Cow Beck

A stream near Cragg Hill, Leeds. No gauge of its own: what the river map and the banked data say about it.

Cow Beck is a stream on Ordnance Survey’s river map near Cragg Hill, Leeds, with about 510 m of mapped channel. On the map it flows into the River Aire, which flows on into the River Ouse, then the River Humber and out to the sea.

Next gauge downstream

Kirkstall Abbey on the River Aire, about 2.0 km along the river below where Cow Beck ends on the map.

1.45 m Normal · steady 45 min ago

After that, Armley, about 5.5 km along the river.

No gauge measures Cow Beck itself. A gauge downstream shows water that has already passed it, mixed with everything else that has joined on the way, so it says nothing exact about this stream.

Storm overflows on Cow Beck

2 storm overflows are placed on this stream on the river map. Each status is the water company’s own monitor.

Yorkshire Water Horsforth Transfer Not discharging
Yorkshire Water · into Cow Beck · 2025: 37 spills, 71 h
Hawksworth Road, Horsforth CSO Not discharging
Yorkshire Water · into Cow Beck · 2025: 7 spills, 3.3 h

A status says whether an overflow is discharging now, never how much or why. A monitor that is offline or has not reported is not “not discharging”. Sewage in Britain’s rivers →

Live status: © Yorkshire Water storm overflow activity data, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Annual spill figures: Environment Agency Event Duration Monitoring return, © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right, Open Government Licence (OGL) v3.0.

Places along it

From its source towards its mouth, the settlements within a kilometre of it on the map: Horsforth Woodside, Cragg Hill, Newlay.

Place names: OS Open Names. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database rights 2026.

On the map

The map needs JavaScript. Everything it shows is listed on this page.

The blue line is Cow Beck; grey lines are other mapped watercourses. Lines from OS Open Rivers (edition 2026-04).

The River Aire, the river it joins →LS18 4JQ, a postcode page near where it ends on the map (about 280 m away) →All rivers with gauges →

What this page can and cannot tell you

Its line, its name and where it flows come from Ordnance Survey’s river map (OS Open Rivers, edition 2026-04), which leaves out many small streams, ditches and culverts. “Flows into” is the map’s word: a channel that is not on the map is not shown here, which does not mean it is not there.
No gauge measures Cow Beck itself, so its own level is not known here.
Storm overflows are listed only where the river map places them on this stream; an overflow it could not place is not counted.
No water-sampling point with a banked sample is placed on this stream. Only England’s samples are banked, and only where the map can place their sampling point.
Nothing on this page says whether any place floods. For an address, see its postcode page.

This uses Environment Agency flood and river level data from the real-time data API (Beta). Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0.