CHAPTER 8: The Greta Headwaters

128 Chapter 8: The Greta Headwaters
Anyway, let us be grateful, for if they
had so decided all of the Settle-Carlisle
line would be outside Loyne. However, we
should always remember that the “thrilling
story of this magnificent engineering
enterprise”, as Wainwright’s Walks in
Limestone Country puts it, involved a
few thousand people working here, under
appalling conditions, for six years (less
for the two hundred or so who died). The
Batty Green shantytown sounds jolly but it
must have been a hard, tough life here in the
cold, wet, muddy desolation. I hope that the
workers’ sacrifices were not in the cause of
some vainglorious adventure.
Today, we may admire the results of
their labours. The Batty Moss Viaduct is
the most spectacular of all the engineering
works on the Settle-Carlisle line and an
awesome sight from Whernside and other
vantage points. Its 24 arches are made
from local limestone and the embankment
from earth excavated from Bleamoor Tunnel. The
viaduct is 32m high and 400m long and the spans are
7m wide, with each sixth pier thickened to help prevent
collapse. Its gentle curve seems fully in keeping with the
surroundings, now that the shantytown has long gone.
Winterscales Beck makes its way intermittently
southwest, repeatedly disappearing through its limestone
bed and being re-created by resurgences, of which the
largest is from Gatekirk Cave. In summer much of its
bed will be dry but it is obvious from the erosion that
after heavy rain this is a ferocious torrent. In places,
one can stand in the dry bed and see debris in the trees
several metres above.
After Winterscales Beck disappears, a series of
potholes and caves continues its line until the emergence
of Chapel Beck below Chapel-le-Dale. Some of these
potholes are described in the overblown prose of John
Hutton, vicar of Burton-in-Kendal, who in 1780 wrote
a 49-page pamphlet considered to be the first-ever book
on caving. He considered Weathercote Cave to be “the
most surprising natural curiosity of the kind in the
island of Great Britain … a stupendous subterranean
cataract.” Hurtle Pot, however, was “one of the most
dismal prospects we had yet been presented with … [and
he viewed] with horror and astonishment its dreadful
aspect.”
Winterscales Beck near Winterscales Farm
Like many rural hamlets, Chapel-le-Dale is known
for its pub and its church. The Hill Inn was long regarded
as a rowdy base for potholers. St Leonard’s Church is a
more sombre resting place for the “many men, women
and children … who died through accident or disease
during the construction of the Settle-Carlisle railway and
who were buried in this churchyard”, as a millennium
year memorial plaque puts it. Sadly, the plaque does not
list the two hundred names given in the burial register.
A notice in the St Leonard’s Church porch
(Perhaps the boggards of Hurtle Pot - to which legend
attributes the strange noises that Hurtle Pot makes
when in flood - have been up to their tricks.)
This is Chapter 8 of The Land of the Lune (2nd edition), http://www.drakkar.co.uk/landofthelune.html, Copyright © 2010 John Self