Spence's Garden Short Multi
The cache, a camo-taped, screw-topped, pre-form tube, is hidden in this lovely unusually secluded location, given its proximity to the bustling Grove - Ilkley's main (shopping) street. It is a short multi which can be completed in 10 minutes.
It replaces an earlier cache Santos L Helper (aka fat bloke)'s popular GC3GM0Q The Secret Garden MK II which was hidden on 9/4/12 and archived on 3/1/22 after some 234 finds garnering 6 FPs during its almost 10-year lifetime.
Step 1: after parking your cachemobile in the main central car park (payable) or - depending on spaces available - streetside (some locations payable but others, like here, free with recorded visit, for 1 hour), make your way to the Parking machine at N 53 55.471 W 1 49.778.
Examining this you will see that its Location No. is 30A17 where A is the figure required. On the front of the machine you will find a red number B71.
Step 2: walk through the gardens or around the corner to N 53 55.450 W 1 49.767 where you should be standing outside the left of two fine semi-detached houses. On the stone gatepost you will see the well-weathered inscribed 9-letter name of the property. The alphanumeric value (A=1 B=2 C=3 etc) of the 3rd letter of this name = C
Step 3: cross over the road to N 53 55.450 W 1 49.784 where you will see that the number on the lamp post there = D
Step 4: finally move a few metres along the pavement over the beck to the location of a manhole inspection cover at N 53 55.450 W 1 49.784 which has inscribed along its western edge FIG 62 24 X 1E where E is the required number.
The cache is hidden at:
N 53 55.D(A-1)(B-2) W 1 49.(E-C)(A+B+C)(D-4)
The small triangular gardens are shown on some maps as Spencers Gardens (which seems to be a misspelling) but on others are not shown. The 2002 Ilkley Area Assessment briefly mentions Spence's Gardens on p8 'Throughout the residential areas, open spaces are prevalent, either in the form of ‘romantic’ rocky wooded ghylls such as Spence’s Garden on Grove Road and that on Wells Walk (Mill Ghyll), or more formal public parks, with lawns, planting and trees' and on p23 '. . . Spence’s Garden, a delightful public park, more of a wooded glen, with magnificent mature specimen trees and timber bridge over the beck that runs through it'.
The gardens were originally grazing land and were donated to the town by a Dr Spence (no info has been found on him). They appear (unlabelled) on the 1910 Ordnance Survey map but apparently not on the next earlier (1899) map. They thus predate the adjacent Memorial Gardens which were landscaped in 1922. They also appear in photos as early as 1905. So, it can be concluded that the garden was created sometime between 1899 and 1905.
The beck running through the gardens is Spicey Gill which has its source high up on Rombalds Moor near the high point of the Keighley Road which crosses over the moor. It is featured in its upper reaches in SawaSawa's cache GC9J2D4 Spicey Gill Crossing and enters the Wharfe just east of the old Ilkley Bridge.
