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A Brief History of Time in the Ancestral lands around
Farndale A
journey back through time in the period before clear records of individual
Farndales |
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Dates are in red.
Hyperlinks to other pages are in dark blue.
Royal dynasties are in blue
Headlines are in brown.
References and citations are in turquoise.
Local history of Farndale and its surrounding areas is in purple.
Geographical context is in green.
BCE - Before the common or current era. The contemporary
equivalent of BC.
CE -
Common or current era. The contemporary equivalent of AD.
kya
– abbreviation for a thousand years
YBP – Years before present
In contrast to other pages of this website, on this page we
travel backwards through time.
Introduction
We have explored the Farndale ancestry through
the clear and direct links provided by parish records and other sources to
about 1500, and then used medieval sources to find direct links to Doncaster at the time of the Black Death in
the fourteenth century. The medieval records have then provided some significant records of the
lives of our ancestors back to
about 1230. We have then explored
the cradle of the Farndale family, and the people who lived there, back to
the Norman Conquest.
We might imagine that those ancestral
individuals who must have lived in the dale of Farndale in the thirteenth
century, before leaving the dale but retaining its name, were in turn plucked
from the cauldron or primeval sludge of Bronze Age Beaker Folk, Iron Age
Settlers, Brigantes, Romans, Danes, Angles and Saxons that had roamed the moors
and dales of Yorkshire since about 9,000 years BCE.
So where did those more distant medieval
ancestors, who lived in Farndale, themselves come from? This page travels
backward in time from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to consider the evidence of
who our most distant ancestors may have been, roaming the area of the North
York Moors.
This webpage will work backwards through
the epochs of time as follows:
·
The early middle
ages (866 CE to 1066). Saxon
and Norman England. Anglo Saxon England was arguably united as the Kingdom
of England by King
Ćthelstan (927–939 AD), although the process was a long one.
It later became part of the short-lived North Sea Empire of Cnut
the Great, a personal union between England, Denmark and Norway in
the 11th century. During this period the majority of
the Yorkshire population was engaged in small scale farming. A growing number
of families were living on the margin of subsistence and some of these families
turned to crafts and trade or industrial occupations. In the 9th Century, the
Vikings settled in many places all around the North Yorkshire Moors, but there
is no sign of them settling in the moors.
·
The post Roman period (410
CE to 866 CE). The
first written law codes, histories and literature emerged.
·
The Roman Period (70 CE to
410 CE). When
the Romans arrived in the area, they found organised resistance and strong
tribes prepared to fight for their land. The Romans came into the area further
east to patrol the coast. They built roads, part of which still exist and
warning stations on the cliffs at places like Huntcliffe. It is possible
that Roman patrols passed into the dales and even through Farndale,
but there is no evidence that they stopped there. A large fortification in
the location of modern day York was founded by the
Romans as Eboracum in 71 CE. The Emperors Hadrian, Septimius Severus, and
Constantius I all held court in York during their various campaigns. During his stay 207–211 CE, the Emperor
Severus proclaimed York capital of the province of Britannia Inferior, and it
is likely that it was he who granted York the privileges of a 'colonia' or
city.
·
The Iron Age (700 BCE to
70 CE). Iron
tools and weapons changed the fighting and working world, though dwellings and
lifestyles did not change significantly. Communities and tribes, although
warlike became more settled and cereal production and animal husbandry
increased. Iron Age 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 hill fort at Roulston Scar, which dates
back to around 400 BC. It is the largest Iron Age fort of its kind in
the north of England. There are outlines of other such settlements near
Grassington and Malham. The most impressive Iron Age remains are at Stanwick,
north of Richmond.
·
The Bronze Age (1800 BCE
to 700 BCE). The
Bronze Age was the period when metal ore was discovered. Copper was alloyed
with tin. By applying very high heat levels to ceramic crucibles it was
possible to alloy bronze and to caste axe heads, knives, spear heads, and
simple ornaments. This was the period represented by the Windy Pit discoveries,
including Beaker People pottery and human remains. The use of bronze was
probably introduced into Yorkshire by the Beaker Folk, who entered the area via
the Humber Estuary in about 1800 BCE.
·
The Neolithic Period, the New
Stone Age (3000 BCE to 1800 BCE). 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. Neolithic society made pottery, weaved cloth and made
baskets. These people no longer lived a semi nomadic existence. 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.
