| Blue John Cavern | |
|---|---|
 Blue John seams in the cavern | |
| Location | Castleton, Derbyshire England |
| Coordinates | 53°20′44″N1°48′13″W / 53.3456°N 1.8035°W |
| Geology | Blue John |
| Entrances | 1 |
The Blue John Cavern is one of the four show caves in Castleton, Derbyshire, England. [1] The others are Peak Cavern, Treak Cliff Cavern and Speedwell Cavern.
The cavern takes its name from the semi-precious mineral Blue John, which is still mined in small amounts outside the tourist season and made locally into jewellery. The deposit itself is about 250 million years old.
The miners who work the remaining seams are also the guides for underground public tours. The eight working seams are known as Twelve Vein, Old Dining Room, Bull Beef, New Dining Room, Five Vein, Organ Room, New Cavern and Landscape.
In 1865, Blue John Cavern was the site of the first use of magnesium to light a photograph underground. It was taken by Manchester photographer Alfred Brothers. [2]
In the UK Blue John, or "Derbyshire Spar", is found only in Blue John Cavern and the nearby Treak Cliff Cavern. It is a type of banded fluorite. The most common explanation for the name is that it derives from the French bleu-jaune, meaning 'blue-yellow', but other derivations have been suggested. [3]
"The Terror of Blue John Gap", a short horror story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was probably based on this cave.
In the late 1950s, the cavern was photographed in 3D by Stanley Long of VistaScreen, for sale at the souvenir booth and through mail order. [4]
The cavern was featured on the 2005 TV programme Seven Natural Wonders as one of the wonders of the Midlands. The cave and jewellery production of Blue John was featured in the 2010 series of How it's Made .
Blue John Cavern is also visited by a couple in the 2013 film Sightseers .
The Peak District is an upland area in England, at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire, it extends into Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire and includes the Dark Peak, moorland dominated by gritstone, and the White Peak, a limestone area with valleys and gorges. The Dark Peak forms an arc on the north, east and west sides; the White Peak covers central and southern tracts. The Peak District was the first of the national parks of England and Wales in 1951. The historic Peak District extends beyond the National Park, which excludes major towns, quarries and industrial areas. Nearby Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent, Derby and Sheffield send millions of visitors. Inhabited from the Mesolithic era, it shows evidence of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages. Settled by the Romans and Anglo-Saxons, it remained largely agricultural; mining arose in the Middle Ages. Richard Arkwright built cotton mills in the Industrial Revolution. As mining declined, quarrying grew. Tourism came with the railways, spurred by the landscape, spa towns and Castleton's show caves.
Mam Tor is a 517 m (1,696 ft) hill near Castleton in the High Peak of Derbyshire, England. Its name means "mother hill", so called because frequent landslips on its eastern face have resulted in a multitude of "mini-hills" beneath it. These landslips, which are caused by unstable lower layers of shale, also give the hill its alternative name of Shivering Mountain.
Castleton is a village in the High Peak district of Derbyshire, England, at the western end of the Hope Valley on the Peakshole Water, a tributary of the River Noe, between the Dark Peak to the north and the White Peak to the south. The population was 642 at the 2011 Census.
The Peak Cavern, also known as the Devil's Arse, is one of the four show caves in Castleton, Derbyshire, England. Peakshole Water flows through and out of the cave, which has the largest cave entrance in Britain.
Speedwell Cavern is one of the four show caves in Castleton, Derbyshire, England.
Treak Cliff Cavern is a show cave near Castleton in Derbyshire, England. It is part of the Castleton Site of Special Scientific Interest and one of only two sites where the ornamental mineral Blue John is still excavated. As part of an agreement with English Nature, the Blue John that can be seen in the show cave is not mined but it is extracted in small quantities from other areas of the cave and made into saleable items like bowls, jewellery, and ornaments.
