Mother Shipton’s Cave is a small cave in North Yorkshire, England, associated with the legendary soothsayer and prophetess, Mother Shipton.

According to text by the 17th century authors, Richard Head, and later by J. Conyers, Ursula Southeil (known as Mother Shipton), was born in 1488 in the market town of Knaresborough.

Both authors note that her mother, Agatha Soothtale, was a poor and desolate 15-year-old orphan who had fallen under the influence of the Devil and engaged in an affair, while some legends suggest that Agatha was a witch that summoned the Devil to conceive a child.

Shipton was born in a cave on the banks of the River Nidd during a violent thunderstorm. She was described as deformed with a hunchback and bulging eyes, cackling away at the rumbles of thunder that caused the raging storms to dissipate.

The cave sits next to a geological wonder called the Petrifying Well. The waters of the well are rich in sulphate and carbonate that encase objects with a stony exterior. In the past, this was believed to be the result of magic or witchcraft that could turn objects to stone, but this is a natural phenomenon due to a process of evaporation and deposition in waters with an unusually high mineral content.