Fairy Holes

Fairy Holes are three caves cut into a limestone cliff in the Forest of Bowland, high above the River Hodder near Whitewell in Lancashire. The main cave and the smaller East and West Caves sit on the south side of New Laund Farm, facing the rolling hills of the Bowland fells. A narrow path climbs from the farm track to a flat ledge in front of the caves. The ledge is only half to one and a half metres wide and drops almost sheer for six metres to the slope below. The main cave itself is a straight passage about twenty-two metres long, one and a half metres wide on average, and three metres high. Archaeologists have found Bronze Age remains inside and outside the caves. Excavations in the late 1940s, the 1960s and later uncovered flint tools, fragments of a collared urn, hearth stones, pottery sherds, animal bones and three small iron objects that could not be identified. Two low stone walls were also found on the platform in front of the cave mouth. In 1984 a large round stone was dredged from the River Hodder. Experts recognised it as a Bronze Age mortar and named it the Whitewell Stone; it now stands in the village hotel. Visitors reach the caves along a farm track that winds up from Whitewell. The path ends at the narrow ledge where the caves open. Inside the main cave the straight passage is tall enough to walk upright, lit by daylight at the entrance. Outside, the ledge offers wide views over the Hodder valley and the surrounding moorland. The smaller East and West Caves lie close by, each with its own narrow entrance. The whole site sits in quiet farmland, far from main roads, surrounded by stone walls and grazing sheep.