Monument record 15209 - Bear Hole, Helsby

<1> Various, Written Communication to the HER, 27/07/2020 (Written Communication). SCH3756.

Cave said to have been used to cage a bear. Some evidence of sand-mining in the 19th century. Tunnels extend to an unknown depth but anecdotal accounts suggest that the may connect to cave in Helsby Quarry. Interior width 3.5m. Height 2.5m . Depth - passages extend at least 15m but are blocked.

<2> Sandstone Ridge Trust, 2020, Bear Caves on the Sandstone Ridge, 27/07/2020 (Unpublished Report). SCH8930.

The Bear Hole at Helsby is today in a private garden on The Rock but in the eighteenth century this land was owned by the township. Local folk-law holds that a bear used for bear-baiting in a field opposite the Robin Hood Inn was kept in this cave. No firm evidence has been found to support this claim but the story was well established in the nineteenth century when an article in the Chester Observer 1/2/1896 about the Helsby Water Scheme referred to The Rock as “Bear’s Hole Lane”.

The old pub moved to a new site following the building of the turnpike in about 1790 and bear-baiting was abolished nationally under the Cruelty to Animals Act in 1835. That is no guarantee of when bear-baiting might have ceased in Helsby but it would suggest that the keeping of a bear or bears in that cave is unlikely to have continued beyond the end of the eighteenth century. There is no longer any physical evidence of a cage but the cave is certainly spacious enough to have been used in that way. There is, however, evidence that the cave was partly excavated by sand merchants in the nineteenth century so signs of bear-keeping would have been erased.

<3> Sandstone Ridge Trust, Sandstone Ridge Trust, https://www.sandstoneridge.org.uk/beneath-ridge/bear-caves-on-ridge.html (Web Site). SCH8931.

Full article with photographs