A REMARKABLE story of how South Cumbrian caves have been used over the centuries emerged in a talk by Hannah O'Regan from the University of Nottingham.

She was speaking at the Forum, Barrow, as part of the Bay Archaeology Festival organised by the Morecambe Bay Partnership.

Her talk featured four caves in limestone near Grange and provided an explanation of how difficult it could be to work on such sites.

She said: "It can take four people to get one bucket of sediment to the surface."

Helmets, lights and ropes are added to the normal trowels and brushes used by diggers on historic sites.

The best known site she described was Kirkhead Cave, between Grange and Humphrey Head.

She said: "It is quite a large chamber and it has been excavated on numerous occasions going back to the 1860s."

At kents Bank, the two chambers gave up bones of horse, cattle and even elk.

She said: "This is straight after the Ice Age."

At Doghole, near Sandside quarry, excavations in a natural shaft found bones from 23 people, plus those of dogs, sheep, pig cattle and horse.

A dig in 2011 to 2012 found more bones, including those of a baby of the period before 125AD.

The site looks to have been used for Romano-British human burials and as a tip for medieval butchery waste.

The site appears to have been used over a period of around 1,500 years.

She said: "Caves preserve evidence which is lost elsewhere."