Stump Cross Caverns: How Yorkshire family-run attraction has almost doubled visitor numbers thanks to fossil experience

Stump Cross Caverns date back over 350 million years, weren’t found until 1860 by local miners, and for much of Lisa’s tenure since purchasing in 2003 have remained mostly undiscovered by others, despite being home to a treasure trove of stalagmites and colourful rock formations in the prehistoric caves.

It took the pandemic for Lisa to realise that what she had underground was tremendously valuable in historic and educational terms and had potential to be a very real, exciting visitor attraction.

“Covid changed me,” says Lisa. “I was too close to it all for years, but when lockdowns came I went down and actually looked at the caves in all their wondrous glory and thought how amazing they are and what an incredible attraction Stump Cross truly is. That moment made me realise what we have.

“I couldn’t believe that people couldn’t come here. To own something like this and not be able to share it was a tragedy.

Lisa had already set her mind on studying and networking while visitors couldn’t come and had taken on a business coach.

“That’s when I started really thinking about what I wanted to do with Stump Cross and through the online groups I became involved with there was a feeling I needed some kind of a mascot. That’s when I thought of myself as cavewoman, because I own a cave anyway, so I’m a modern-day cavewoman.

“When I told my children, all now in their twenties but grew up here, that I was going to become cavewoman and dress up as one to teach visitors about the cave I think they finally thought this woman’s gone mad, if they hadn’t before.

That’s exactly what Lisa did and with the extremely able assistance of her son Oliver and fiancé Nick, Stump Cross is now flourishing like never before.

Lisa is understandably delighted with the way things have worked out and while they are not getting too carried away there is a feeling of resolve and dynamism over the future.

“It’s been an incredible past three years,” says Lisa. “What I’ve found is that when you get dressed up as a mascot people seem to take you more seriously, you’re more approachable and I now get to do lots of fun things like the fossil digs and going into schools and having schools here and really teach them about what Stump Cross Caverns are about, where they come from, how they’ve been formed and the fossils within it.

“We are now working closely with the Natural History Museum in Sheffield. We are looking to see if there any more remnants of ice age animals like bison, reindeer and wolverines that have been found here previously and we are looking to extend the caves.

“The show cave that is walked in at present is a third of a mile, but the entire system is 6.3 kilometres. We can’t open up all of that, but we have a great relationship with Craven Pothole Club who will help with what we can open.

Crowdfunder campaigns to raise much needed funds and an appearance on a TV show presented by The Hotel Inspector, Alex Polizzi on Channel 5 added to the momentum Lisa had started, as son Oliver says.

“The difference since Covid is like night and day really. Our annual visitor numbers before the pandemic were at 22,000. We’re now at 37,000 and we’ve set ourselves a target to achieve 70,000 by 2030.

“The exposure we got from the Crowdfunder campaigns helped massively along with the TV appearances, but the key thing is the improvement in the customer experience and the product we have now.

“We have so much activity for children and adults and now have a full eight and a half minute pre-show video shown in our 55-seater cinema before parties go down in the cavern. This primes their experience, plus they have a crazy cavewoman on the surface to talk to them.

“Our dwell time now, because of the package we offer which includes the fossil experience, the gem panning sluice, the café and shop, can be up to four hours whereas previously it was largely a one hour activity.

Oliver says the impact made by Alex Pollizi and her team catapulted what his mum had come up with into a new dimension.

“The decisions Alex and her team made has brought a massive difference. One of the biggest changes was the information boards. We would never have been able to afford someone from the Natural History Museum to come and rewrite our interpretation strategy.

“The biggest thing the show did was to completely revamp the shop, bringing in a visual merchandiser who’d worked for all these big brands. The science behind it is incredible even though it can sound wishy-washy when you hear it and they start talking about the decompression zone and other terminologies, but it clearly makes a difference and is the reason why these big brands spend tens of thousands of pounds on them.

“What they did was to lower all the tables so that children could see all the crystals at a certain height, using a tiered effect, and then interwove all the books between the crystals. Our book sales have never been higher and where we normally get 12,000 visitors a week to the website in October, we had 12,000 visitors in one hour after the show had gone out.

Lisa aka Cavewoman now runs all kinds of workshops and activities including a Rock Star Club on a Sunday. https://www.stumpcrosscaverns.co.uk/