Wharfedale

Silver Well, Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire

11/10/202612/10/2026 megalithix

Sacred Well (covered): OS Grid Reference – SE 10425 46701

Archaeology & History

Highlighted on the earliest of the Ordnance Survey maps, this spring of water supplied the old cottage here for many a year. Nowadays it has been covered—and has been like that for upwards of fifty years—although it was said to be in constant flow by those who lived here in earlier times. When the Yorkshire holy wells writer Edna Whelan (1989) came here in the 1980s, the running water could still be heard beneath a pile of large stones that covered its source. Today, stone slabs cover it over—but the water is still running below. It had a reputation of never running dry, even in droughts. I spoke with a local doctor in the late-1980s who told us that he was confident the Silver Well would always keep running and its water were fine to drink. It’s a pity the source of the spring is covered over and, surely, is a case for being exposed and open for folk to use once again…

In Collyer & Turner’s (1885) magnum opus on Ilkley, they thought the Silver Well “was probably a holy well” —and it probably was something along those lines, depending on how precisely we define the word ‘holy’. The notion that it may have been a place where, in earlier times, silver coins and other offerings were given to the spirit of the well in exhange for good health and fortune (as is found at springs and wells all over the world) was given a boost when, in the 1960s, a short distance east of Silver Well, was found a clutter of very old silver coins dating from the periods of Kings Edward I and II (13th and 14th Century). The coins were donated to the British Museum where, I presume, they still live. But they may have either come from this well, or were being deposited here. We’ll probably never know for sure. A number of other Silver Wells in Britain possess so-called holy associations.

References:

Collyer, Robert & Turner, J.H., Ilkley: Ancient and Modern, William Walker: Otley 1885.
Whelan, Edna & Taylor, Ian, Yorkshire Holy Wells and Sacred Springs, Northern Lights: Dunnington 1989.

Acknowledgements: Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Silver Well (1), Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire

06/10/202610/10/2026 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 10252 46583

Also Known as:

Carving no.60 (Hedges)
Carving no.225 (Boughey & Vickerman)

Getting Here

From Ilkley central, go up Wells Road and, several hundred yards past the cattle-grid, keep your eyes peeled and turn left up the small moorland road for a half-mile and park-up at the start of the track to Silver Well cottage. Walk along here and, on the way, you may as well pass the cup-and-ring marked Weary Hill Stone, and the other Silver Well carvings further west through the heather. From the Silver Well (3) cup-marked stone, follow the walling uphill for nearly 100 yards until your reach the small gate. Go through it and stick to the footpath for 200 yards and then keep your eyes peeled for a large wonky ovoid stone less than 20 yards to your right. It’s a big thing, so you’ll find it easily enough.

Archaeology & History

Although this is primarily a cup-marked stone (a faint ring is possible around one of them), it’s a good design. It does it for me anyway! Sitting on a ridge at the top of a slope overlooking the Wharfe valley, from here the landscape opens up for many miles ahead of us looking mainly to the north, although the horizons both east and west also call our attention as the rising and setting sun would speak around the equinoxes. But it’s the airt of north which mainly calls from here. A scatter of cups splatter the rock surface, all of them on one half of the stone acting out in usual disorderly conduct apart from one spot where there are three deep cups in a line: this is the most notable part of the carving. At the top (southern) nose of the stone is a triangle of them and they then becoming increasingly disordered as you move along the stone. There are seemingly twenty of them altogether (perhaps more) with one of them having a short groove oozing out of it which can be difficult to see when the light isn’t quite right.

It was first described in Hedges (1986) survey, where he told it to be a “large flat rock in bracken with sixteen clear cups, four other possible cups, grooves and one basin”—although at the same time somehow, erroneously, he thought the carving may have been uncovered by Stuart Feather in 1970, confusing this stone with two more complex petroglyphs 300 yards to the west of here. Give it your attention when you’re walking on this ridge, before walking to the two others 300 yards to the west. It’s certainly worth looking at.

References:

Allen, J. Romilly, “Notice of Sculptured Rocks near Ilkley,” in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, volume 38, 1882.
Anonymous, Walks Around Cup and Ring Stones, ITIC: Bradford n.d. (1995)
Boughey, K.J.S. & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks of Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
Morris, Ronald W.B., “The Prehistoric Rock Art of Great Britain: A Survey of All Sites Bearing Motifs more Complex than Simple Cup-marks,” in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, volume 55, 1989.

