A British student suffered a truly horrific death when he ventured into an unexplored shaft in the Peak Cavern cave system in Derbyshire.

Oscar Hackett Neil Moss was a 20-year-old undergraduate studying philosophy at Oxford, when he joined seven others at the caves on that fateful day, Sunday, 22 March 1959.

The group's intention was to explore a passage about half a mile from the show cave, discovered just two weeks earlier. They elbowed, crawled and climbed their way through narrow mud-filled passages, a thousand feet below ground, until they reached a larger, open chamber from which an even narrower shaft led almost straight down. Moss was the first to descend and venture into this unknown passage to see where it led.

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According to the book Race Against Time: A History of the Cave Rescue Organisation, "They knew that the tight shaft corkscrewed and was difficult. They had also estimated that the depth of the shaft was approximately forty feet but seventy-five feet of ladder was lowered down the hole in case the shaft continued.

"At around 3.30pm, Moss forced himself into the hole, kicking all the surplus ladder before him. The shaft hung slightly off vertical for twelve feet, then came a difficult corkscrew twist leading to a ten-foot long inclined bedding plane and then a further vertical eighteen-foot drop’.

"Thinking he might be able to move the boulders blocking the shaft to one side, Moss manoeuvred himself to a slight recess but in his struggle jammed the loose ladder beneath him. Tired of struggling, he determined to climb out of the shaft, but he never resurfaced.

"Unable to lift his feet sufficiently to climb back up the ladder he became 'sandwiched in an elliptical slit only eighteen inches wide' and asked the others to pull the ladder whilst he held on to it. They succeeded in lifting him a few feet but then the ladder jammed."

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There were several attempts to haul Moss up with ropes, but each ended in failure, and by now air flow to the shaft was being cut off by his own body.

His rescuers also felt the debilitating effects of carbon dioxide, and three of the volunteers lost consciousness whilst attempting to descend the shaft.

A fourth, Ron Peters, succeeded in getting a rope around Moss's chest but this only added to his breathing difficulties, according to the Mountain Rescue England and Wales website.

Almost 24 hours later, Moss was still stuck despite numerous rescue attempts and drifting in and out of consciousness. Techniques included chipping away at the rock with crowbars and hammers in the hope of widening the shaft, and digging a new tunnel to get underneath Moss.

But Moss's fate was sealed at the end of the second day, when the order came to withdraw because heavy rain was threatening to flood the main cavern.

When the rain eased off, rescuers returned to the head of the corkscrew shaft but could no longer hear Moss breathing. The inquest into his death stated his time of death as being 3am on Tuesday, March 24.

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Moss's father Eric had kept vigil by the main tunnel entrance throughout the ordeal, and it was he who requested his son's body be left in place, before anyone else risked their lives.

The lower part of the shaft was then sealed with loose rocks, collected from the floor of the chamber, and an inscription left nearby.

A section of Peak Cavern which had been referred to as 'Stalagmite Chamber' was renamed 'Moss Chamber' in his memory.

Moss's tragic story was re-told in 2004 novel One Last Breath and in 2006 documentary Fight for Life: The Neil Moss Story.