Monument record MDR7833 - Carsington Pasture Cave, Brassington

Located c.1km SE of Brassington at an altitude of 300m at SK24155368. The cave is on a ridge line with a distant viewshed in all directions. Inside the natural entrance to the cave it widens into a 5m wide chamber with flowstone walls and a clay floor. Pegasus Caving Club dug a narrow passage through the rubble and clay fill following the sloping roof of the cave steeply downwards in an easterly direction. The dug passage enters a second chamber about 10m long and 4m wide. The floor of the second chamber is limestone rubble - partially encrusted with speleotherm. Micromammalian remains indicate use of the cave by owls at some stage. The human remains were distributed across several square metres of the floor of the second chamber, including individuals of all ages from a newborn infant to elderly adults. Only large skeletal elements are visible, but smaller bones may have fallen into voids. At lease 6 individuals can be recognised. The remains are disarticulated and may not be in their original context. There is evidence that the cave floor has slumped by as much as a metre. Yet the presence of fragile neonatal cranial bones indicates that the skeletal remains may not have moved very far from their site of deposition. On the south wall of the chamber is a small (0.5m) niche containing what appears to be a pile of carefully placed stones and fragments of animal bone - possibly concealing a cached deposit. (1) Subsequent work identified a bone pin and a red deer antler that had been grooved for splintering. (2) More detailed analysis of the human bones showed a minimum number of 20 individuals represented, with both sexes and a range of ages included. In one chamber there was a non-random distribution of skeletal remains, with all of the neonatal remains being clustered near the centre of the chamber. A number of animal bones were also recovered; however only two showed butchery marks. (3)