·
The Mesolithic Period
(9,500 to 3,000 BCE). The
Middle Stone Age was the period after the ice had receded. Microlith sites have
been found on the Moors including at Farndale,
including flint and stone chippings and tools. Early humans lived at Star Carr
which was first occupied in about 9,000 BCE.
·
The
last Ice Age dated from about 110,000 to 11,000 years ago. During that Ice Age
there were warm and cold fluctuations which lasted long enough to explain the
presence of sub tropical animals in Kirkdale cave.
·
The Palaeolithic Period or the Old Stone Age (10,000 BCE
to 2.6 million year ago). The Palaeolithic Period,
also known as the Old Stone Age, is a period in human prehistory
distinguished by the original development of stone tools. This period
covers about 99% of human technological prehistory. It extends
from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominids in Africa
about 3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene.
Although this period covers human prehistory on a global scale, humans do not
appear to have emerged on the North Yorkshire Moors until about 9,000 BC,
during the Mesolithic Period.
The early middle ages (1066 back to 866 CE)
The period from the Danish colonisation
of 866 AD to the
Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 was strongly influenced by Danish
colonisation, especially in the area of the Deiran and Bernician lands that
would merge into Northumbria. Viking
meant pirate or sea raider, but the English generally referred to them as
Danes.
1066
Edward the Confessor died in January
1066.
Tostig’s brother, Harold II (Harold Godwineson) (1066 to 1066) was elected king by the Witan, but
William I of Normandy claimed that Edward had promised the throne to him. In
the context of a power struggle, Harold was then faced with a combined threat
from a reinvasion by the Danes and from the Normans.
Tostig had fled to Flanders and had
gathered a fleet of 60 ships. He entered Lincolnshire but was driven out and
fled to Scotland with only 12 ships. Harld Hardrada, King of Norway accepted
the exiled Tostig as allies and they sailed up the Humber and Ouse with 300
ships.
The Danes, led by the
Norwegian King Harold Hardrada, sailed up the Ouse, with support from Tostig
Godwinson and after the Battle of Fulford, they seized York. Harold then
marched his army north to York (185 miles) in four days and took the invaders
by surprise. They were defeated at the Battle of Stamford Bridge (some 10km
east of York) in which Harold Hardrada and Tostig were killed.
There is an In
Our Time podcast on the
Battle of Stamford Bridge, the decisive English victory over Viking forces
which took place in September 1066.
However Harold was then required to rush south
again, with so much of his exhausted army as could keep up, to face William I
at the Battle of Hastings.
1063
Earl Tostig had the supporters of his
rival, Gospatrick of Bamburgh – Gamal son of Orm, and Ulf son of Dolfin, killed in
York in 1063.
Tostig then sought to increase taxation
which prompted opposition. The Northumberland folk revolted in 1065 and marched
on York and Tostig’s Danish housecarfs (a force of about 200) were destroyed
near the Humber. Tostig was outlawed.
1055
The beautiful Saxon Church
of Kirkdale lies about a mile west of
Kirkbymoorside, south of the North York Moors, and overlooks the Hodge Beck.
Within the porch at the entrance door is housed a Yorkshire treasure. It is a
Saxon sundial, and it bears the inscription “Orm the son of Gamel acquired
St Gregory’s Church when it was completely ruined and collapsed, and he had it
built anew from the ground to Christ and to St Gregory in the days of King
Edward and in the days of Earl Tostig”. The inscription refers to Edward
the Confessor and to Tostig, the son of Earl Godwin of Wessex and brother of
Harold II, the last Anglo Saxon King of England. Tostig was the Earl of
Northumbria between 1055 and 1065. It was therefore during that last peaceful
decade, immediately before the Norman conquest, that Orm, son of Gamel rebuilt
St Gregory’s Church.
The Domesday book
evidences that Kirkdale by about this time comprised ten villagers, one priest,
two ploughlands, two lord’s plough teams, three men’s plough teams, a mill and
a church. Orm
seems to have held five carucates of land at Chirchebi. So presumably this area
of land described the five carucates of cultivated land around Kirkdale.
Siward
died in 1055, leaving one son, Waltheof. He was buried at St Olave’s Church,
which he had built, just north of York’s walled boundary.
