Historically, the most comprehensive source of caving information for this area were the Northern Caves volumes, of which the third edition is still in preparation. However, these books only included basic surveys and no centreline data. There has been no comprehensive data project, as there is in many other countries, and as exists in Mendip.  However, there are active surveying projects contributing their work to the Cave Registry. We hope to extend this to cover all caves in the area, ideally by making use of already existing material as well as from new survey projects.

Three Counties Area

Ease Gill system

The Red Rose Caving and Potholing Club continues to work on its Ease Gill resurvey. You can purchase the completed sheets from their website and a copy of the raw centreline data is in the Cave Registry. The compiled Ease Gill, Leck Fell and Kingsdale data is available here as all.3d which is a Survex file.

Leck Fell caves

Together with Ease Gill, the Leck Fell Caves currently form the Three Counties System. The Misty Mountain Mud Mining Club has been resurveying caves such as Lost Johns', Notts Pot, Ireby Fell Cavern, Rift Pot and Large Pot, in order to help guide their digging activities and to document the gradual extension of the Three Counties system.  Several of the caves have been drawn up in Tunnel and these surveys are available to download here.

Kingsdale Area

A resurvey project covering the West Kingsdale System (link updated) has been running since 2007, led by Footleg. Though in June 2015 it's been separated out into its own  directory and handed over to Noel and his ULSA team (contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for details).

There is also the  East Kingsdale section as the The Misty Mountain Mud Mining Club had done some resurveys of Crescent and Illusion. Some diving data passing under the valley floor has been added.

All the data for this project is now in the Cave Registry and should be processable along with the Three Counties cave system (when it gets debugged).

The compiled Ease Gill, Leck Fell and Kingsdale data is available here as all.3d which is a Survex file.

Gaping Gill Area

A project to resurvey the Gaping Gill system and Ingleborough Cave was started in August 2013 by Kevin Dixon. This project includes the third longest cave system in Northern England.

Other areas

As described above, there are now active resurvey projects covering the three longest cave systems in Northern England (and extending to caves nearby to these systems). However, this still leaves many hundreds of caves with little or no survey documentation. In particular, centre line data is not available although there are historical surveys of many individual caves. Many of these historical surveys are available on the excellent CaveMaps.org.

If you, or anyone you know, has survey information (centre-line data, old survey notes, drawn up surveys, etc) from caves in Northern England that you are willing to be included in the Cave Registry then please do contact us, Julian and Becka ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

Managed by Julian Todd and Becka Lawson. Please contact us ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) if you have any questions or, better still, if you have survey information!