The Cave System
The Cleeves, or Cleaves Cove (Scots) cave system is situated in the lower bed of carboniferous limestone. It measures around 500 feet if all the passages were put together. The caves are now well above the level of the Dusk Water and lie close to Cleeves Farm and Blair Mill on the Blair Estate. Many of the stalactites and stalagmites have been damaged by visitors. The cave has three practical entrances facing onto the Dusk Water.
A number of older books refer to the romantic sylvan dell of Auchenskeigh, now Auchenskeith, derived from Achadh-na-sgitheach - the field of thorns. The calcareous incrustations in these caves were compared with Gothic fretwork. A number of old limestone quarries lie close to the modern day farm of Auchenskeith, but it is likely that Auchenskeigh is a synonym for Cleeves Cove.
Read more about this topic: Cleeves Cove
Famous quotes containing the words cave and/or system:
“Under the one word “house” are included the schoolhouse, the almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwellinghouse; and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains elements of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The twentieth-century artist who uses symbols is alienated because the system of symbols is a private one. After you have dealt with the symbols you are still private, you are still lonely, because you are not sure anyone will understand it except yourself. The ransom of privacy is that you are alone.”
—Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911)