AUGUST ’62 was a wild and wet one and in the potholes of the Yorkshire Dales streams were turning into torrents.

As waterfalls raged underground, local potholers had to be rescued.

One weekend of that month, our newspaper reported that Accrington potholers John Edmondson, Roy Hartley, who was a mechanic of the Co-op Dairies in Accrington, and Barry Nuttall, who worked at Mullard in Blackburn, were rescued from Providence Pot at Kettlewell.

After finding their way out blocked by a raging waterfall, they went to dry ground, sang and ate jellies until help arrived.

Some miles away, four men had been brought to safety after spending five hours of horror in a flooded pothole.

It was the end of a lonely ordeal for 20-year-old Norton Farrow, then of Thorn Bank, Bacup, who had spent hours on his own, shivering at the foot of a swollen waterfall in Alum Pot near Settle.

He was in a party of cavers, five of whom worked in Burnley Borough Engineers department, who had been underground for 10 hours.

The moorland stream rising into the pot was at its normal level when the men, led by 31-year-old John Dugdale of Waddington walked into the ‘K’ system.

The successfully reached the bottom of the 292 ft deep cavern and were making their way back to the rain soaked surface, when the stream suddenly became a torrent.

They all struggled back to the bottom of the 40ft wide main shaft and tried to climb the first of a series of surging waterfalls that would get them to the surface.

But only Stan Bradshaw of Haslingden and Kenneth Holt of Barnoldswick made it, leaving Norton shivering alone at the bottom.

John Dugdale, John Eastwood of Accrington, who attended the technical school and Michael Pooler of Ramsbottom, were forced back and were eventually rescued by other cavers lowering five ladders tied together down the main shaft.

On his own Norton tried to climb through the torrent, but failed and said later: “I just stood in the water for about an hour, then spotted a ledge and crawled on it, trying to rest.

“My light was getting very dim and then suddenly I saw lamps at the top of the waterfall. I shouted for help and then a rope ladder came down.

“I was so nervous, so tired and so frightened that my rescuers almost had to pull me to the top.”