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 survives moderately well for most of its length, despite some damage
to the monument caused by plantation activity in the past, particularly at its
southern end, and is a rare example of a double complex of banks and 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 200m section of Bronze Age double linear boundary
banks and ditches (also known as a dyke) running north-south through forestry
plantation to the west of Far Out Field, Millington Wold.
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 forms a
relatively short section of an elaborate complex of boundary dykes between
Millington and Huggate Wolds and Huggate Pasture, single components of which
run either along the top of the escarpment, or part the way down the sides of
the intervening dry valley systems of Frendal Dale and Tun Dale, south in the
direction of Pasture Dale, Millington Dale and Cow Moor, or north and west
towards Millington Wold and Millington Lings, linking up with the boundary
dykes in those areas. These dykes were used to enhance the natural
topographical barriers of spurs and escarpments between valleys, with
additional physical barriers of banks and ditches. Natural conduits along the
floors of 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 touch.
This elaborate complex of boundary earthworks is one of the best preserved
remnants of the original more extensive systems recorded and mapped 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.
This short section of linear bank and ditch is not a discrete monument, as
neither its eastern or western ends is thought to be the original terminus,
but are thought to have formed a continuous length of boundary banks and
ditches with other monuments in this area.
At its northern end, this monument includes two banks and two ditches, running
south as a single system through a shallow wooded valley between High Callis
Wold and Millington Wold. To the east of the monument, a trackway overlies and
obscures what is thought to have been a third ditch lying parallel with the
first bank of the system. The first bank varies in height from 0.5m to 2m
high, depending upon its level of preservation, and is around 6m broad
across at its base. The ditch lying parallel with it to its western side is
shallow and `U' shaped in profile, measuring approximately 3m across and no
more than 0.4m deep. The second bank, lying to the west of the first bank and
ditch, is around 0.5m to 1m high, and the lower of the two banks at the
northern end of the monument. The ditch flanking the western side of the
second bank is very shallow and poorly defined, being now nearly completely
infilled, and is about 2m wide, and probably no more than 0.2m deep, lying
alongside the rise in land to the west leading up into arable fields west
towards Callis Wold.
As the two banks head south, the first merges with the line of the trackway on
its eastern side and disappears, and the second bank continues to become the
main element in the system. The second, and now only visible bank, is between
5m-6m wide across its top and 6m-8m across the base, and as it continues
south, with its eastern side now conforming to the line of the woodland
trackway, it is from 2m-3m high, measured from the level of the track to the
east, but only between 0.3m and 0.5m high from the western side of the valley
edge along which it lies, and it is around 3m wide across its top. At this
point the bank clearly augments the side of the valley, falling off steeply
down to the east. The ditch to its west gradually becomes completely infilled,
and is eventually no longer visible, although it will survive as a buried
feature.
The line of the monument eventually disappears into a deeply pitted and
cratered area at its southern end. There is a small `nose'-shaped projection
surviving, which is thought to be the remains of the main (second) bank here,
but this part is not at all well preserved, and is not thought to be an
original terminus, as the system will have continued further south and west to
link up with the next section of dyke north of Millington Grange, which is the
subject of a separate scheduling.
Modern post and wire fences and forestry equipment and constructions are
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.
