Speedwell Cavern
Speedwell Mine or Cavern lies at the foot of the Winnats Pass, just a short distance from Castleton.
The tour through Speedwell Cavern is made by boat, which makes Speedwell unique in all British show caves. The tour starts by descending 105 steps from the entrance to the landing stage of an underground canal where you step onto the boat.
The speedwell tunnel was built 200 years ago, to extract ore from nearby lead mines. The project was led by James Gilbert, who was the Duke of Devonshire's agent for the Ecton Hill mines in Worsley near Manchester. He already installed a similar system there. There were known shafts that surfaced near the Speedwell entrance and the so-called Bottomless Pit and the Stream Caves were known about by the lead miners who worked these mines. The tunnel was dug in the hope of finding even richer ore beds. These were never found and the project was a financial disaster.
It was long ago that tourists were propelled along the passage by the feet of the guide 'walking' along the roof. Nowadays an electric motor does the hard work as you glide towards the Halfway House, where the canal tunnel splits into two to allow oncoming boats to pass by. The tour finishes at the cathedral-like cavern containing the awesome Bottomless Pit - a huge subterranean lake. So named because the level never rose no matter how much rock was thrown down into it's depths. The Bottomless Pit is about 100m high and contains a 20m high waterfall.
The gift shop also contains a small museum including the saddle from a horse owned by a young couple eloping to Peak Forest (once the Gretna Green of England). They carried all they owned and were set on my four local thieves in Winnats Pass and murdered fort their money. Their attackers were never caught but all died horrible deaths - the last surviving confessing their crimes on his painful deathbed.