Act 2
The Primeval Swamp
The Iron Age, Bronze Age, Neolithic,
Mesolithic evidence of the people of the immediate vicinity to Farndale
I suggest that you follow the main chapters
of the Farndale Story in order. If you do so, the journey will first take you
back in time to a period before individuals of ordinary agricultural folk like
the Farndale family, can ever be identified. Yet the Farndale lands were part
of a large estate of which its southern lands at the northwest edge of the Vale
of York, were settled for a millennium and more. So
while we can’t tell individual stories before the thirteenth century, we can
still continue the ancestral story, through the story of the place where the
family came from.
Whilst it is probable that our family
were inhabitants of the stable estate lands around Kirkdale perhaps back to
Roman times, we can’t be sure of our deeper ancestry. However we know the
history of human settlement in Yorkshire, and this page tells that story.
Scene 1 – Early Human Settlement
Those
individuals who came to be the first inhabitants of
Farndale had been plucked from the primeval sludge of Bronze Age Beaker
Folk, Iron Age Settlers, and Brigantes people who had roamed the moors, dales
and vales of Yorkshire since about 9,000 years BCE, most likely settling by
Roman times in the cultivated lands around Kirkdale, a place of
even greater antiquity, which has left us the remains of interglacial age
hippopotami.
Tropical
Yorkshire
Nearby to
the church at Kirkdale
is the Kirkdale Cave discovered
by workmen in 1821 and found to contain the fossilised bones of a variety of
mammals no longer indigenous to Britain, including hippopotami (the farthest
north any such remains have been found), elephant and hyena. The cave is only
500 metres southeast of St Gregory’s Minster. The Reverend William Buckland
came to understand that this was a cave into which hyena had dragged their prey
during the interglacial period (a time when the earth was warmer than it is
today) and which started 130,000 YBP (“years before the present”). This was
before the age of humans in Britain, but a place of very deep antiquity, and
the very place where our ancestors would later live, in a different period of
geological time.
Human
settlement
A vast epoch of time then passed before the
first human settlers following the last great Ice Age entered Britain across Doggerland,
the lowlands of what is now the North Sea, probably following animals such as
reindeer.
Humans had
visited our shores long before these early settlers. Human footprints have been
discovered at Happisburgh in Norfolk which date to 900,000 YBP when
early humans visited Britain during an earlier period of warming when Britain
wasn’t an island. The oldest human remains are those of a six foot specimen of Homo
heidelbergensis found at Boxgrove in East Sussex which date to about 500,000
YBP. Shorter and stockier Homo neanderthalensis and then Homo Sapiens
visited Britain between about 400,000 to 50,000 YBP. However no human remains
have been found in Britain between about 180,000 to 60,000 YBP. Ice Age cave art has been found at Creswell
Crags in Derbyshire dating to about 13,000 YBP.
The first
wave of our ancestral settlers arrived in the area of
the North Yorks Moors about 10,000 YBP. They were hunters, hunting wild animals
across the moors and in the forests. Relics of this early hunting, gathering
and fishing community have been found as a widespread scattering of flint tools
and the barbed flint flakes used in arrows and spears.
There is a
wealth of archaeological evidence of Mesolithic
Yorkshire. This includes recovery of Mesolithic tools from the high moors
above Farndale.
A Mesolithic
group settled at Star Carr, near
Scarborough. They lived in tents made from animal skins which were erected on
wooden platforms around the edge of a large ice-dammed lake, Lake Flixton at
the estuary of the once Lake Pickering. Star Carr is a Mesolithic
archaeological site, about 5 miles south of Scarborough. It’s the most
important Mesolithic site in Britain. Star Carr was first occupied about 9,000
years before the common era.
Microlith
sites have been found on the Moors at Bransdale and Farndale and many more
locations including flint and stone chippings and tools. The area between the
heads of Farndale and Westerdale is one of the richest series of sites in
Britain. Large collections have been made at Common Stone at (NZ 627000), near
Ash House (NZ 648003), near and Blakey House (SE 679995). Petit tranchet
microliths or arrowheads, have been found at the Farndale sites.
For
thousands of years before the Romans came to the area, prehistoric folk hunted,
farmed and lived in communities. They discovered how to exploit stone, then
bronze and later iron. The first metal objects were made from copper, but by
adding tin, they became much stronger.
