The Cheshire
Sandstone Ridge

Caves associated with the keeping of bears have been visited at two sites on the Ridge: at Bear Hole on The Rock, Helsby, and at Broxton Old Hall, where a cave attached to a picturesque stone 'parlour' is known locally as The Bear Cave. The thought of bears in the woods and bears in caves is often used to frighten but also somehow to delight us. Shakespeare recognised this terror in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Vi) when thinking about the power of the imagination: 'Or in the night, imagining some fear ... How easy is a bush supposed a bear!' and it is easy to suppose that local traditions of bears in caves are simply the imaginative creation of children or their parents trying to frighten them.

Of course, bears did once represent a real threat until they became extinct in the early Middle Ages, and there is plenty of evidence that tamed bears have been kept in Britain in the more recent past. Bears have been kept as a source of street entertainment, for baiting by dogs and as exhibits in private menageries. It is worth considering, therefore, whether these Cheshire cave names might have any foundation in fact.

Often associated with travelling shows and individual entertainers, there were still dancing bears imported to Britain in the late nineteenth century. In 1887, the Manchester Evening News reported on one such having escaped from a group of Germans performing in Tarvin(1). The practice, however, was outlawed in 1911(2). Unfortunately, displaying dancing bears was by no means the cruellest exploitation of the animals. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they were kept for the express purpose of baiting. In 1819, the historian George Ormerod commented on 'The predilection of the inhabitants of Congleton in the seventeenth century for the elegant divertisement (sic) of bear-baiting' and recorded between 1589 and 1622, among several references to payments for players and cockfighting, payments to 'Bearwards'. For example, in 1613:

Gave to Mr Hardern to fetch Shelmadine and his Bears 1s.3d. when the Great Cockfighting was at Whitsuntide, and he refused to come, and Brack the Bearward and his bears came, gave him 6s.8d....Fetching the Bears at the Wakes, 3s.6d. ditto two more Bears 1s. Bearward 15s. (3)

It may be deduced from these references that a town in Cheshire might be only too eager to support the practice of keeping bears for this kind of entertainment.

The Bear Hole at Helsby is today in a private garden on The Rock but in the eighteenth century this land was owned by the township. Local folk-law holds that a bear used for bear-baiting in a field opposite the Robin Hood Inn was kept in this cave. No firm evidence has been found to support this claim but the story was well established in the nineteenth century when an article in the Chester Observer, 1 February 1896 about the Helsby Water Scheme referred to The Rock as 'Bear's Hole Lane'.

The old pub moved to a new site following the building of the turnpike in about 1790 and bear-baiting was abolished nationally under the Cruelty to Animals Act in 1835. That is no guarantee of when bear-baiting might have ceased in Helsby but it would suggest that the keeping of a bear or bears in that cave is unlikely to have continued beyond the end of the eighteenth century. There is no longer any physical evidence of a cage but the cave is certainly spacious enough to have been used in that way. There is, however, evidence that the cave was partly excavated by sand merchants in the nineteenth century so signs of bear-keeping would have been erased.

• Photo 1 (top centre) – Entrance to the Bear Hole, Helsby
• Photo 2 (lower left) – The Stone Parlour, Broxton; the Bear Cave opening to the right of the doorway
• Photo 3 (lower right) – Interior of The Bear Cave
• (1)Manchester Evening News, p2 27 January 1887
• (2)During the Middle Ages dancing bears were a common and popular form of street entertainment throughout Europe and Asia. By the fifteenth century the practice was far less common in Western Europe, although there were still dancing bears in Britain in the late nineteenth century (the practice was outlawed in 1911). Closely linked with travelling shows and individual entertainers it seems that the majority of dancing bear trainers were Romany people from Eastern Europe and Asia. Dancing bears remained a common sight in Eastern Europe and many parts of Asia well into the late twentieth century CLICK HERE.
• (3)Ormerod, George The History of County Palatine of Chester , 1819, Vol II pp 660-665. Ormerod also records that in 1622 'About this time arose the saying of Congleton selling the Word of God to buy a Bear. Thus: there being a new Bible wanted, for the use of the Chapel, and as they were not able at that time to purchase one, they had laid some money by, for the purpose. In the meantime the Town Bear died, and the said money was given to the Bearward to buy another; and the Minister was obliged to make a further shift, and use the old (bible) a little longer...'
• (4)CLICK HERE
• (5)CLICK HERE