Thackray's Passage, from Holbeck Junction to The Assembly Hall

Thackray's Passage, from Holbeck Junction to The Assembly Hall

Upstream from Holbeck Junction is Thackray's Passage. The passage is normally dry at first, but soon meets the stream. Easy walking passage passes nice stal formations. Soon the stream is lost, and the passage enters an oxbow. Easy walking and stooping passes several gour pools. Soon the passage becomes smaller. A crawl through a window, past a stal "grille", regains the streamway.

[Downstream becomes very low.] Upstream is a pleasant well-decorated streamway. The streamway is knee-deep in places in normal conditions, but is sometimes deeper, and floods to the roof in very wet conditions. After about four minutes, it is possible to step up into a calcited oxbow above the stream, the White Way. [Continuing upstream soon reaches a very dangerous boulder choke.]

The oxbow soon opens out at the bottom of a 10m diameter chamber. At the top of the chamber is a 2.5m climb up, with an in-situ handline (March 2015). At the top of the climb, crawling to the right leads to an ascent up boulders to a window at roof level [or an alternative route to the left.] The window opens into a chamber, The Assembly Hall.

• To the right, a handline marks the climb up into Easter Grotto.
• Ahead, a rift is the start of the route towards Nagasaki Cavern.