Acknowledgements: Big thanks to the petroglyphic hands of Graeme Chappell and Tom Cleland for the work at this stone. Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Silver Well (2), Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire

05/10/202605/10/2026 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 10496 46625

Also Known as:

Carving no.70 (Hedges)
Carving no.240 (Boughey & Vickerman)

Getting Here

Go up Wells Road out of Ilkley central, up and across the cattle-grid and, one-third of a mile (0.5km) past the grid, keep your eyes peeled for the small road on your left. Go up here for literally half-a-mile and park at the roadside. From here you’ll see the straight track leading to the Silver Well cottage in the trees. Walk 250 yards along the track (past the larger Weary Hill [3] carving on the slope just above) towards the cottage and, about fufty 100 yards before reaching the gate, walk up the slope through the heather to the small flat-faced rock that looks down at you. If you’re approaching the much larger, more notable boulder of the Silver Well (3) carving, you need to be about 20 yards east of it.

Archaeology & History

This is a simple but notable cup-marked rock. As you walk up the slope towards it, you get the impression you’re looking at the front-end of a tomb entrance of some sort—but it’s nothing of the sort (sadly). Once you reach the flat face of stone, you’ll see that its topmost section is a thin wedge of stone along which are three distinct and quite deep cup-markings. The stone was first mentioned in Hedges (1986) survey, where he also thought there may have been a fourth cup on the south-side of the stone. When I first saw photos of this, I thought it was either a modern one or just another of Nature’s carved handiwork; but when we visited it recently our opinions changed.

There’s a rock a short distance east of here with a single cup-mark on it—but it’s not really worth looking at and might not even be the real deal.

References:

Boughey, K.J.S. & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks of Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.

Acknowledgements: Big thanks for help and assistance on our day’s venture to Graeme Chappell and Tom Cleland.

Silver Well (3), Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire

04/10/202605/10/2026 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 10474 46635

Also Known as:

Carving no.69 (Hedges)
Carving no.238 (Boughey & Vickerman)

Getting Here

Nice ‘n easy to find this one. Take the Wells Road up out of Ilkley central, up and over the cattle-grid and, one-third of a mile (0.5km) past the grid, keep your eyes peeled fro the small road on your left. Go up here for literally half-a-mile and park at the roadside. From here you’ll see the straight track leading to the Silver Well cottage in the trees. Walk 300 yards along the track (past the larger Weary Hill [3] carving on the slope just above) towards the cottage and, about ten yards before reaching the gate, walk uphill through the heather to the notable large boulder forty yards up the slope. Y’ can’t really miss it.

Archaeology & History

On a recent visit to this cup-marked stone, good old Mother E greeted us with a dark grey sky and so the design we were hoping to catch on this large sloping stone wasn’t quite what we hoped. The wide and half-inch deep cup-marks were visible when we stooped low to look across the surface of the stone, but from above they were difficult to make out. Altogether we counted eight cups—but Boughey & Vickerman (2003) reckoned there were nine of them. Also, well-defined grooves, half-natural and half-man-made, were just above visible, but we couldn’t see them in their entirety. In John Hedges (1986) sketch of the design, the cups and wide deep grooves are clear to see.

In the event that you have a look at this petroglyph, it would be best to visit it on a clear day when the sun is low—and if you brush the surface with water it would highlight the design pretty clearly. It’s also possible that you’d see new elements on the carving as a result of your work.

One final note: when we came here recently, both Graeme Chappell and Tom Cleland related to me that the rock itself was quite a notable red colour—which was totally lost on me as I’m the colorblind dude in the bunch! But, as they both suggested, this distinct colouration was probably one of the ingredients the stone was chosen to be carved. Makes sense.

References:

Allen, J. Romilly, “Notice of Sculptured Rocks near Ilkley,” in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, volume 38, 1882.
Anonymous, Walks Around Cup and Ring Stones, ITIC: Bradford n.d. (1995)
Boughey, K.J.S. & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks of Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.

Acknowledgements: Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Weary Hill (1), Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire

08/09/202610/09/2026 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 10614 46251

Also Known as:

Carving 243 (Boughey & Vickerman)

Getting Here

The best description to get here is, from Ilkley, to go up Wells Road, over the cattle grid, and about 500 yards past the cattle grid take the left turn up Keighley Road. This becomes a truly dodgy dirt-track when you hit the road to the Silver Well cottage on your right, but keep going uphill for another after a short while, but keeping walking uphill for another 500 yards till you reach a good-sized footpath on your right. Walk along here for 50-60 yards and then walk into the vegetation on your right and, just a few yards along, you’ll see a good-sized elongated stone in front of you.