Peakshole Water is a stream in the Derbyshire Peak District named after its source, Peak Cavern. It flows through the village of Castleton to join the River Noe in nearby Hope. Despite its name, much of its flow actually emerges from the Russet Well, a resurgence in a garden on the east side of the gorge below the main Peak Cavern entrance, described as the "main resurgence of the Castleton area", which drains a series of swallets on the other side of the Pennine watershed below Rushup Edge. The resurgence has been explored by cave divers to a depth of 82 feet (25 m) but further exploration was halted by a constriction.
Cave Dale is a dry limestone valley in the Derbyshire Peak District, England. It is located at grid reference SK149824. The northern end of the dale starts at the village of Castleton where the valley sides are almost perpendicular and over 50 metres (160 ft) in height. The dale rises gently after leaving Castleton for approximately 200 metres (220 yd) before becoming steeper culminating in a fine viewpoint down the dale taking in Peveril Castle with Lose Hill behind. After the viewpoint the dale swings west and levels out with gentle gradients, becoming just a shallow depression as it peters out onto the open pastureland between Castleton and Chapel-en-le-Frith.
Winnats Pass is a hill pass and limestone gorge in the Peak District of Derbyshire, England. The name is a corruption of 'wind gates' due to the swirling winds through the pass. It lies west of the village of Castleton, in the National Trust's High Peak Estate and the High Peak borough of Derbyshire. The road winds through a cleft, surrounded by high limestone ridges. At the foot of the pass is the entrance to Speedwell Cavern, a karst cave accessed through a flooded lead mine, and which is a popular tourist attraction.
Titan is a natural cavern near Castleton in the Derbyshire Peak District, and is the deepest shaft of any known cave in Britain, at 141.5 metres (464 ft). The existence of Titan was revealed in November 2006, following its discovery on 1 January 1999 after cavers discovered connections from the James Hall Over Engine Mine to both Speedwell Cavern and Peak Cavern. Previously, the deepest known underground shaft in Britain had been Gaping Gill on the slopes of Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales.
Oxlow Cavern is a part-natural and part-mined cavern near Castleton in Derbyshire, England. It is situated on the south side of the road running from the A623 at Sparrowpit to the Winnats Pass, west of Castleton, and is almost opposite Giant's Hole on the other side of the road. A few yards from Oxlow Cavern is the connecting Maskill Mine.
Odin Mine is a disused lead mine in the Peak District National Park, situated at grid reference SK133835. It lies on a site of 25 hectares near the village of Castleton, England. It is the oldest documented mine in Derbyshire and is thought to be one of the oldest lead mines in England. The mine is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and has biological and geological significance within the Castleton Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Eldon Hill is a hill in the Peak District National Park in the county of Derbyshire, England, 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) southwest of the village of Castleton. It is a 470-metre (1,540 ft) limestone hill whose pastureland is used for rough grazing, although a large proportion has been lost to limestone quarrying. It lies within the Castleton Site of Special Scientific Interest. Eldon Hill was formed when a bed of pure limestone was squeezed and upfolded by geological forces to form a dome; it is the highest limestone hill north of the River Wye.
Buxton Museum and Art Gallery focuses its collection on history, geology and archaeology primarily from the Peak District and Derbyshire.
Giant's Hole is a well-known cave near Castleton in Derbyshire, consisting mostly of large passages. It is a stream-way cave, and part of the Karst topography of the area.
Blue John is a semi-precious mineral, a rare form of fluorite with bands of a purple-blue or yellowish colour. In the UK it is found only at Blue John Cavern and Treak Cliff Cavern at Castleton in Derbyshire. During the 19th century, it was mined for its ornamental value, and mining continues on a small scale.
The Derbyshire Dome is a geological formation across mid-Derbyshire in England.
The Seven Wonders of the Peak were described in the 17th century by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his book De Mirabilibus Pecci: Being The Wonders of the Peak in Darby-shire, Commonly called The Devil's Arse of Peak. The wonders refer to places to visit in the Peak District of Derbyshire in England.
David Webb is an English filmmaker, caver and conservationist. He has produced over a dozen films about caving and mine exploration and has contributed articles to Descent magazine.
