DMC#7: Skifra Beck - Whams to Wharfe
This is the 7th cache of a 20-cache circuit, consisting of 16 new + 4 existing caches adopted from Santos L Helper, which takes you anticlockwise through lovely mixed countryside from near Denton across to near Middleton and back.
See DMC #1: Intro & Start for background info on the series, a map (also found in this cache's Gallery) and parking waypoints.
The cache, a camo-taped preform tube, is hidden just off the trail as it climbs steeply through the fine woodland out of Skifra Beck Ghyll.
The 4km long Skifra Beck* originates @ or near N 53 57.706 W 1 47.181 in Cross Bank Whams, a marshy area up on the top of Denton Moor, passing High Denton Farm before entering this ghyll above Stubbs Wood.
[*On the 1851 Ordnance Survey map the beck north of its confluence with another beck at Cross Bank (just north of High Denton) is labelled Hollin Beck].
It continues down through West Park Wood joining Hepper Carr Beck to flow into the River Wharfe @ N 53 55.789 W 1 47.151 some 450m east of Denton Road Bridge.
No information can be found on the origin of the name Skifra but in relation to the italicised words above . . .
A wham is defined as: a swamp, a morass, a marshy hollow, a hollow part of a field, or a dale among hills, a wide, flat glen, a small valley usually with a brook, or a hollow in a hill or mountain.
Places with this name occur in the Pennine hills of Yorkshire, Cumbria and Northumberland, as well as in Lancashire, Cheshire, Dumfries and Galloway, and as far north as the central belt of Scotland from St Andrews to Stirlingshire.
The English Dialect Dictionary says that the geographical spread of the use of this word suggests it was introduced by the Norwegian Vikings who migrated from Ireland in the early 900s to settle in northern England and Scotland. Its origin is likely to be the Old Norse hvammr, which originally meant a grassy slope or vale.
See here for an interesting blog page on this word.
Carr is from an Old Norse word kjarr meaning 'a wooded marsh'. It became a Yorkshire dialect word meaning 'marshy land'. Hepper Carr is the name of the small patch of woodland just north of where the beck joins the Wharfe.
Hepper is one of the numerous words used for a young salmon.
Stubbs is the English surname for one who a) 'lived near a prominent tree stump, or b) was a short stumpy man, or c) who came from Stubbs - 'recently cleared land where the stumps are still evident' in Yorkshire.
Hollin means holly in Yorkshire dialect. North of nearby Askwith is Hollin Tree Hill.