Qualla: Malham Cove

Malham Cove: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lupin at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. For one afternoon in December 2015, after Storm Desmond dumped its catastrophic rainfall across northern England, water poured over the top of Malham Cove for the first time in 191 years. For a few hours it became one of the highest single-drop waterfalls in England: an 80-metre veil over a cliff that had stood dry since 1824. Then the cave system beneath the limestone pavement caught up with the deluge, swallowed it, and the cove returned to silence.

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Image: Lupin at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Malham Cove: The Ghost of a Waterfall

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit F. C. Franklin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Malham Cove is what a waterfall leaves behind when it dies. At the end of the last Ice Age, more than 12,000 years ago, glacial meltwater poured over this lip in a cataract 80 metres tall and more than 300 metres wide. The water carved the cove's distinctive curve, eroding the ce...

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Image: F. C. Franklin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Malham Cove: The Streams That Don't Mix

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian Greig, CC BY-SA 2.0. Malham Beck emerges from a cave at the foot of the cove, but this stream is not the one that disappears underground at Water Sinks, a mile north near Malham Tarn. For centuries people assumed they were the same waterway. Dye experiments proved otherwise. The two streams pass thro...

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Image: Ian Greig | CC BY-SA 2.0

Malham Cove: A Wall of White

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cyberdemon007 at en.wikipedia, Public domain. The priest and antiquary Thomas West described the cove in 1779: "This beautiful rock is like the age-tinted wall of a prodigious castle; the stone is very white, and from the ledges hang various shrubs and vegetables, which with the tints given it by the bog water gives it a var...

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Image: Cyberdemon007 at en.wikipedia | Public domain

Malham Cove: Rainman and the Climbers

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jarek Tuszyński, CC BY-SA 3.0. The cove's south-facing wall has become one of Britain's most demanding climbing crags. Routes here range from gentle traditional climbs near the edges to extreme sport climbs up the overhanging central wall. In June 2017, Steve McClure completed Rainman, graded 9b, becoming Brit...

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Image: Jarek Tuszyński | CC BY-SA 3.0

Malham Cove: Hermione, Heathcliff, and the BBC

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Immanuel Giel, Public domain. The limestone pavement above the cove served as the setting where Hermione and Harry camped while on the run in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, filmed here in November 2009. The pavement also appeared in the 1992 film adaptation of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, i...

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Image: Immanuel Giel | Public domain