Forgotten Wolds
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FORGOTTEN WOLDS: LATE PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HISTORIC LANDSCAPES ON THE YORKSHIRE CHALK Chris Fenton-Thomas Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. Department of Archaeology and Prehistory, University of Sheffield Submitted June 1999 CONTENTS: VOLUME ONE Acknowledgements ..................................................................... .iii-iv Chapter 1: Multiple Landscapes ................................................ .1- 32 Chapter 2: Chalkshire: An Introduction to the Yorkshire Wolds .................................... .33-62 Chapter 3: Linear Earthworks and the Late Bronze Age Landscape ............. 63-109 Chapter 4: Pastures and the Past: Developing Landscapes of the Iron Age and RB ...................... 11 0-184 VOLUME TWO Chapter 5: Historical Landscape and Township Profiles ............... 1-54 Chapter 5: The Wolds Before Domesday................................... 56-123 Chapter 6: The Wolds Keep Revolving .................................... 124-184 Biblio~aphy .............................................................................. I-XXX Appendix One: Local Descriptions of Wolds Linears .......... XXXI-XLII VOLUME THREE: FIGURES List of Figures ............................................................................ .i-ix The Figures ................................................................................. 1-122 11 VOLUME ONE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis has been written and researched in four phases (Sheffield, Carmarthen, South Dalton and Sheffield again) and for each I have different people to thank. Most importantly I am ever grateful to Andrew Fleming and Mark Edmonds who both acted as supervisors. Andrew, for his quiet but profound inspiration, practical support and guidance in the first three years of research at Sheffield, and subsequently in rural Wales. Mark has kept me going through the final year(s) of writing up with rigorous critque and tireless practical support. Without his patience and committment it would never have been finished. The ideas and approaches contained within have developed enormously over the number of years spent in preparation and research, and for this I am grateful to many people who have shared thoughts or field trips and whose work I have dipped into. This is especially true of those who have been based at Sheffield and engaged in their own investigations in East Yorkshire, such as Pat Wagner, Paul Buckland, Bill Bevan and Mel Giles. The RCHM kindly made available their aerial photographic plots, prior to publication, and for this I am grateful to Cathy Stoertz and Rowan Whimster. Terry M~nby was very forthcoming with a wide variety of information and advice, in the early stages. Furthermore, both Hull Museum and the Sites and Monuments Record of Humberside Archaeology Unit (now Humber Archaeology), were very helpful in allowing the consultation of their archives. Especially helpful were Ed Dennison, formerly, of the SMR and Andrew Foxon and Brian Sitch of Hull Museum. Historical records were consulted at the following places: Brynmoor Jones Library, Hull University; Humberside County Record Office, Beverley; Yorkshire Archaeology Society Library, Leeds; Borthwick Institute, York. To the staff of these institutions I am also grateful. Margaret Ehrenberg kindly made available unpublished information on her excavations at Fimber Westfield. I suppose, I should also be grateful to Trinity College, Carmarthen for providing me with the free time without which the thesis would never have been completed. The documentary records and information could only come to life through innumerable visits and field investigations on the Yorkshire Wolds, which after all is the prime concern of the research. For access to sites and countrysides which are often inaccessible to the public, I am grateful to many farmers and landowners in East Yorkshire. Principally these include the Sledmere Estate and their present land agent, Mr. Tony Wilson; the Birdsall Estate; Lord Hotham and the Dalton Estate; John Scholes and family of Fimber Nab Farm and the tenants of Westfield Farm, Fimber .. Personally, I have been kept going in this endeavour through the support and confidence of many friends and family, who never lost faith, when perhaps they should have. Special thanks go to Natalie, who had to put up with the early obsessive years and to Cynthia who endured the middle, more manic ones. (and 111 thanks too for the miniature pen and ink drawings). To Alex, Joshua and Max who have grown up with it, (and sometimes thrown up on it) I will now have more time for football. Writing up has been supported by material distractions and accompaniments, including: rosemary oil, Belle and Sebastian, violining, Endcliffe