WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

1
00:00:00.130 --> 00:00:03.776
- Tucked away in the picturesque little
village of Knaresborough in Yorkshire,

2
00:00:03.776 --> 00:00:05.840
is Mother Shipton's Cave.

3
00:00:05.840 --> 00:00:10.860
And the publicity claims that it is "England's
oldest still-surviving tourist attraction".

4
00:00:10.860 --> 00:00:12.100
Good luck fact-checking that,

5
00:00:12.100 --> 00:00:13.560
but I can't find anything else

6
00:00:13.560 --> 00:00:16.820
that's been charging an
admission fee for nearly 400 years.

7
00:00:16.820 --> 00:00:19.410
To be fair, good luck fact-checking
anything in this story.

8
00:00:19.410 --> 00:00:21.800
It's likely that there was a
woman called Mother Shipton

9
00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:24.970
who lived about 500 years
ago, but after that,

10
00:00:24.970 --> 00:00:27.820
actual certified references
are shaky at best.

11
00:00:27.820 --> 00:00:31.080
She's said these days to have
been a witch and a prophet

12
00:00:31.080 --> 00:00:34.660
who lived in a cave with
a pool shaped like a skull

13
00:00:34.660 --> 00:00:36.770
that turned things to stone.

14
00:00:36.770 --> 00:00:41.520
- We all grow up in this area
hearing about Mother Shipton,

15
00:00:41.520 --> 00:00:43.543
and so we grew up with her prophecies.

16
00:00:44.410 --> 00:00:48.370
We're talking about the year 1488.

17
00:00:48.370 --> 00:00:52.160
There was a young lady
called Agatha Sontheil,

18
00:00:52.160 --> 00:00:54.800
was cast out of the
town of Knaresborough

19
00:00:54.800 --> 00:00:59.010
at the age of 15 because
she was having a baby.

20
00:00:59.010 --> 00:01:01.320
So, she came to these woods

21
00:01:01.320 --> 00:01:05.460
and, in the cave, gave
birth to a baby girl

22
00:01:05.460 --> 00:01:07.610
called Ursula Sontheil.

23
00:01:07.610 --> 00:01:11.290
She was born, it is said,
with a hunched back,

24
00:01:11.290 --> 00:01:14.710
but she was also a
very, very clever young lady.

25
00:01:14.710 --> 00:01:16.890
At the age of five,

26
00:01:16.890 --> 00:01:21.070
she went to the medieval
equivalent of school.

27
00:01:21.070 --> 00:01:23.570
She left school at 15.

28
00:01:23.570 --> 00:01:27.480
At the age of 20, she got
married to a carpenter

29
00:01:27.480 --> 00:01:30.740
by the name of Tobias Shipton.

30
00:01:30.740 --> 00:01:35.740
But by this time, she was
having visions about the future

31
00:01:36.590 --> 00:01:40.510
and news of her prophecies
was starting to spread.

32
00:01:40.510 --> 00:01:43.030
There was a lot of superstition about her.

33
00:01:43.030 --> 00:01:46.263
She was already learning
to hate authority,

34
00:01:47.210 --> 00:01:49.810
and some people thought
she was a witch.

35
00:01:49.810 --> 00:01:52.790
There was a bridge at
the entrance to the park.

36
00:01:52.790 --> 00:01:55.067
Now, Mother Shipton said,

37
00:01:55.067 --> 00:01:59.607
"When the High Bridge in
Knaresborough has fallen thrice,

38
00:01:59.607 --> 00:02:02.490
"the end of the world is nigh."

39
00:02:02.490 --> 00:02:07.170
Not to get you worried, it
has been down twice already.

40
00:02:07.170 --> 00:02:09.940
But there are more
roadworks across that bridge

41
00:02:09.940 --> 00:02:12.970
than anywhere else in this area

42
00:02:12.970 --> 00:02:16.570
and I can assure you it's very solid.

43
00:02:16.570 --> 00:02:18.900
- We'll never know which
of the many, many stories

44
00:02:18.900 --> 00:02:21.060
about Mother Shipton's
life were actually true.

45
00:02:21.060 --> 00:02:22.650
She's a folk legend.

46
00:02:22.650 --> 00:02:25.220
And unless the laws of physics have
changed in the last few centuries,

47
00:02:25.220 --> 00:02:27.160
she couldn't actually see the future.

48
00:02:27.160 --> 00:02:29.990
But the pool that turns objects to stone?

49
00:02:29.990 --> 00:02:31.870
Well, that is real.

50
00:02:31.870 --> 00:02:34.130
And at some point a few centuries ago,

51
00:02:34.130 --> 00:02:37.270
some enterprising local decided
to start charging admission.

52
00:02:37.270 --> 00:02:41.060
- This park used to belong
to the Royal Family.

53
00:02:41.060 --> 00:02:47.610
It was bought by Sir Charles Slingsby
from King Charles I in 1630.

