Thor's Cave
Thor's Cave is one of the most impressive natural cave entrances in England, a vast limestone arch set high in a cliff above the Manifold Valley in Staffordshire within the Peak District. The cave's enormous triangular entrance, approximately 10 metres high, commands a sweeping view down the valley and has made it a recognised landmark of the limestone country of the Staffordshire Moorlands for millennia. The approach up a steep rocky path from the valley floor is demanding but rewarding, with the scale of the entrance growing more imposing with every step of the ascent. The cave penetrates the limestone cliff to a depth of about 75 metres and connects with a smaller secondary entrance on the eastern face of the crag. The interior is a single large chamber rather than an extensive cave system, with a floor that slopes steeply toward the rear of the cave and walls of pale grey limestone showing the characteristic bedding planes and solution features of calcium carbonate rock that has been slowly dissolved by mildly acidic groundwater over millions of years. Archaeological excavation of the cave during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries revealed evidence of human occupation extending from the earliest prehistoric periods through to the Iron Age. Artefacts recovered include stone tools dating to the Palaeolithic period, confirming that people sought shelter here during the last Ice Age, when the climate of this region would have been extremely cold and the cave a relatively warm and defensible refuge. Bronze Age and Iron Age pottery, bone objects and animal remains from later periods provide evidence of continuing human use across tens of thousands of years. The Manifold Valley below the cave provides one of the most beautiful cycling and walking routes in the Peak District, the former railway trackbed having been converted to a traffic-free trail that follows the river through the limestone gorge. The valley is particularly notable for the way the River Manifold disappears underground through the porous limestone in dry summer conditions and re-emerges several kilometres downstream near Ilam.