Park, Sheffield Wednesday, Mexico and Guatemala, China Kitchen and tuna. My Dad provided a wonderful year of relaxed surroundings, accomodation and company at a time, in need of restoration. But finally, perhaps the one person, for whom the completion of the thesis would have given most pleasure, would have been my mum. lV CHAPTER ONE MUL TIPLE LANDSCAPES "The outdoor man, away on a cross-country tramp, taking in the uplands, lingering over his midday sandwich on the earthwork of some hilltop camp, will look all round 'to get the lay of the land'. He will first pick out the hill points: this one bare to the top, another marked by a clump of trees, or less frequently by a single one. Sometimes one or more mounds or tumuli will stand out as pimples on a hill ridge against the sky line and he will remember similar ones which he has passed on his valley route, perhaps belted by a water-moat, built for a purpose so obscure that no one had yet explained it. He will not fail also to look for any entrenched hill-top camp he may know, sometimes with blunt notches on the sky outline where the earthworks run, but only too often quite smothered by trees. " (Alfred Watkins 1925, The Old Straight Track). CONFLICT AND THE SPIRIT OF THE BRITISH COUNTRYSIDE It is 1999, and the British government have announced their commitment to a statutory right to roam over the more remote areas of the English and Welsh countryside. At the same time, the Common Agricultural Policy, which has been attributed. as the root cause behind the massive changes in the agricultural landscape of Britain, since WW2, is under serious review. The character of the British countryside is changing, through political decisions. It could be argued that these have been influenced, to no small degree, by public will, springing from the individual personal relationships between people and the landscape. These developments follow a period of crisis in the relationship between government policy and public opinion, with regard to the preservation and character of this countryside. Between the late 1980's and mid 1990's government sanctioned 1 'development' of this countryside (mainly road-building) has been forcefully and famously resisted by large numbers of people and a varied constituency (e.g. Monbiot 1995). These numerous shows of opposition have highlighted how it was, not only, .the beautiful views and aesthetics of the scenery that were going to be lost. The strength of feeling that stirred up this resistance seemed to appeal to a deep-rooted sense of attachment and belonging, that was embodied in the 'spirit' of the British landscape. The Union Jack flag appeared at many protest sites, and sometimes it was subverted into the 'Union Jill' (a rainbow-coloured equivalent). The use of these symbols of 'patria' reflected the fact that the protests had tapped into an almost mystical grassroots patriotism. The issues at stake had little to do with (party) Politics or Nationalism, but was symbolised by people's veneration of the landscape around them. It demonstrated how important the landscape remains for the cultural identity of those communities which inhabit it but also that the identities drawn from it and bound up with it are often conflicting (Bender 1993a). The anti-road movement, and its spin-offs, concerned with open-cast mining and airport extensions, were always perceived as environmental campaigns. The historical credentials of the landscape, however, did surface now and again as an important contribution to the conservation issue. Many comparisons were made between the hard-core tree-house dwellers and the 'Diggers' movement, of the years surrounding the English Revolution, during the 1640's (Hill 1972;1983). In the years after 1649, several communities had set themselves up on common land in order to use its resources to provide for a self sufficient community. The landscape was here used as the symbolic vehicle for the expression of social and political ideology held by Gerard Winstanley and others. Much was made of the archaeological sites, which were going to be lost to the new motorway at Twyford Down, but the acknowledgement of the wider historical foundations of the landscape was not perhaps made often enough. At another level, the long struggle by ramblers for a right to roam has been based on the premise that landownership, of the kind that exists today in this country, does not have very strong or immovable historical credentials (Shoard 1987). The cultural construction of 'contested' landscapes has been discussed by Bender with regard to Stonehenge, so that competing claims to intellectual and spiritual ownership of this single 2 ancient monument have become a symbol for wider social tensions and conflicts within modern British society (Bender 1993a). The historical aspect to these political debates