High Force has been plunging into this gorge for many thousands of years but the rocks it reveals are much more ancient – with origins dating back over 300 million years.

This spectacular waterfall tells stories going back millions of years –  from tropical seas to molten rock and ice ages and a Viking heritage.

High Force, England’s biggest waterfall, spectacularly drops 70 feet (21m) into a plunge pool below.

The story of High Force goes back millions of years and tells of tropical seas, molten rock, ice ages and water. The drama of its plunging falls has attracted people through the ages, probably since early settlers arrived here 10,000 years ago.

Shaped by natural processes over millions of years, High Force tells stories of molten rock, tropical seas and ice ages. It has also had special significance for people for thousands of years.

Molten rock

High Force plunges over a layer of resistant rock known as the Whin Sill. This formed 295 million years ago from molten rock, which spread out and solidified between older layers of rock underground. After millions of years of erosion you can now see the Whin Sill at the surface.

Sun, sea and sand

The rocks below the Whin Sill formed 330 million years ago when the North Pennines was at the equator. The grey rock is limestone and the layer above it is sandstone. The limestone formed from limy ooze in a tropical sea and the sandstone was once sand in a river delta.

Sculpted by water

This gorge has been carved by water – from ice age meltwaters 15,000 years ago, to today’s River Tees. The waterfall is progressively moving upstream as water wears away the rock. What you see today is a just snapshot in time. Who knows what this area will look like in another 15,000 years?

In a word

‘Force’ comes from ‘foss’, the Old Norse word for waterfall. This, along with many other local landscape words, came here with Viking settlers 1,200 years ago. The Whin Sill took its name from local quarrymen’s terms: ‘whin’ was a hard, dark rock and a ‘sill’ was a flat-lying layer of rock.