INWT #9: Calvary Corner
This is the 9th of a 13-cache series which takes you on a 4.3km trail around some of the lovely countryside between Middleton and Austby immediately to the northwest of Ilkley above the north bank of the Wharfe. Allowing for an easy pace, stopping for caches | to admire the view | spot birds the trail should take you about 3 hours or so.
See GC8Q381 Ilkley NorthWest Trail #1: Intro & Start for background info on the trail and parking waypoints. See Gallery for a map of the trail showing parking spots and approximate cache locations.
The cache, a camo-taped screw-capped sample tube is magnetically attached to the gate east along the lane from #8 near the corner of the peaceful wooded area where a special and curious site is located. The entrance gate to the site is a short distance east of the cache location.
A barely legible sign by an ornately carved oak gate with its Latin inscription declares that this is Calvary. Beyond the gate the path swings around to become a tree-surrounded avenue heading between carved-stone Stations of the Cross to a shrine at the far end.
This has been adorned, over the years, with simple makeshift wooden crosses and photos of loved ones left by 'pilgrims' to this remote, quiet and (if alone) slightly spooky place, somewhat resembling a churchyard. On top of the structure stand three crosses depicting Calvary.
It is a religious folly - an 'outdoor oratory devised for meditation and prayer' - created in the 1850s by the local landowner, Peter Middleton, resident of the nearby Myddelton Lodge.
Through numerous stone carved 'Stations of the Cross', it depicts the final hours of Jesus' life, his 'Passion'. 
Such Stations, in churches or outdoors, are designed to help the devoted (usually Roman Catholic) to make a spiritual pilgrimage of prayer, by reflecting and meditating on the scenes of Christ's suffering and death.
It is a peaceful place and has its own slightly eerie beauty, though it has obviously seen better days. After years of neglect during periods of financial difficulty for the Middleton family, it was almost derelict by 1906. It was tidied it up by a monastic order, the Passionist Fathers who since then occupied the Lodge from the 1920s-1980s. The Lodge is now run as a Retreat House by the RC Archdiocese of Leeds and is not open to the public.