Oliver Bowerman’s Childhood in a Purchased Cave Leads to Management Role

When Oliver Bowerman was five, his parents informed him of their family’s impending move to a cave. This decision was not driven by a desire for a Neanderthal re-enactment, but by the acquisition of a site in the Yorkshire Dales with significant tourist potential. The Bowerman family had answered a newspaper advertisement seeking a new proprietor for Stump Cross Caverns, situated close to Pateley Bridge. The opportunity was characterized in the advert as a “once in a generation” opportunity. Initially, Oliver believed he would be commencing a Stone Age existence. However, 22 years subsequent to that, he is now preparing to assume the management responsibilities for the caverns personally. “I remember first coming down, being absolutely terrified and coming straight back up,” Oliver said. “I saw the wolverine picture on the surface and I thought it was going to be in the cave and eat us.” He quickly developed an affection for the cavern system, which has an age of 350 million years. By the time he was seven, he had explored it more than 100 times. “It was surprisingly normal. You didn’t think much of the cave because you became so used to it,” he stated. During his childhood, Oliver mentioned that his friends considered it “cool,” and he even recorded a music video with his band inside the caves. He further commented, “I think it was more when I went to university, you got people asking what your parents do.” He observed, “When I said ‘oh, we have a cave’, the look on people’s faces was quite interesting.” Following his graduation with a psychology degree, Oliver began assisting his mother, Lisa Bowerman, in operating the business. Lisa recounted a time during a holiday when she disclosed to her three children that they were purchasing a tourist attraction that included an attached cottage. She remarked, “They didn’t even know what a cave was.” Over two decades later, Lisa expressed pride in the enterprise they have established and indicated her readiness to transfer leadership to Oliver. She stated, “To be in a position to hand it over to somebody with such an amazing business brain and such a vision for the future, it’s quite exciting.” She also added, “I still boss him about, I am his mother at the end of the day, but we work really well together.” Lisa will maintain her involvement in the creative and educational aspects of the business, while Oliver will be responsible for directing the business decisions. Lead miners initially discovered the cave system, which later yielded a complete reindeer fossil, during the 19th Century. In 1926, the property owners sold the location to Septimus Wray, an entrepreneur specializing in pleasure gardens, who subsequently commenced opening the caverns for public visitation. The caverns stayed under the proprietorship of his descendants until 2003, the year the Bowermans acquired the business. Oliver’s updated vision for Stump Cross Caverns involves making a previously potholer-exclusive section of the cave accessible to the general public. Oliver commented, “It’s incredibly exciting because we can get people to see what we’ve seen.” He further explained, “We get the chance to actually peer behind the curtain and see these amazing caverns, but it’s a massive undertaking because there’s a lot of engineering that is going to be involved.” Commencing in January, a team will undertake the excavation of the cavern over the next two years, involving the removal of rock and soil. Lisa admitted, “I was a bit sceptical and thinking about the workload and how it was going to be managed.” She added, “But it is just amazing. He’s got it all sorted and we can’t wait for the future.”