Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 30 -- Down to a Sunless Sea
In a note to The Botanic Garden (1791, the frontispiece to the
right), English naturalist Erasmus Darwin describes a
"romantic common" where two rivers disappear into the earth:
Near the village of Wetton, a mile or two above Dove-Dale,
near Ashburn, in Derbyshire, there is a spacious cavern
about the middle of the ascent of the mountain, which still
retains the name of Thor's House; below it is an extensive
and romantic common, where the rivers Hamps and
Manifold sink into the earth, and rise again in Ham gardens,
the seat of John Port, Esq. about three miles below.
The figure "Caverns and
Mighty Fountains" from
John Whitehurst's An
Inquiry into the Original
State and Formation of
the Earth; Deduced from
Facts and the Laws of
Nature (1786) is to the
right. Whitehurst
describes the same
subterranean river in
terms foreshadowing
images in "Kubla Khan."
The mountains of Derbyshire, and the moorlands of Staffordshire appear to be so many heaps
of ruins... They are broken, dislocated, and thrown into every possible direction, and their
interior parts are no less rude and romantic; for they universally abound with subterraneous
caverns; and, in short, with every possible mark of violence. The caverns near Buxton and
Castleton, and the subterraneous rivers, the Manifold and the Hamps, are familiar instances of
the present state and condition of those parts of the globe. The former river, after a passage of
four or five miles from the north, and the latter about the same distance from the west both
emerge at the foot of the same cliff, in the garden of John Port, Esq. of Ham, about the distance
of twenty yards from each other.
Coleridge would have likely have toured the emergence during a visit to Derby in August 1796.
We can, in fact, tour the site today. During the dry months, the River Hamps flows southward
from the moorlands of Derbyshire until it disappears in limestone terrain, reappearing six
kilometers downstream at Ilam Park. The River Manifold disappears in the west and upwells at
nearly the same location.
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