Siward’s son, Waltheof was too young to
become Earl of Northumbria. King Edward chose Tostig, son of Earl Godwin of
Wessex to succeed Siward.
1053
Harold Godwineson became earl of Wessex.
The Godwines by now were largely running the country.
By this time York had seven
administrative districts, with one controlled by the Archbishop.
The townsmen had extensive pasture rights in the surrounding area. Archaeology
has revealed significant manufacturing in metal, glass, amber, jet, deer horn,
wood and bone.
Local
organisation focused around a lord’s great hall (later
called manors by the Normans). From these would satellite outlying demesne
farms which were called berewicks. Free men held soke estates.
There were some larger sokes which belonged to the King, church or Earl.
In other words, there was an informal hierarchy from larger to smaller
lordships. (John Rushton, The History of Ryedale,
2003, 23).
Over seventy thegns are listed in the
Domesday Book, including the large landowner Ormr, who held Kirkbymoorside,
Earl Siward, Gamal, Tosti and Ughtred of Cleveland.
Arable farming focused around vills or towns.
Tax was assessed on cultivated land
through caracutes (derived from the Latin carruca, plough) and bovates.
Early assessments were therefore focused on the amount of ploughing that could
be achieved in an area of land. These initial measures would last through time,
even though methods of ploughing changed. A carucate was a medieval land unit
based on the land which eight oxen could till in a year.
The dales flowing down from the moorland
remained thinly settled.
It is not clear how strongly held
Christian belief were at a local level. Many pagan customs continue. The days
Tuesday through to Friday are still named after Anglian and Norse Gods. Hills
remained dedicated to the Norse Gods Odin and Woden, Much Yorkshire folklore
remains rooted in Anglian and Norse traditions. Hobs and boggles remained in field
names. However masonry at churches evidences Christian
assimilation. The settlement at Chirchebi that would be the burgeoning
lands of Kirkbymoorside was a small rural community focused around
the church of St Gregory and its priest. The eleventh century sundial at
Kirkdale is the best preserved of several including others at Edstone and Old
Byland.
1051
The rivalry between the Godwine family
and the Normans started to bubble over. There was a violent dispute in Dover
between Normans and the locals. The Godwines were ordered by the King to punish
the Dover folk, but they refused. They were outlawed and exiled, but they were
sufficiently powerful that Edward was persuaded to reconciliation.
1050
According to William, Duke of Normandy, Edward
named William as Edward’s successor to the English crown.
There was a succession battle waiting to
happen:
·
Cnut’s
heirs were waiting in the wings.
·
The
Godwine family, vast landowners and now married in to
the royal family, were staking their claim.
·
William
of Normandy had also staked his claim.
1044
Edward the Confessor married Edith,
daughter of Earl Godwine. They had no children.
1042
Edward
“the Confessor” (1042 to 1066) restored the
House of Wessex to the English throne. He became king in 1042 as Aethelred’s
surviving son, Cnut’s sons having died early. He is remembered for his deep
piety which led to his focus on the building of Westminster Abbey while the
country was generally run by Earl Godwin and Harold.
By this time many of the names of towns
and places were of Viking origin, such as those ending in by or thorp.
However the old Anglo Saxon names
remained abundant suggesting an assimilation during the Viking times rather
than a period of ethnic cleansing. Scandinavian language
survived widely in the countryside.
1040
Harthacanute
(1040 to 1042)
was the son of Cnut and
Emma of Normandy was quickly accepted as king as he sailed to England with a
fleet of 62 ships. He died at the age of 24 at a wedding when toasting the
health of the bride. He was the last Danish King of England.
1035
Harold
I (Harold Harefoot) (1035 to 1040) was Cnut’s
‘illegitimate’ son claimed the throne while his brother Harthacanute was in Scandinavia, but died before Harthacanute needed to invade
to retake the throne.
1033
Cnut chose a
fellow Dane, Siward, as his Yorkshire Earl.
1030
The Horn of
Ulph is an eleventh-century oliphant (a horn carved from an elephant's
tusk). It is two feet four inches long, and has a
diameter at the mouth of five inches. Given its size and condition, it is a
particularly good example of a medieval oliphant. Tradition holds that it is a
horn of tenure, presented to York Minster by a Norse nobleman named Ulph
sometime around 1030. This suggests that a powerful Scandinavian nobleman was
willing to donate a very valuable object to the Christian church by this time.
