Ilkley West Ramble #14: T'Romans wor 'eear
This is the 14th in a series of 28 caches which will take you on a memorable ramble through some fine, varied West Yorkshire countryside immediately west of Ilkley and south of Addingham. The southern half of the ramble traverses Addingham Moorside.
See Ilkley West Ramble #1: Intro & Start for maps, background info on the trail, and parking waypoints.
This marks the halfway point of the ramble and the end of Q2 (low contour), from IWR#15-IWR#20 (Q3) the route ascends through Addingham Middle Moor up to Addingham Moorside to join Moorside Lane. Thereafter for Q4 the route contours back to the starting point.
From IWR #13, pass through the small metal gate and continue heading north- west along the route of the Roman Road between the rows of fine mature trees to the location of the cache, a camo-taped push-top food container, on the right (north side) . . .
RR72a: As mentioned in IWR#10, the route of the caches up to this cache follows that of Roman Road RR72a which ran west-east for 33 miles (53km) from the fort at Ribchester (Bremetennacum Veteranorum) in Lancashire via Elslack (SW of Skipton) to Ilkley (Olicana) - see here for more details.
The Road is shown as The Street / ROMAN ROAD on old Ordnance Survey maps (see Gallery).
Most of its course has been revealed by LiDAR imagery (see here) which uses laser technology to measure distances.
The relevant section along which the IWR route passes is described [with notes] as follows:
. . . it then turns to just north of east and follows the contours around the hill before descending gently down from Draughton Height along Crossbank Road towards Addingham. Where Crossbank Road bears more easterly, close to Addingham, the Roman line is supposed to head straight on past Street Farm [the location of this cache] and Bramley Barn, its line taken up briefly by Cocking Lane.
The route described is also the route of the first Skipton to Addingham turnpike road, opened in 1755, which was later re-routed in 1820 to a much easier course which is now part of the modern A65. It has always been assumed that the turnpike road was built on top of the Roman, but the Roman road has never actually been found.
. . . from Draughton eastwards, the course is hard to trace for about 1.7 miles until LiDIR coverage starts just SE of Chelker Reservoir. From there the road appears clearly running alongside the northern edge of the A65 [along part of the AEG cache series route].
As the A65 bears south, the Roman line continues straight on across Bracken Ghyll Golf Club, until it disappears beneath modern housing at Addingham.
It reappears on the other side of Addingham, again very clearly visible on LiDAR where it passes . . . Street Farm [location of IWR#12] . . . whilst hard to make out on the ground, it descends through a substantial engineered cutting to the crossing of Lumb Ghyll [location of IWR#11]. The remains of the bridge ramps on both sides of the Ghyll can just about be made out, although no dressed masonry is to be seen, presumably all robbed out.
The road then negotiates the crossing of another ghyll [Hall Ghyll] . . . before heading off south of Cocking Lane, briefly running along the north side of the course of the old railway before continuing towards Ilkley. It is presumed to enter modern Ilkley to the south of the fort on a line approximating to the Grove, but this is not known with certainty.