54
00:02:47.610 --> 00:02:50.580
Sir Charles was a canny Yorkshire man

55
00:02:50.580 --> 00:02:54.750
who decided a pretty penny
could be made from this place,

56
00:02:54.750 --> 00:02:57.520
hence guided tours
commenced here in that year.

57
00:02:57.520 --> 00:02:59.510
Not me, I have to add!

58
00:02:59.510 --> 00:03:03.630
Before he bought this, it
had a very, very bad press.

59
00:03:03.630 --> 00:03:05.780
People, being superstitious,

60
00:03:05.780 --> 00:03:10.130
would find animal skeletons,
leaves turning to stone,

61
00:03:10.130 --> 00:03:13.980
and they actually thought
people would turn to stone.

62
00:03:13.980 --> 00:03:17.360
He soon realised he was
onto a good thing here.

63
00:03:17.360 --> 00:03:24.570
The waters consist of iron, zinc,
magnesium, aluminium, calcium carbonate.

64
00:03:24.570 --> 00:03:30.010
There's a stream which is underground,
and it comes to the surface

65
00:03:30.010 --> 00:03:32.800
just before you come down to this well.

66
00:03:32.800 --> 00:03:36.640
It comes to the surface,
it goes over the wellhead,

67
00:03:36.640 --> 00:03:39.470
and when it drops down,
it'll turn anything to stone

68
00:03:39.470 --> 00:03:42.233
because of the various
chemicals it's picked up.

69
00:03:43.100 --> 00:03:47.110
And it became
known as a health cure.

70
00:03:47.110 --> 00:03:51.330
People would bathe in the
water and drink the water.

71
00:03:51.330 --> 00:03:53.550
It it supposed to cure rheumatism.

72
00:03:53.550 --> 00:03:57.520
It's not recommendable today
with modern health and safety(!)

73
00:03:57.520 --> 00:03:58.930
- This isn't true petrification.

74
00:03:58.930 --> 00:04:01.790
The material isn't being
replaced with stone.

75
00:04:01.790 --> 00:04:04.440
But at the risk of making
some chemists angry at me,

76
00:04:04.440 --> 00:04:05.880
I think it's close enough.

77
00:04:05.880 --> 00:04:09.200
The water here is so rich in minerals,
carbonates and sulphates,

78
00:04:09.200 --> 00:04:12.080
that it acts like stalactites
forming in a cave

79
00:04:12.080 --> 00:04:14.530
or limescale building up
on your plumbing.

80
00:04:14.530 --> 00:04:17.330
The teddy bears, the hats,
the whatever's in here,

81
00:04:17.330 --> 00:04:21.220
it's steadily being coated in minerals
over and over and over again.

82
00:04:21.220 --> 00:04:24.040
And if it's porous, it becomes
solid enough that,

83
00:04:24.040 --> 00:04:25.750
yeah, it turns to stone.

84
00:04:25.750 --> 00:04:27.400
Chemically, maybe not.

85
00:04:27.400 --> 00:04:29.670
Linguistically? Sure, I'll take that.

86
00:04:29.670 --> 00:04:33.170
- Now, with regard to the
objects that you see up there,

87
00:04:33.170 --> 00:04:35.450
it's got to be anything porous.

88
00:04:35.450 --> 00:04:39.580
The smaller the object is,
the shorter time it takes.

89
00:04:39.580 --> 00:04:42.480
A teddy would take about three months.

90
00:04:42.480 --> 00:04:46.910
Anything bigger would
take six months to a year.

91
00:04:46.910 --> 00:04:49.080
It does freeze in winter.

92
00:04:49.080 --> 00:04:53.810
Icicles come right down to the floor,
and it's quite spectacular.

93
00:04:53.810 --> 00:04:56.433
It's been flowing since the ice age.

94
00:04:57.411 --> 00:05:03.510
The other remarkable thing about the water
is it flows at the same rate all the time:

95
00:05:03.510 --> 00:05:08.540
700 gallons an hour.
It never varies, drought or flood.

96
00:05:08.540 --> 00:05:12.340
It's again one of the wonders of the well:
it never dries up.

97
00:05:12.340 --> 00:05:14.450
- Mother Shipton's Cave is
still a tourist attraction.

98
00:05:14.450 --> 00:05:16.978
They still charge money to do
the nice long walk through the park 

99
00:05:16.978 --> 00:05:20.420
and then come and marvel at the pool
that turns things to stone.

100
00:05:20.420 --> 00:05:21.690
But before theme parks,

101
00:05:21.690 --> 00:05:23.590
before American roadside attractions,

102
00:05:23.590 --> 00:05:25.590
before seaside tourist traps,

103
00:05:25.590 --> 00:05:27.940
there was a cave, a good story,

104
00:05:27.940 --> 00:05:30.050
and someone who wanted to
make some money off it.

105
00:05:30.050 --> 00:05:32.733
And they still sell the
teddy bears in the gift shop.