mind of such writers as a special piece of scenery. (Not so the vandals who, when caving, stripped handily-reached systems of their stalactites and stalagmites, which were sold as garden ornaments).

John Hutton visited a score of cave systems, actually entering some of them. He made a fundamental pronouncement about the marine origins of limestone. It had been laid down on the bed of a sea, composed of “the shells and other parts of fish”.

For his first cave visit, Hutton employed an Ingleton guide equipped with “candles, lanthorn, tinderbox, etc”. They entered the vast Yordas Cave, near the head of Kingsdale which, alas, had already been scarred and battered by vandals, who had defaced such imposing natural features, including those named Throne and Chapter-house, of “their pendent, petrified works, which had been some ages in forming”.

As tourism developed, Yordas Cave was linked on the tourist trail with Weathercote Cave, which lay in neighbouring Chapel-le-Dale. Hutton flamboyantly labelled Weathercote “the most surprising natural curiosity of the kind in the island of Great Britain.”

Today, the cave is not open to view, being on private land. Old prints show a flight of stone steps, a natural arch and, beyond, a spirited waterfall appearing from beneath an imposing block of stone named Mahommet’s Coffin.

At Yordas Cave, in about the year 1800, an old soldier named William Wilson, living at Ingleton, guided John Houseman, a well-known topographer, underground.

Houseman, apparently more fascinated by the cave guide than the surroundings, dealt more with his role as guide than with the appearance of the cave. Wilson “now places himself upon a fragment of the rock and strikes up his lights, consisting of six or eight candles put into as many holes of a stick; with each, by the help of a long pole fixed therein, he could illuminate a considerable space”.

Wilson, noted John Houseman, prepared and lit his tobacco-pipe, holding it in his mouth “with his flambeau in one hand and a staff in the other”. This was before his guests had the signal to march by.

Wilson, unsteady on his feet, had a minor accident. He and “his collection of luminaries” fell into what Houseman described as a brook, but is normally just a shallow watercourse crossing the floor of the cave. Wilson arose “without receiving much injury”.

JMW Turner, artist extraordinary, visited Weathercote Cave in 1808. The resultant painting included the vivid rainbow that, at midday in the height of summer, forms in the spray at the base of the waterfall, some 60 feet below ground level.

John Ruskin, Turner’s friend, was unimpressed by Weathercote, describing it as “the rottenest, deadliest, loneliest, horriblest place I ever saw in my life!”

Some of the finest illustrations of the “show” caves were the work of William Westall, who visited the area in 1817, making a dozen engravings, seven of them having Yordas and Weathercote as their subject. Westall worked at Yordas at a significant time. He drew the big, open cave mouth in the July of 1817. A few days later, the appearance of the entrance was dramatically changed as a consequence of a waterspout that burst on the fell above. “The torrent occasioned by it forced down great stones and masses of earth, which half filled the entrance to the cave.”

Henceforth, those who visited Yordas did so by torchlight. A woman’s view was provided by Priscilla Wakefield, whose visit to Chapel-le-Dale was to gather material for a section of a book she would entitle Family Tour through the British Empire (the 13th edition was published in 1829). She visited Hurtle Pot, which lies to the rear of Chapel-le-Dale church (and must be avoided by modern visitors).

To Priscilla it was horrible, gloomy and deep. She hurtled down a slope, slithering to the edge of a pool and was “near to losing my life, from a deception of sight caused by the shining of the sun from above on the surface of the deep, black water, which, reflecting the lower part of the surrounding rocks, appeared like a rugged bottom just beneath.”

A large black trout rose into view. She was on the point of stepping, as she thought, on the shallow bed or rock, to catch it, “but the guide happily stopped me, time enough to save me from inevitable destruction, for the water is of an unknown depth.”

The real caving era began in 1837 when, in September of that year, a vast extension to Clapham Cave, at the head of Clapdale, was exposed to view. The cave mouth, at the base of a 100-feet limestone cliff, had been known for years. Until 1837, it might be explored for 56 yards. When a thick stalagmitic barrier was demolished, and the torrent of water that was released had abated, men entered the new stretch by candlelight, tramping for half a mile towards the heart of Ingleborough. (Potholers, following constricted passages, were eventually to negotiate a passable link from the Gaping Gill system).

The first recorded potholers, as opposed to cavers, were John Birkett and William Metcalfe. The former, a Quaker living at Anley, near Settle, had a major interest in the Craven Bank. William Metcalfe, of Weathercote House, suffered from a deformity of his back, leaving Birkbeck to undertake the lion’s share of the exploration.

At first, much of their attention was on the potholes in the flanks of Penyghent. They then challenged Gaping Gill. In the early part of the century Birkbeck was lowered as far as the broad ledge. He was doubtless the first man to gaze into the vast main chamber. (A Frenchman called Martel, using rope and rope ladder, was the first to make the complete descent - and claim what was undoubtedly an honour).