In 1179 a ‘ferocious tremor’ shook the land and three great pits opened in the earth near Oxen-le-Hall to the south of Darlington, these apparently bottomless pits came to be called the hells kettles by the locals and spawned numerous legends about the boiling green waters including tales that the dead haunted its depths attempting to lure in the unwary to be eaten by ferocious pike and eels that lived within and the Kettles are even said to have inspired Alice's fall down the rabbithole
Two of the kettles have joined together over time while the third has collapsed creating a shallow lake. The area around the Kettles is registered as a site of special scientific interest due to the highly unusual and rare plant life that thrives there.
Modern investigation has revealed that the kettles are actually sinkholes created by the erosion of mineral deposits deep underground, the 'bottomless pits' of the surviving two shafts are actually around 200 feet deep. While science may have done its best to explain the kettles there are still those that consider them places of power and a potential doorway into the elsewhere…