Archaeology & History

This large boulder has about nine cup-marked impressions, both on its eastern topmost part and others a few feet away on a lower south-facing section of the stone. But they’re not all man-made. The cups on the top-east surface are the ones we should be paying attention to. Of the three or four that we can see, at least two of them are man-made: it’s possible that all of them have been man-affected, but without a detailed geomorphological analysis, we’ll never know for sure. The cups and dips on the other, lower section of the rock are Nature’s handiwork. That doesn’t mean they had no importance in the overall mythic nature of the carving but, as with most British petroglyphs, we may never know one way or the other.

References:

Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.

Hartlington Moor Lane (2), Hebden, North Yorkshire

05/09/202605/09/2026 megalithix

Cup-and-Ring Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 0467 6373

Archaeology & History

After visiting the Hartlington Moor Lane carving, walk further up the track for bang-on 400 yards and you’ll reach a gate on your right. In the field here, about 150 yards in, is an ornate cup-marked stone, which has had the dung of a hundred animals and other natural effects dumped upon it in recent years and, as a result, remains hidden at the mo. A sketch of it was made some time back, showing it’s general design, but it would be good to get some good photos of it (let us know if you manage to locate it).

The carving covers most of the surface of this low rounded stone and a number of the cups are quite deep, which suggests that it had been hidden from view for a long time. There are up to 54 cups, several of which are linked together by carved grooves, giving it what some folk call an ‘hour-glass’ feature. Near the middle of the stone it looked as if there was a faint cup-and-ring with a carved line running out of it.

Hartlington Moor Lane (1), Hebden, North Yorkshire

05/09/202605/09/2026 megalithix

Cup-and-Ring Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 04382 63384

Getting Here

The worst part about getting to this stone is finding somewhere to park on the B6265 road if you’re visiting by car! The best spot (as of writing) seems to be a small clearing that the farmer has made by the roadside near one of his gates. From Hebden village travel literally one mile (1.62km) east up the B6265 road and (keep your eyes peeled!) you’ll reach the small left-turn down to Hartlington Raikes (and on your left is a dirt-track) – but keep going straight on past this turning for another 450 yards where the farmer’s cleared the edge of the road against his field. Do not obstruct his field! (he’ll have every right to move it with his tractor if you’re an idiot) Naathen – walk back on yourself to the dirt-track (known as Hartlington Moor Lane) 450 yards away and walk up it for 300 yards where there’s a small tree on to your left. On the opposite side of the track, just below the wall right at the very edge of the track itself, you’ll see the small rounded carved stone.

Archaeology & History

Adjacent to a large, flat, elongated ovoid stone that nearly covers the width of the dirt-track is this much smaller stone with a decent scatter of cup-marks on it that was rediscovered only a few years ago by Yvonne Luke of Ilkley.

A rock art menagerie of Morley, Chappell & Hotham

The petroglyph comprises of two standard cup-and-rings, one of which has a carved groove running from the cup to the ring. There may be up to nine other single cup-marks on the stone, many of them quite worn (as you’d expect with it living on a track!); but some of these may be the result of natural erosion. Nonetheless, most of them seem to be the real deal. There are also several oval ‘notches’ on the design, but these may have been made by agricultural/farm machinery scratching across the stone.

From this carving, if you venture another 400 yards up the Hartlington Moor Lane track and go through the gate on your right, about fifty yards into the field is another carving at grid-ref SE 0467 6373, covered in cup-marks, but now covered over in vegetation. If you get a chance to make the stone visible again, let us know! It’s likely that other unrecorded carvings are hiding away in the adjacent fields.

Acknowledgements: With appreciations to Tony Morley, John Hotham and Graeme Chappell for getting us up to this olde stone. Cheers fellas!

Hangingstones Quarry (1), Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire

27/04/202629/04/2026 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 12681 46748

Also Known as:

Carving no.120 (Hedges)
Carving 278 (Boughey & Vickerman)

Getting Here

From the Cow & Calf car-park, walk towards and past the gigantic Calf rock, swerving round the fallen mass of rocks and into the trees at the back. Walk uphill to the Hanging Stones cup and ring stones, then keep heading—down the slope then back up the next one—west, for barely 100 yards until you’re on the level ground again, following the footpath alongside the heather. Barely 50 yards along, keep your eyes peeled in the heather for a low flat rock just a few yards in. Forage around and you’ll find it.