Flint
tools, the Yorkshire Museum
Pottery vessels for cremated remains
Scene 2 – Stone, Bronze and Iron
Stone
A
revolutionary advance was made in the cultural development of northeast
Yorkshire by around 3,000 BCE when the first Neolithic (New Stone Age) settlers
arrived from Continental Europe who probably crossed the new sea around Britain
in dug out canoes. The New Stone Age was the period
when tool making skills produced stone axes, flint axes, arrow heads, spear
points, fired clay beakers and woven cloth.
The start of
stone age farming in the area of the north Yorkshire
moors was in about 3,000 BCE. The Neolithic
Revolution involved arable farming and the domestication of animals.
Neolithic society made pottery, weaved cloth and made baskets. Small village
communities became settled, more reliant upon domestic animals and less on
hunting. They built stone enclosures for animals.
The
development of grinding and polishing stone allowed a variety of stone as well
as flint to be used. Hard boulders from local glacial deposits were useful raw
material. Flint axes, some polished, were found at Peak, south of Robin Hood’s
Bay and green stone axes were found in Seamer. Seven miles east of Pickering in
the centre of a round barrow were found a burnt flint knife and a round axe.
The
Neolithic people buried their dead with ceremony, in chambered mounds called barrows,
or in caves and in stone lined graves. The organisation required to erect the
large megalithic structures and the barrows
suggests highly developed society.
From about
2,000 BCE huge prehistoric monuments appeared in the Megalithic Period. The
largest standing stone in Britain is a single pillar of grindstone, 25 feet
high. It dominates the churchyard at Rudstone,
a few miles west of Bridlington. The nearest source of stone is 10 miles north
of the site.
The Yearsley Moor long barrow
and round
barrows on Ampleforth moor have been excavated at the home of the later
ancestors of the Ampleforth line
of Farndales.
Bronze
The use of
bronze was probably introduced into Yorkshire by the
Beaker Folk, who arrived in the area via the Humber Estuary in about 1,800
BCE. They came across the Wolds and crossed the Pennines. Their name is derived
from their tradition to bury beaker shaped urns with their dead.
Beaker Folk
reached Malham Moor near Settle in the west Yorkshire dales and occupied sites
on the Wolds. There is evidence that they cultivated wheat and there is
evidence of trade. They imported flat bronze axes from Ireland and exported
ornaments made of Whitby jet. They traded in salt and had sea connections with
Scandinavia.
The people
of the Bronze Age continued to hunt in upland areas. There have been finds of
their barbed and tanged flint arrowheads. Gradually these were replaced with
metal tools and weapons. There is evidence during the Bronze Age of metal
working and tin mining, leather and cloth manufacturer, pottery and salt
production. There was domestic trade and trade beyond the island’s shores. The
population steadily grew to perhaps about 2 million.
The Bronze
age was a time of changes in burial rituals. Bodies continued to be buried in
barrows, but increasingly these were circular mounds (round barrows) often
accompanied by bronze artefacts. There are many barrows in upland locations on
the Wolds and the Moors. Early Bronze Age burials were performed at Ferrybridge
Henge near Wakefield.
There is a Street House Long
Barrow (later added to by an Anglo
Saxon royal burial site) near Loftus,
where many later Farndales lived and
are buried.
Round
barrows of the early part of the Bronze Age are the most conspicuous
archaeological features of the North York Moors. The scarcity on lower ground
is due mainly to agricultural activity. Those on higher ground have generally
been found to contain cremations, while those on lower ground in limestone
areas contained both burnt and unburnt bodies. The skeletons are most often
accompanied by pottery (beakers, food vessels, collared urns and accessory
cups), and flints, and sometimes by jet ornaments, stone battle axes and
occasionally by bronze daggers. Collared urns and cremations have also been
found with stone embanked circles such as at Great Ayton moor. Excavations at Gillamoor in 1975, close to Farndale, found burnt and
unburnt human bones, mixed with burnt stones and clay, with scraps of Bronze
Sage pottery.
The Ryedale Windy Pits are
underground features now to be found in a wood about 10km west of Kirkdale. They were
found by our friend the Rev William Buckland, after his Kirkdale cave fame. Human bones were
found in these natural underground caves, with pottery associated with the
bronze age Beaker Folk.
