Malham Cove

Malham Cove is a spectacular inland cliff near Malham, in the Craven District of Yorkshire, within lands of the Honour of Skipton.

Malham Cove by Andy Staples

Geography

The limestone cliffs of Malham Cove rise 230 feet (70m) from the base of Malhamdale, half a mile north of the township of Malham . The cliffs are topped with an extensive limestone pavement - blocks of limestone of roughly level height (known as clints) separated by narrow crevasses (grikes).
Malham Beck emerges from the base of the cove, having run underground from a sinkhole on Malham Lings, the moor above the cove. After prolonged rain the underground course is sometimes unable channel all the waqter, and the beck runs overground to cascade down the face of the cove, but this is very rare.

Tourism

The Jesuit priest and antiquary Thomas West (1720-1779) described a visit to Malham Cove in A Guide to the Lakes in Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire (1783).

My first excursion was to the tarn (or little lake) skirted on one side by a peat bog, and rough limestone rocks, on the other; it abounds in fine trout, but has little else remarkable, except being the head of the river Aire, which issuing from it, sinks into the ground very near the lake, and appears again under the fine rock which faces the village. In the time of great rains this subterraneous passage is too narrow; the brook then makes its way over the top of the rock falling in a most majestic cafcade full 60 yards in one sheet. 
This beautiful rock is like the age-tinted wall of a prodigious castle; the stone is very white, and from the ledges hang various shrubs and vegetables, which with the tints given it by the bog water, &c. gives it a variety that I never before saw so pleasing in a plain rock.

Type

Cliff

Owner/Ruler

Hawise of Aumâle

Ruling/Owning Rank

Count

Owning Organization

Honour of Skipton