Creswell Crags: Britain's Only Known Ice Age Cave Art

Creswell Crags is a limestone gorge on the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in England, whose caves hold the only known Ice Age cave art in Britain. Engravings of animals, identified in 2003 in the cave called Church Hole, have been dated to at least about 12,800 years ago. The gorge also preserves tens of thousands of years of animal and human remains and, from much later times, one of the largest collections of “witch marks” in Britain.

Background: a gorge on the edge of the Ice Age world

The gorge is a short, steep-sided valley cut through magnesian limestone, with caves and rock shelters on both sides. During the last Ice Age, Britain was joined to continental Europe by land, and Creswell lay near the north-western limit of human settlement.

Excavations since the 1870s have found bones of hyenas, cave bears, woolly rhinoceros, mammoths and reindeer, along with stone tools. Neanderthals visited the caves, and modern humans returned at several points as the climate allowed. The name Creswellian is given to a Late Upper Palaeolithic stone-tool tradition in Britain, from roughly 15,000 to 14,000 years ago, named after finds here.

The best-known caves include Church Hole on the Nottinghamshire side, and Robin Hood Cave, Mother Grundy’s Parlour and Pin Hole Cave on the Derbyshire side. Robin Hood Cave yielded a rib bone engraved with the head of a horse, one of the few examples of Ice Age portable art from Britain, now in the British Museum.

The 2003 discovery

For more than a century, archaeologists believed that Britain had no Palaeolithic cave art, even though decorated caves were well known in France and Spain. In April 2003 Paul Bahn, Sergio Ripoll and Paul Pettitt examined the walls of the Creswell caves looking for engravings that earlier excavators might have missed.

In Church Hole they recognised several engraved figures. The most convincing is an animal on the ceiling, usually identified as a stag, although some have seen an ibex. Other figures were interpreted as birds and a bovid. When the team returned in 2004 with better lighting, they found further engravings that had been invisible under the conditions of the first visit.

Not every proposed figure is accepted. Engravings are hard to see and natural cracks can resemble lines, so specialists debate several identifications. A core group, however, is widely regarded as genuine.

Dating the engravings

Proving the age of cave engravings is difficult, because the lines themselves contain no datable material. At Creswell, some engraved lines are covered by thin crusts of calcite, a mineral that formed later as water seeped over the rock.

In 2005 a team led by Alistair Pike used uranium-series dating on these crusts. The results showed that the crusts formed at least about 12,800 years ago, so the engravings beneath them must be older still. This gave a minimum age and placed the art in the Late Upper Palaeolithic, broadly contemporary with the Magdalenian art of continental Europe, such as the Swimming Reindeer carving.

The witch marks

In 2019 members of a caving and history group noticed unusual carved symbols in one of the caves. Further survey revealed hundreds of marks, including overlapping letters such as “VV” and “PM”, interlaced lines, boxes and mazes.

These are apotropaic marks, popularly known as witch marks, meant to ward off evil. Such symbols are common in old houses and churches in England, but this was described as the largest known group in a British cave. They are thought to date mainly from the 16th to 18th centuries, when people may have seen the dark caves as an entrance to the underworld.

Visiting and protection

Creswell Crags is a protected heritage site with a museum and visitor centre. The caves themselves are gated, and visitors enter on guided tours. The lake in the gorge is not natural: it was created in the 19th century by damming the stream as part of the Welbeck estate.

The site has been proposed for UNESCO World Heritage status and is on the United Kingdom’s tentative list. Its combination of Ice Age art, animal remains and later folk practices makes it unusual among British archaeological sites.

Timeline

• c. 60,000-40,000 years ago: Neanderthals visit the Creswell caves at times.
• c. 15,000-14,000 years ago: Late Upper Palaeolithic hunters use the gorge; the Creswellian tradition is named after them.
• By c. 12,800 years ago: Engravings in Church Hole are already covered by calcite crusts.
• 1870s: First major excavations in the caves; the engraved horse rib is found in Robin Hood Cave.
• 2003, April: Bahn, Ripoll and Pettitt identify engravings in Church Hole.
• 2004: Further engravings recognised under improved lighting.
• 2005: Uranium-series dates published.
• 2019: Hundreds of witch marks are recognised in the caves.

Why it matters

Creswell Crags changed the story of Ice Age Britain by showing that people here, like their contemporaries in France and Spain, made art on cave walls. It also shows how one landscape can carry very different human meanings, from Palaeolithic hunters to early modern villagers protecting themselves from evil. For other early British evidence, see Cheddar Man.