Linear earthwork north east of Collingwood Farm

Reasons for Designation

Linear boundaries are substantial earthwork features comprising single or multiple ditches and banks which may extend over distances varying between less than 1km to over 10km. They survive as earthworks or as linear features visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs or as a combination of both. The evidence of excavation and study of associated monuments demonstrate that their construction spans the millennium from the Middle Bronze Age, although they may have been re-used later. The scale of many linear boundaries has been taken to indicate that they were constructed by large social groups and were used to mark important boundaries in the landscape; their impressive scale displaying the corporate prestige of their builders. They would have been powerful symbols, often with religious associations, used to define and order the territorial holdings of those groups who constructed them. Linear earthworks are of considerable importance for the analysis of settlement and land use in the Bronze Age; all well preserved examples will normally merit statutory protection.

This section of earthwork survives well. Together with other similar monuments in this part of the Yorkshire Wolds it provides an insight into prehistoric land division in this area.

Details

The monument includes a section of linear earthwork on the Yorkshire Wolds. It is 700m long and up to 20m wide. It includes two parallel ditches each 2m wide and 0.5m deep between which is an earthwork bank 5m wide and 0.5m high. Slighter earthworks banks 5m wide and up to 0.75m high flank the outside of the ditches. Together the various elements form a complex 20m wide. The earthworks are visible throughout Collingwood Plantation although they survive best at its south western and north eastern ends. They also extend into the field to the immediate south east of the plantation. Here they have been reduced by former cultivation and the ditches have been largely in-filled and the banks spread to form low mounds 0.3m high and 6m to 8m wide. The linear earthwork originally extended further to both south west and north east; however beyond the ends of the scheduling the earthwork is not as clearly visible and the extent of any surviving remains is not fully understood.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract. It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features, considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

21222

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Other
4204, Humberside SMR,

End of official list entry

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