379 
A YORESHIRE’ DENE’ HOLE: 
T. SHEPPARD, M.Sc., F.G.S. 
Tue Hull Corporation has recently purchased what is known 
as the Cottingham Castle Estate* at Cottingham, near Hull, for 
the purpose of a sanatorium. With the object of obtaining 
chalk for the roads, a disused chalk quarry on the hill top near 
the road leading from Willerby to Skidby was opened out. 
When the rubbish which covered the old quarry tace had 
been cleared away, the entrance to a cave was found at a 
depth of 13 feet from the surface. This was 5 feet high, 
the floor of the cave being 18 feet deep. At the entrance was 
a heap of chalk rubbish, which had accumulated in it some 
time previously. It is necessary to scramble down this before 
reaching the level floor, which is a distance of about 40 feet 
from the entrance, and at a depth of 7 feet below the quarry, 
or approximately 25 feet from the surface of the ground. 
This entrance tunnel varies from 5 feet to 63 feet in width, 
and is 9 feet g inches high. It then bifurcates, the two branches 
meeting again at a distance of about 4o feet, and from this 
tunnel “three shafts are driven in different directions. The 
tunnel and shafts vary from 4 feet to 6 feet in width. 
Over most of the excavation there is a fairly thick bed of 
hard chalk, forming a roof, which is about 15 feet below the 
surface of the ground. Nothing was iound in the excavation 
beyond some branches of trees and pieces of wood, which, 
however, were quite rotten, and almost fell to dust on being 
touched. 
In different places the chalk has been blacked by lamps or 
candles, and various signatures of earlier visitors, dating from 
1848 to 1854, occurred. 
On looking at the section outside the entrance there is a 
bed, 9 feet or over, of reddish boulder clay (Hessle Clay), 
containing few pebbles, mostly of chalk. Occasionally a Lake 
District Andesite or Carboniferous sandstone occurred. The 
clay is blue-jointed, but is remarkable for its great thickness at 
its position at the top of the hill. Below the clay is a bed of 
rubble or grut, about a foot in thickness, composed of sand and 
chalk mixed together. This is very hard, and has to be re- 
moved by crowbar and pickaxe. 
Below this for three or four feet the chalk is much crushed 
and ground by the action of the moving ice which deposited the 
boulder clay. Below this again the chalk is fairly hard and in 
beds about a foot in thickness, with here and there a band of 
*This must not be confused with the old Cottingham Castle of the Wake 
family, which was within the village itself. 
1915 Dec. 1. 
