As if Charred By Fire: Elizabethan England's Portal to Hell and the Folklore Behind Eldon Hole

 Robert Dudley, known as Lord Dudley, or the 1st Earl of Leicester is a prominent courtier and English statesman, renowned across continental Europe for his tact and diplomacy.  He is said to be one of Queen Elizabeth’s favorites and for years now he is rumored to have sought not only the Queen’s affections, but also her hand in marriage.

Residing in the County of Derbyshire, Lord Dudley is considered one of the wealthiest men in the English midlands, and between the cities of Leicester and Manchester, his word is law and second to only that of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I.

Sometime in the late 1580’s Dudley has his mind set on a decidedly different mission than wooing the Queen or negotiating a settlement over a trade dispute with a competing royal court.  He is determined to send a man down to the bottom of Eldon Hole and put to rest, once and for all, the persistent rumors that a portal to Hell itself is located right in his own backyard.

Eldon Hole is situated in the Peak District of Derbyshire in the English midlands.  Today, what is now known as the Peak District is a sprawling National Park and nature preserve that is home to countless rolling hills, caves, caverns and a vast array of wildlife and natural wonders. 

Eldon Hole, a wide and dark cavern with no end in sight is located on the side of the eponymous named Eldon Hill and dating back at least to the early Middle Ages, if not to the time of Roman Britain and Arthurian Legend, Eldon Hole has been purported to be a bottomless refuge for the Devil--a true gateway to Hell itself.

During the height of the Elizabethan Age (history does not record the exact date) Lord Robert Dudley, the 1st Earl of Leicester, is determined to find out where the dark depths of Eldon Hole lead.

Lord Robert Dudley

The Lord grabs one of his hapless peasants.  We don’t know if he paid him, but most likely he simply grabbed one that seemed strong and healthy but light enough for the job, and he had a 100 foot rope tied around the peasant’s waist.

He is lowered down into the earth, into the empty black void of Eldon Hole, as far as the rope will go.

The peasant hangs on the rope and the Earl calls down Eldon Hole, “Peasant, what see you there?”

No answer.

He calls again, “Answer me peasant!  What see you there?”

Still, there is no answer, only the echo of Lord Dudley’s voice disappearing down the bottomless pit to Hell.

Lord Dudley grows impatient as he stares down the rope.  He orders the peasant brought up to the surface at once.

What Lord Robert Dudley and his entourage pull out of Eldon Hole on that fateful day in the late sixteenth century is but a shadow, a shell, of a man.  The luckless peasant is pulled from Eldon Hole stark raving mad!  He is uttering senseless gibberish, convulsing, with his hair disheveled and clothes torn.  The peasant who had been lowered down into Eldon’s Hole on a hundred foot long rope only moments before as a hearty and healthy young man, is now after being pulled from the hole, a completely senseless lunatic.

Eight days later the peasant will die.  

Lord Robert Dudley, the 1st Earl of Leicester, still hasn’t learned exactly what is located at the bottom of Eldon Hole, but he is now convinced that this eerie place is truly a gateway to Hell itself, and he no longer conducts any experiments to find out for sure.

For countless centuries the bottomless pit of Eldon Hole has both fascinated and terrified residents of England’s midlands.  It is considered one of the great natural wonders of the Peak District.

No less an authority than the famous philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who is best known for his influential work Leviathan, which centered on the nature of civil society and the legitimacy of government, was truly enamored by the mystery behind Eldon Hole and the wonders of the Peak District.

Thomas Hobbes

In a book he wrote and published in 1635 called The Wonders of the Peaks, Hobbes called Eldon Hole, “A Magical and Marvelous place.”

He describes in detail throwing a rock into the bottomless pit thus, “Thus laid the stone,/ We dropped which curled in the mist thrown,/ Against a rock the cavern groans awhile,/ Loud sighs are vented from the shaken pile,/ From rock to rock the sound goes downward still,/ Less heard by us but the more heard by Hell.”

When reading Hobbes’ The Wonders of the Peaks it becomes more and more apparent that Hobbes himself, in the middle of the seventeenth century, truly believed that Eldon Hole was a gateway to Hell itself.  This was a belief that was probably widely held by most locals at the time.  Holes in the earth, especially very deep ones, the bottoms of which cannot be gleaned from the earth’s service have, since time immemorial, been thought of in western folklore as refuges for the Devil, or fairies or trolls.

Records indicate that not only was Eldon Hole during the early-modern period of European history thought to be a passageway to Hell, but that highwaymen, and other robbers, often used the deep caverns of the Peak District, specifically Eldon’s Hole as places to stash and store their ill-gotten loot.

Hobbes in his work recounts the tale of Lord Dudley and his hapless peasant and he also gives voice, in decidedly literary fashion, to his belief that Eldon Hole may truly be a bottomless pit to Hell, but the famous English philosopher, even to this very day, is definitely not alone in his beliefs regarding Eldon Hole.

Since the early Middle Ages among locals living in the English midlands, in and around the county of Derbyshire, persistent stories regarding birds and Eldon Hole have been circulating.

Essentially, legend has it that on countless occasions birds have been seen flying into the entrance to Eldon Hole and disappearing, only to reappear days later by flying out of one of the innumerable caverns located in the Peak District with their feathers scorched off and singed black by fire.

With wild stories circulating for centuries and frightful folklore surrounding the entire region it begs the question--What exactly is known about Eldon Hole, if anything?

Exploring Eldon Hole representation from 1813

For one thing the entrance to the Hole is over 100 feet in length and 20 feet wide.  It is believed, after first having been surveyed in the late 18th century, that Eldon Hole is somewhere between 250 and 300 feet deep, though parts of it slope downward and open up into massive caverns that have never been fully charted.  

Another man of literary fame, Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, one of the first true novels in the history of English letters, also wrote about Eldon Hole.  Defoe recounts a story supposedly set sometime near the end of the 17th century of a local man being robbed at gunpoint by two villains on a road near the Hole. He says that the villains made their victim, for sport apparently, attempt to jump over the twenty foot wide chasm at the opening to Eldon Hole.

Of course the luckless victim did not make the jump and instead fell into the dark vastness of Eldon Hole, with the two robbers standing all the while on the edge of the Hole and listening until the man’s screams fell silent.

The expedition which set out in 1780 to chart the depths of Eldon Hole supposedly made it somewhere between 60 and 80 feet down until they gave up their mission after the explorers became spooked when they found human remains scattered around the caverns within Eldon Hole.  Perhaps, Defoe’s tale is not mere folklore, but actual fact.

Today interest in Eldon Hole is still great and many wild and spooky stories continue to make the rounds among cavers and residents in the Derbyshire region.  One of the most popular groups dedicated to exploring the caverns of the Peak District, specifically Eldon Hole, is actually known as the Dudley Caving Club in honor of the Elizabethan nobleman Lord Robert Dudley 1st Earl of Leicester who sought so long ago to uncover the secrets lying at the bottom of Eldon Hole

As recently as 2017 local cavers on a exploring expedition to find the bottom of Eldon Hole found four sets of human remains at a depth of about 200 feet and subsequently abandoned their explorations after reporting their macabre find to local authorities.

No one knows how those bones ever got there or to whom they belong, and it is said that Eldon Hole is littered with the bones of its victims, some who have seen them even claim that many of those bones are charred as if by fire…