The hamlet of Ilton is situated three miles south west of the small market town of Masham in North Yorkshire and is now a dispersed settlement of houses and farms with a population of around 60 people but in the not too distant past this was not necessarily the case! A high proportion of the housing is situated alongside an unusual circular road which encircles an area known as Sweet Earth.

To the north of this focal point the through road travels steeply down to the valley of the Sole Beck (known as Sole Beck Gill) passing through a ford to rise up the opposite side of the valley passed Stonefold Farm in the direction of the villages of Healey and Fearby.

Close by there is a large concentration of medieval cultivation earthworks that now support a mixed economy of pastoral and arable cultivation. There are signs that this good agricultural land has been in use possibly since pre-historic times. To the south and west the terrain is mainly moorland interspersed with the occasional conifer plantation.

From a geological perspective Ilton lies on the eastern edge of the Askrigg Block, a platform of ancient rock chiefly of granite, not far from where the dipping carboniferous strata disappear beneath the Permian Limestone east of the River Ure. The area is predominantly Millstone Grit and consists of a series of alternating layers of sandstones and shale one on top of the other. The area has been subject to extensive glaciation with numerous glacial deposits and drift giving rise to a number of unusual geological features.

The area is drained to the north by the River Burn fed by Sole Beck, Eller Beck and Den Beck and to the south by Wreaks Beck, Kex Beck and the Rivers Laver and Skell joining the River Ure at Ripon.