Archaeology & History

You’ll no doubt be seeing this carving after you’ve visited the impressive Hanging Stones petroglyphs 150 yards to the east. And you’ll probably be disappointed in its lack of visual grandeur when compared to its more ornate eastern neighbour. But the petroglyph fans among you should give it your attention.

When the dawn or evening daylight cuts across the rock, the design looks much better than at sun high, perhaps telling us that the message of the stone coincided with those periods of the day. The gentle folds of the stone itself morph into the carving: evening and morning light cutting subtle shadowy folds across the rock, giving it an organic texture that our aboriginal ancestors told to be a vital essence of stone itself. The two small clusters of cup-marks upon this stone become greater than their basic design when brushed with the shadows and glows of a sunset. And when our aboriginal peoples painted them in ochre and other colours, an even greater mythos emerged—but sadly it is forgotten here….

When looked at with the simplistic eyes of the archaeo-mind, this and its compatriots are little more than a number of marks on lifeless rocks. This stone for example was described in John Hedges’ (1986) survey as being just “two groups of four and five cups and grooves”—nothing more—with naught but an echo in Boughey & Vickerman’s (2003) later work. The carving has neighbours even more basic in the heather close by…

References:

Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks on Rombalds Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.

Craven Hall Hill (2), Hawksworth Moor, West Yorkshire

29/09/202530/09/2025 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 14620 44272

Getting Here

You can walk up from Menston, up Moor Lane north-west towards the moor, then turning left when you hit the moorland road of Hillings Lane. Nearly 350 yards along, turn right up the track known as Occupation lane onto the moor. More than half-a-mile up, past the gate at the Bee Stone, where the track splits, keep to the left and head further uphill, roughly parallel with the fence on your left. Literally ¼-mile (0.4 km) up from the split, you’re looking almost straight down at the reservoir; but to your left, walk towards the fence. Zigzag about! You can also approach it from the Grubstones and Great Skirtful area, by following the Occupation Lane track eastwards down the slope until you’re roughly level with the same reservoir.

Archaeology & History

On this somewhat isolated stone on the northern sloping edge of Craven Hall Hill we find a small cluster of shallow cup-marks, first noted in the 1980s and eventually mentioned in a survey by Boughey & Vickerman (2003) where they described it as a,

“Low, medium striated rock lying in slope of hill. SE end carries possibly up to eleven cups, possibly two sets grouped in arcs running into natural striations of rock, one of which may have been artificially enhanced by pecking.”

The view from here is quite something: gazing east to the heathen hilltop of Otley Chevin (Beltane rites and rock art — albeit not much), north-east to the far uplands of the White Horse of Kilburn, then across the northern panoramas of Askwith and Denton Moors, and beyond. Some archaeologists have started to believe that such vistas may have had relevance with such carvings, sometimes. They’ve caught up at last! 🙂 Anyhow, the carving itself is pretty simplistic and probably only of interest to the real petroglyph nuts amongst you – although it’s mebbe worth checking out if you’re visiting the Great Skirtful giant cairn and its very impressive hengi-form neighbour.

References:

Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding – Supplement, YAS 2018.

Acknowledgements: With thanks to Tom Cleland for help in relocating the site on a recent visit.

Reva Hill (2), Hawksworth, West Yorkshire

29/09/202530/09/2025 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 15002 43155

Getting Here

Numerous ways to get here: probably the easiest (direction wise) is if you’re coming from Dick Hudson’s public house on the southern road surrounding Rombalds Moor. From the pub, head left (east) along Otley Road (passing Weecher reservoir) for 1.9 miles (3.1km) until you reach Reva reservoir where a track leads you to the waters. A small parking spot is on the left-side of the road. From here, go through the gate and along the footpath across the field for nearly 300 yards to the next gate. Go through here and immediately follow the walling down to your left for about 135 yards to the edge of the rushes. It’s there!

Archaeology & History

On a recent visit to the Fraggle Rock carving, Tom Cleland foraged about at the edge of what was, in centuries gone by, a good flowing stream below the west slope of Reva Hill. An old pathway cut across one section of it near where the walling now runs, covered these days in the mass of Juncus reeds, typical of mashy grounds. And here, just where folk would cross the waters, Tom found a good sized stone with a single deep cup-mark on its crown, calling through a feast of lichens to be seen once more. There may be a second cup-mark by its side, but the light wasn’t good when we were here, so that’ll be worked out some other day. Anyhow, this one’s probably only for the crazy petroglyph hunters out there. It’s the Fraggle Rock and its companios that you’re gonna be looking for, nearby….