Section of linear boundary dyke south of Middleham Plantation and Harper Dale Plantation

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.

The monument is part of a very extensive and important system of linear boundary dykes in this area of the Yorkshire Wolds, dating back to the Bronze Age. It is well preserved for much of its length, and is one of the rare surving sections of bank with double flanking ditches. It is closely associated with other adjacent complexes of linear banks and ditches, which together form an integral system of boundary and defensive earthworks in this region. As such it offers important insights into ancient land use and territorial divisions for social, ritual and agricultural purposes in this area of the Yorkshire Wolds.

Details

The monument includes a 1.67km long section of Bronze Age linear boundary bank and ditches (also known as a dyke) orientated nearly east-west between Bottlands Slack and Harper Dale, running south east along the line of Middleham Plantation. At its south western end it includes a 500m long section surviving in the form of buried ditches revealed by aerial photography, stretching nearly as far as the next section of dyke at the head of Harper Dale, which is the subject of a separate scheduling. Lying close to an ancient trackway on the western side of the Wolds, the surviving part of which forms the present-day Wolds Way, the monument is part of a complex of linear banks and ditches running from Horse Dale through Harper Dale eastwards in the direction of Bottlands and Middleham Plantation, and further south along Cow Dale and Rabbit Dale, north east of Huggate village. The whole system is associated with other complexes of single and double linear bank and ditch systems further to the west along Huggate Pasture in Frendal Dale and its junction with Tun Dale, stretching south in the direction of Pasture Dale, Millington Dale and Cow Moor, linking up with the systems of boundary dykes in those areas. These dykes were used to enhance the natural topographical barriers of spurs and ridges between valleys, with the additional physical barriers of banks and ditches. Natural conduits along the floors of the dry valleys were then `blocked' by other bank and ditch systems to control access. Well preserved sections of these linear boundaries are the subject of separate schedulings, and in some cases, adjacent monuments may physically abut. This elaborate complex of boundary earthworks is one of the best preserved remnants of the original more extensive systems recorded and mapped as extending across large areas of the Wolds by early antiquarians such as J R Mortimer in the 19th century. Excavations and observation of spatial relationships with other earthworks of known date demonstrate this Wolds complex of earthworks to have originated in the later Bronze Age, with several subsequent phases of elaboration and augmentation. The monument also forms part of a broadly related and extensive complex of multi-period prehistoric earthworks, including bowl barrows, barrow cemeteries, linear bank and ditch systems, trackways and enclosures dispersed across Huggate and Warter Wolds, and Huggate and Millington Pastures. The monument includes a 1.15km length of boundary dyke surviving as a visible earthwork above ground, represented by a low bank and double ditch, of very variable height and width. The bank varies from as little as 0.5m up to 1.5m high and between 4m-5m wide for much of its length, and has shallow, partly infilled ditches to both its north and south. The system is not a continuous one, being broken in places with occasional trackways of a later period, made to afford access from one side of the monument to the other. The ditch lying along the southern side of the bank is at the junction of a shallow valley side with the upland to the south east and its overall dimensions are smaller than those of the ditch to the north, narrowing in places to less than 1m wide and occasionally becoming `V' shaped in profile. The northern ditch is the more pronounced of the two and wider, being between 1.5m and 2m wide at its base and more clearly `U' shaped, with shallow sloping sides of up to 5m wide at the top. Its southern edge slopes upwards into the adjoining and parallel bank lying above it on slightly higher ground. The south western end of the visible earthwork section disappears into arable fields, where it survives below ground as buried ditches clearly revealed in crop marks visible from the air. The south western end of this crop mark section is not an original terminus, as early maps suggest that it would have originally extended further westward back towards Harper Dale and related dyke systems in that area. However, there is no evidence of such a direct link visible on aerial photographs. As the monument enters the woodland plantation further eastwards, the bank becomes much more pronounced, up to 1.5m high and between 6m and 7m in width at its base. The ditch to the north is also more pronounced and `U' shaped in profile, around 2m wide and 1.5m deep. At the north eastern end of the monument, the bank is nearly 2.5m high, sloping down to into the ditch to the north, which is 1.5m deep and up to 3m wide here. The ditch to the south is, however, far more shallow, and is around 1.5m wide. The system then merges into the natural hillside here and disappears, although this end is not thought to have been an original terminus, as aerial photographs reveal the crop marks of buried linear ditches on this same alignment, further north east in the direction of Blealands and Bessing Dale. Modern post and wire fencing, animal feed and water dispensers and other modern farm or game bird husbandry constructions and equipment is excluded from the scheduling, although the ground beneath them is included.

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:

26584

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Mortimer, J R, Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire, (1905), 365-380
Dent, J, Archaeological Journal in The Yorkshire Dykes, Vol. 141, (1984), 32-33
Halkon, P, Prehistory Research Section Bulletin in The Huggate Dykes, Vol. 30, (1993), 10
Manby, T, Current Archaeology in The Yorkshire Dykes, Vol. 67, (1979), 233

Other
Humberside SMR, Sites and Monuments Records Sheet, (1994)

End of official list entry

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