Village Becks

There are four main becks in the parish of Addingham, Town Beck (called Marchup Beck upstream of Townhead), Back Beck, Winebeck and Lumb Beck. All have headwater tributaries that are unnamed.

Town Beck is joined by Back Beck in the centre of the village as the beck leaves the Garth under Bolton Road. It flows into the Wharfe at Low Mill. All becks are in relatively poor condition suffering from sediment and nutrient pollution in agricultural areas and from runoff from road surfaces and housing estates in the built-up part of the village. Town Beck and Back Beck are constrained by artificial channels through the village and Town Beck in particular suffers from multiple weirs and culverts that impede fish passage.

In the summer of 2017 with the help of the Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust (YDRT) we set up the Addingham 4Becks project. It was a partnership project made up of representatives from Bradford Council, the Environment Agency, Yorkshire Water, the Wild Trout Trust, the Addingham Anglers Association, Addingham Parish Council as well as YDRT and our Addingham Environment Group.

The programme of work centred on our volunteer group of beck stewards, each responsible for monitoring different stretches of Town and Back Becks.

In 2018 we received a £20,000 grant from the Wharfe Flood Levy Programme that enabled YDRT to appoint a project officer to manage the 4Becks work programme focussing on flood risk, water quality and habitat restoration.

In January 2019, to assess beck water quality we sampled 35 sites along our becks from their headwaters to their confluence with the River Wharfe. The samples were analysed for the nutrient pollutants, phosphorus and nitrogen, and for biological indicators of water quality, diatoms and macro-invertebrates.

Some six years later, in February 2025 we repeated the survey, adding in extra sites but sampling only for phosphorus and associated chemical variables.

For more information about the 4Becks Project click here.

To read the final report of our original 4Becks project (October 2019) click here.

To read Maire O’Connell’s experience of being a beck steward click here and to read a diary account of her inspection of Back Beck in June and September 2025 click here.

To read the report of our re-survey of beck sites in February 2025, click here.