Ilkley Moor

The Cow and Calf

The Cow and Calf are the best-known landmark on the moor: a large gritstone outcrop (the Cow) with a big detached boulder (the Calf) sitting below it, above the Ben Rhydding side of town. Local legend tells of a Bull too, and of a giant, Rombald, whose stamping split the rock. The more prosaic truth is that much of the Cow's face was quarried in the 19th century, which is why it looks sheared off. Today the old quarry is a popular spot for rock climbers, and there is a car park and a café-pub nearby, making it an easy starting point for moor walks.

The Swastika Stone and cup-and-ring rock art

Ilkley Moor has one of the richest concentrations of prehistoric rock art in Britain. Hundreds of carved rocks have been recorded, most decorated with "cup" hollows, often ringed by grooves and linked by channels. They are usually attributed to the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, roughly 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, although nobody knows for certain what they meant.

The Swastika Stone, on Woodhouse Crag at the western end of the moor towards Addingham, is a carved curvilinear cross of cups and linking grooves with a distinctive swirling "arm" design. It is fenced for protection, and the more visible carving beside it is generally understood to be a later replica, with the original being the fainter carving. Its age is debated: it is often compared with Iron Age designs but some suggest it is earlier. Either way, the symbol long predates, and has nothing to do with, its 20th-century misuse.

Other well-known stones include the Badger Stone and the Twelve Apostles stone circle on the high moor (the latter is a Bronze Age ring of stones, restored and partly re-erected in modern times).

On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at

Yorkshire's unofficial anthem is a comic dialect song. A young man goes courting Mary Jane on the moor without his hat, and the verses cheerfully follow the logic: he'll catch his death of cold, be buried, the worms will eat him, the ducks will eat the worms, and "then we shall all have etten thee".

"Wheear 'ast tha bin sin' ah saw thee?
On Ilkla Moor baht 'at"

It is sung to the hymn tune Cranbrook, written by Thomas Clark of Canterbury. The words are traditional and their origin is uncertain; a popular story says they were made up during a 19th-century church choir outing to the moor, but that is folklore rather than documented fact.