Almscliffe Crag

Nearest town:
Harrogate (7km NE)
OS reference:
SE267490
OS sheet:
104
Latitude:
53° 56' 10.08 N
Longitude:
1° 35' 35.72 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Almscliffe Crag (Natural Rock Feature) by listerinepree

The low man/altar rock, complete with tree ‘carving’ (not really but, folklore surrounds it as such)

Image credit: Layla Smith
listerinepree
listerinepree Jun 26, 2010
Image of Almscliffe Crag (Natural Rock Feature) by listerinepree

one of the pin/dew/wart wells on the top of the crag. Claimed never to run dry even in good weather....having spent a few months going up to the crag on a very regular basis we found this isnt quite the case!

Image credit: layla smith
listerinepree
listerinepree Jun 1, 2010
Image of Almscliffe Crag (Natural Rock Feature) by listerinepree

TF and EL, Thomas Fawkes and Edwin Lascelles initials carved into their respective sides of the slit across the crag. The initials are found in three seperate places along the split.

Image credit: layla smith
listerinepree
listerinepree Jun 1, 2010

Articles

Almscliffe Crag

Kozmik_Ken
Kozmik_Ken Apr 23, 2004

A fantastic high outcrop of millstone grit at the northern side of Wharfedale. Connected by folklore to the Cow and Calf rocks on Ilkley Moor, this place is worth a visit if only for the great views and weirdly weathered bowls. Standing stones reputedly once stood nearby, so it seems very likely that the sacred nature of the crag was recognised by our ancestors.

Folklore

Almscliffe Crag
Natural Rock Feature
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Jul 22, 2012

Fairies at Almas, or Orms, Cliff, in Knaresborough Forest.

Almas Cliff is a prominent group of millstone grit rocks, said to have been sacred to the religion of the Druids, and still to retain many traces of the rites and observances of their faith. One rock is named the Altar Rock, and near to this is a natural opening in the cliff, about eighteen inches wide and five feet in height, which is known as the entrance to the ‘Fairy parlour.’ It is said to have been explored to the distance of one hundred yards, and to end in a beautiful room sacred to the ‘little people,’ a veritable fairy palace. Other reports say, that it is a subterranceous passage having an exit near Harewood Bridge – some two or three miles distant. This variation in report only shows how imperfect has been the exploration. It is to be doubted if any mortal has ever reached the fairy parlour. Some years ago, the story was related of daring explorers making the attempt, but so loud was the din, raised upon their advance, by rattling of pokers and shovels by the fairy inhabitants within, indignant at this invasion of the sanctity of their abode, that the too daring mortals precipitantly fled, by the way by which they had entered. Since then, no man seems to have dared the task of ascertaining the truth, as to this passage.

Grainge, the historian of Knaresborough Forest, says of the place: ‘It has always been associated with the fairy people, who were formerly believed to be all-powerful on this hill, and exhanged their imps for the children of the farmers around. With the exception of the entrance to the fairy parlour, all the openings, in the rocks, are carefully walled up to prevent foxes from earthing in the dens and caverns within; and the fairies, being either walled in, or finding themselves walled out, have left the country, as they have not been seen lately in the neighbourhood.‘

From Yorkshire Legends and Traditions by the Rev. Thomas Parkinson (1889).

Folklore

Almscliffe Crag
Natural Rock Feature
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Mar 6, 2010

Edmund Bogg says on ‘Almes Cliff’:

On the surface of the main group of rock are several basins or depressions, no doubt formed principally by Nature, as we have seen many similar amongst the rocks of Upper Wharfedale. ... An old custom of the country people was the dropping of a pin into these basins, they believing that good luck would follow this action. One of the basins is known as the Wart Well; anyone troubled with warts came here and pricked them until the blood flowed freely into the basin, and finished by dipping the hands into the water. If their faith was great enough, the warts were seen no more.

In the year 1776, a young woman of Rigton, having been disappointed by her lover, determined to commit suicide by leaping from the summit of the rocks, a distance of nearly fifty feet. A strong wind blowing from the west inflated her dress, and in her perilous descent she received very little harm. She never repeated the experiment, and lived many years after.

The scene from the top of this rock is magnificent, the silver windings of the old Wharfe passing town, village, meadow, and woodland, whilst far beyond the dale the country in many places can be seen for fifty miles around.

Sounds like a suitable tale for ‘Mythbusters’ if you ask me. Page 77 in ‘From Edenvale to the plains of York’ (1894).

Folklore

Almscliffe Crag
Natural Rock Feature
Kozmik_Ken
Kozmik_Ken Apr 23, 2004

The Giant Rombald was said to have both knocked the calf rock from the Cow and Calf and left his foot print in Almscliffe Crag in one great step over Wharfedale whilst escaping the wrath of his wife.

As Almscliffe lies vaguely North West of the Cow and Calf, this could be a folk memory of a summer solstice sunrise alighnment?

Miscellaneous

Almscliffe Crag
Natural Rock Feature
Kozmik_Ken
Kozmik_Ken Jan 16, 2004

Visible from Ilkley Moor on the other side of Wharfedale and also associated with folklore of the Giant Rombald. A number of cup marks lie on top of the crag. Some maybe natural, others man-made. One large bowl is know locally as the ‘Wart Well’, due to it’s supposed abilty to cure warts.

Topics

Almias - Rural Psychogeographical event 2
T
The Captain
Jun 2010

Sites within 20km of Almscliffe Crag

Like all websites everywhere, we use cookies.