Section of linear earthwork 200m north east of Pasture Cottages

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 is a section of linear earthwork on the Yorkshire Wolds. It is 200m long and up to 25m wide, and includes two parallel ditches each 5m wide and 0.5m deep between which is an earthwork bank 0.5m high and 5m wide. Further earthwork banks of similar height and width flank the outside of the ditches, although in places the southern bank has been levelled. Together the various elements form a complex 25m wide. The linear earthwork originally extended further to both the north east and south west beyond the ends of the scheduling. To the south west the earthwork is not clearly visible and the extent of surviving remains is not fully understood. To the north east a section of the earthwork has been destroyed by quarrying and the excavation of a pond. Further to the north east another section of the linear earthwork is visible as an upstanding earthwork and is the subject of a separate scheduling.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

23830

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Other
4204, Humberside SMR,

End of official list entry

All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.