The Northern Echo

September 16, 1999

A HOLE NEW LOOK INTO ALICE'S INSPIRATION

ALICE in Wonderland may be one of the most magical works of children's fiction , but new research suggests its origins were most mundane. Lewis Carroll's timeless tale of the girl who tumbles into another dimension through a rabbit hole is beloved by millions of people the world over. But the inspiration for the classic tale is now thought to have been much closer to reality, and can be explained by simple subsidence. Natural geological events, in particular gypsum subsidence between Darlington and Ripon, have been put forward as the stimulus for Alice's underground adventures.

Carroll - real name Charles Dodgson - spent his early days at Croft, near Darlington, where his father was rector, and nearby are a trio of ponds, called Hell's Kettles. Although only 22ft deep, for many years they were thought to be bottomless and the young Carroll would have been familiar with them.

The family later moved to Ripon, where subsidence caused by gypsum has long been a problem, causing sudden holes to appear in the ground. The most recent was only two years ago, destroying four garages and leading to the evacuation of several houses, including Ure Lodge. The latter was once the home of Mary Badcock, photographs of whom were used by Sir John Tenniel for the illustrations of the first edition of Alice in Wonderland.

Scientist Dr Tony Cooper of the British Geological Survey highlighted the connections at the British Association's science festival in Sheffield. "Lewis Carroll was almost certainly aware of the problems," said Dr Cooper. "He would have seen the collapses in his friends' gardens and the numerous collapses in the field opposite Ure Lodge." Initially, Carroll even called his story Alice's Adventures Underground, although by the time it was published in 1865 it had been renamed Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
 
(This information you cna find in: Carroll Text-on line)