Inside bizarre life of ‘Professor of Adventure’ who turned a cave into his tiny home after tiring of busy city living
A MAN nicknamed the “Professor of Adventure” turned a cave into his tiny home after tiring of busy city life.
Millican Dalton (1867-1947) led a bizarre life in the Lake District cave for nearly 30 years.
He worked as an insurance clerk in London before moving to a cottage in Buckinghamshire – where he lived in a wooden shack in the garden rather than the house itself.
The self-described “Professor of Adventure” then moved into a quarry cave near Borrowdale in the Cumbrian Lake District.
In 1933 he told a journalist: “Day after day I went to the office at the same time.
“But this was not the life for me. I gave up my job in the commercial world and set out to seek romance and freedom.”
He survived by baking his own bread and making his own clothes from old tents – with his feathered Tyrolean hat a familiar sight for locals.
Millican also claimed to have invented shorts – beating Scouts founder Robert Baden-Powell, who is widely thought to have come up with them.
The cave-dweller paid for his love of coffee and cigarettes by working as a guide for Lake District hikers.
According to LancsLive, in 1941 Millican told a newspaper: “I don’t sleep much, and while I am awake I lie and listen and think.
“There’s a lot to think about just now, isn’t there?
“All the sounds of the nights, the roar of the mountain stream, the barking of our dogs and foxes, the cries of birds – how can I be lonely with such company?”
Millican used the split levels of the “Cave Hotel” as a bedroom and a living room, and slept on a bed of dry bracken.
Warmed by an open fire, he mainly ate nuts, foraged berries and his homemade wholemeal bread.
Visitors today can see a message he engraved on the walls: “don’t Waste Worrds, Jump to Conclusions.”
He died in 1947 after catching pneumonia, and is remembered with a blue plaque at his old shack in Buckinghamshire.
Abandoned ghost mansions were left to rot for more than 100 years after they were gutted by war carnage.