The first well documented explorations in Ease Gill took place in
1935/36 by Miss M. Greenwood and W. Fairbank of Morecambe and are
recorded in the official BSA records of that time. It was known that
Ease Gill was normally dry below Cow Dub, the dry waterfall in Upper
Ease Gill, and that the water sank in series of sinks upstream of
there. Greenwood and Fairbank located seven sinks upstream of here in
April 1936. The highest discovered sink led to the initial
exploration of Boundary Pot. The initial
short crawl was pushed under a daylight shaft to a series of choked
passages and a tight crawl which was not fully pushed until 1950 by
NPC (Bar Steward's Crawl). The third recorded downstream sink led to
a short fissure cave which again was not fully pushed
(Slit Sinks). The entrance to the forth sink
was dug out and led to a cave over 100ft long to a chamber and a
blocked crawl. This is now known as Corner
Sink. Sink Number 6 was also explored
(Swindon Hole) for several hundred feet.
Several other caves high up on the banks of the beck were noted. Sink
Number 7 was later to become known as Oxford
Pot.
The caves of Lower Ease Gill were first recorded and explored by
Henry H. Davis (1849, pp.23, 27) although he grossly exaggerated the
length as being over 80 yards before he was stopped by a pool.
Witches Cave. Today we know that the length
is more like 80ft! Several of the Lower Ease Gill Caves were recorded
by Balderston but it was not until 1936 that the BSA accurately
surveyed these caves; Leck Beck Head being
recorded as 700ft above sea level and Witches Cave some 100 ft long.
Here things rested for some ten years as the Second World War
intervened and most cavers were otherwise occupied.