Backstone Beck
Neolithic/Bronze Age/Iron Age Enclosure and Huts
Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire  OS Map Ref SE12844618
OS Maps - Landranger 104 (Leeds & Bradford), Explorer 297 (Lower Wharfedale & Washburn Valley)


Backstone Beck Hut and Enclosure - looking southeast
Reconstructed hut with a line of rubble walling to the right. Looking southeast towards Green Crag.
This site is fairly easy to find if you follow the course of Backstone Beck after it crosses a track leading southwest from the Cow and Calf, the settlement is on the east of the beck.

It consists of two possible hut circles at the south end that have been somewhat restored and part of a curved low rubble wall that has also been restored by the Ilkley Archaeology Group between 1982-87. A suggested date for the earliest use of the site is around 3000BC during the Neolithic, with the hut circles dating much later, from the late Bronze Age to early Iron Age, somewhere between 800BC and 500BC.

There are also three carved rocks within the enclosure but due to the rich growth of heather around the area they can be difficult to find. See Backstone Beck Stones 1 and Second Idol Stone. On the opposite side of the stream are two more carved stones - see Backstone Beck Stones 2.


See also Ilkley Moor & Rombalds Moor Introduction

View looking north over one of the reconstructed huts. The walling extends to the east and west.

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