Victoria Cave Cave / Rock Shelter View all content for Victoria Cave

"The Victoria Cave, near Settle, so called from its discovery on the coronation day of our Queen, stands about half-way up a cliff two hundred feet high." Mr Jackson, the superintendant of the excavations, found a layer containing lots of "ornaments and implements." I liked the way they were described - and some of them have got to be prehistoric: "Besides spindlewhorls, beads, and curious nondescript articles of bone, it yielded bronze fibulae of undoubtedly Roman workmanship, a portion of the ivory hilt of a Roman sword, and spiral armlets made of bronze and gilded, which possibly may not be Roman. Some of the ornaments certainly present a style of art which is not Roman, and which is by no means of a contemptible order [!]. One curious circular brooch was composed of two plates of bronze soldered together, the front being very thin, and bearing flamboyant and spiral patterns of admirable design and execution." Of another fibula, "its delicate workmanship implies a high degree of taste in the fabricator." from Report on the Results Obtained by the Settle Cave Exploration Committee Out of Victoria Cave in 1870. W. Boyd Dawkins The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 1. (1872), pp. 60-70.

Posted by Rhiannon 15th June 2007ce

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