The Sculpture Chamber

This is the final chamber on the visitor trail.An ancient, 15m (50ft) high fall of rocks - a boulder choke  blocks the end of the chamber.

Beyond this point is the preserve of expert cave explorers who are searching for the elusive link through to '7th Heaven' the secret passages which lay beyond the rockfall. A Geophysics radar scan in 1999 revealed an extensive network of caverns exist still to be entered and explored. A remote controlled robot camera built especially for the project was lowered into a small borehole drillled into one of the secret cavern and revealled a glimpse of more amazing stalactite formations.

  
The startling, cauliflower-like formation in this final chamber is the result of calcite-laden rainwater dripping from above and cementing several boulders together. It was named The Sculpture by schoolchildren in 1977, with reference to the sculptor Henry Moore. The chamber also boasts a magnificent multi-coloured frieze of flowstone, known as the Grand Cascade.

The embryonic River Wye first appears in the Cavern at this point, and we have to follow its course back out of the cave. We have walked approximately 310m (1000ft), at a depth of 30m (100ft) beneath Grin Wood. It is interesting, and a little sobering, to note that we have enjoyed a constant temperature, unchanging throughout the year, of 7ºC (44ºF) - the average temperature of Buxton.