Permanent
settlements were built, like to one at Ulrome, between Hornsea and Bridlington, where a
dwelling built on wooden piles on the shore of a shallow lake has been found.
Iron
The Bronze
Age people, such as the Beaker Folk, were conquered by Celtic speaking invaders
originally from the Mediterranean, but crossing from
northern Gaul. They settled in Britain and became known as the Brigantes.
The Celts were skilled horsemen with iron wheeled, horse drawn chariots, who
attacked their enemy with swords and spears.
The
Kirkburn Sword, East Yorkshire, British Museum
The European Iron Age was a
period of great upheaval when technology and societies were changed forever.
The Brigantes were not the only
Celtic tribe to occupy northeast Yorkshire. In Holderness and the Wolds area,
were a folk known as the Parisii (who came
from France and Belgium).
Mobility
provided from their horsemanship enabled them to control larger areas. Their
farmsteads were made up of groups of small square or rectangular fields and
were often enclosed by low walls of gravel or stones. Their huts were made of
branches, or wattle and stood on low foundations of stone.
There was a
massive promontory hill fort at Roulston
Scar, which dates back to around 400 CE. The site
covers 60 acres, defended by a perimeter 1.3 miles long. It is the largest Iron
Age fort of its kind in the north of England. Roulston Scar
at Sutton Bank is a limestone cliff which overlooks the Vale of York, between
Helmsley and Thirsk (some 20km to the west of Kirkbymoorside and Farndale).
There are
outlines of other such settlements near Grassington and Malham. The most impressive Iron
Age remains are at Stanwick,
north of Richmond where pottery has found covering a large area which had come
from the continent.
The Brigantes
fought fiercely to defend themselves against the Roman invaders. Several large
fortifications witness their efforts. The last inhabitants of the area before
the Romans were illiterate, but left their mark in the
place names of Yorkshire. Many Yorkshire rivers carry Celtic names - Aire,
Calder, Don, Nidd, Wharfe.
The main Parisii settlement was probably close to
Brough near Hull. There is evidence that the aristocracy lived in rectangular
enclosures often about 60 by 80 metres with two metre wide
defensive ditches piled high inside for further protection. The homes, similar to Iron Age roundhouses, may have been established
in groups of two or three. Each enclosure farm worked about 250 acres and the
fields around the farms grew cereals and hay for winter feed. The non
aristocratic folk would have worked the land in the enclosure farms for their
masters.
The Brigantes
and Parisii have left evidence across modern
Ryedale of round houses within enclosed sites.
Iron furnace
remains and slag from smelting have been found. Iron ore may have been mined in
Rosedale. Those living closer to the sea may have picked up or from the
beaches. The Bronze Age is the period when for the first time the land had been
cleared for growing crops and rearing cattle and sheep. Significant advances
were made in culture and politics and the use of land. The landscape may have
looked similar to the present day but with more
woodland in the valleys and no towns or roads. There may have been tracks for
wheeled vehicles.
Costa
Beck is a small river near Pickering. Excavations from the 1920s revealed
Iron Age lakeside settlements through the Vale of Pickering. Animal bones,
pottery sherds and a human skull have been excavated.
There are
several sites in the Pickering Vale, including at Heslerton where there were small enclosures for stock
breeding and growing crops in the wetlands around the once Lake Pickering.
The birth
of a nation
In 320 BCE,
the Greek explorer, Pytheas
of Messalia sailed around Britain and called it Pretannike, probably from the Celtic for ‘tatooed’, from which evolved to Britannia over time.
The larger island of the British Isles came to be called Alba or Albion
and the western island (modern Irland) Ivernia
or Hibernia. Centuries later in the History of the Kings of Britain by
Geoffrey of Monmouth, in 1136, a story emerged that the Trojan Brutus had
landed in Albion finding only giants and named the land Brutaigne.
The lands
of Kirkdale
There is
archaeological evidence of settlement across the Vale of York in the period
before the arrival of the Romans. There were several farms, many within ditched
enclosures, surrounded by small fields. The vicinity of Kirkdale was a rural
area, with dispersed settlements. There was contact between these settlements
by north to south routes through the valleys on the sides of the moors and east
to west through the Vale of Pickering.
Go Straight to Act 3 – Roman Kirkdale
or
A chronology
of the story is told in the
Brief History of Time in the Ancestral lands around Farndale, with some
links to source material.