1016
Edmund
II “Ironside” (1016 to 1016),
was chosen by the folk of London as Aethelred’s successor but the King’s
Council, the Witan, chose Cnut. Ironside denoted Edmunds
strength and endurance in battle, but Edmund was defeated at the Battle of
Assandun and made a treaty with Cnut for a form of power sharing until he was
assassinated.
Cnut
(or Canute) “the Dane” (1016 to 1035) then became
king of a united England, divided into four earldoms of East Anglia, Mercia,
Northumbria and Wessex. Siward of Northumbria appeared in Shakespeare’s
Macbeth. Leofric, Earl of Mercia was married to Lady Godiva who rode naked
through Coventry to persuade him not to impose a tax increase. There is an In Our Time podcast on Cnut.
In an attempt to reassure the indigenous population, he
married the widow of Aethelred II, Emma of Normandy and he recognised the
limitations of his powers in the famous scene when he ordered the tide not to
come in, in the knowledge that he would not succeed.
About 130 years into the birth of the
English nation, she had become a part of the North Sea empire.
1013
By 1013 he had fled to Normandy after
the Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard had invaded the burgeoning English lands from
1013 on the pretext of a massacre of Danes living in England on St Brice’s Day.
Sweyn had come up the Humber that year.
Sweyn was pronounced King of England on 25 December 1013, but died 5 days later. Aethelred returned to England but spent his
remaining years at war with Sweyn’s son, Cnut.
1000
By about 1000, the lands were commonly
referred to as Engalond, of various spellings.
991 CE
The renewal of Danish attacks on
southern England from 975 CE led to the payment of a regular tribute, the
Danegeld from 991 CE.
Aethelred made a fateful treaty in 991
CE with Richard , Duke of Normandy. In the same year a
fleet led by King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway led to the death of his ealdorman
Byrhtnoth at Maldon in Essex. After Maldon, Aethelred raised he sums by a
universal land trax to bribe the Danes, known as the Danegeld. The weight of
taxation drove the peasantry to servitude. Rudyard
Kipling later lamented that once you have paid him the Dane geld, you
never get rid of the Dane.
There is an In
Our Time podcast on the
Danelaw.
Yorkshire had a Danish
leadership who were unwilling to fight other Danes and there was less trouble
there.
978 CE
Aethelred
II “The Unready” (978 to 1016 CE) failed in the
ongoing resistance against the Danes. He was dubbed unready from unraed
or ill advised.
Ethelread the Unready was the first Weak King of
England and was thus the cause of a fresh Wave of Danes (1066 and
all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).
975 CE
Edward
the Martyr (975 to 978 CE) became king
at the age of 12 and was the victim of a family power struggle until his murder
by his stepmother at Corfe Castle.
959 CE
Edgar
(959 to 975 CE)
met the “six kings of
England” and gained their allegiance at Chester, including from the King of
Scots, the King of Strathclyde and various Welsh princes. Edgar imposed lighter taxation and allowed
greater autonomy across the area of modern Yorkshire, which became assimilated
into the wider English Kingdom.
York remained the only sizeable town and
became a centre for craftsmen and merchants. The town had a level of self
government under the hold or High Reeve.
The wider district started to take its
name after the town of York. The Shire started to recognise three Ridings,
which were themselves divided into some 28 wapentakes (perhaps named after the
brandishing of weapons at gatherings to show approval). Often the waopentakes
were named after their meeting places at hills, burial mounds, crosses or
trees.
The land of St Cuthbert at Durham
retained a separate identity.
For a period
there were no invasions. Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury increased the
power and the wealth of the monasteries.
By about this time:
·
Agriculture
started to prosper.
·
Law
enforcement was generally conducted at a local level. Men were divided into
tithings or groups of ten men, to look out for each other, and bonded together
through feasting and drinking together. Ten tithings would form small units to
chase rustlers and bandits.
·
A
relatively homogenous form of customary law emerged.
·
There
was an English church and English saints.
·
A
wide coinage was in circulation with the King’s head.
·
An
administrative system emerged based upon the scir or shire, governed on
behalf of the king by an ealdorman and his deputy or scirgerefa
(sheriff).
·
Significant
numbers came to be involved in the administration of the kingdom, including the
collection of tax.
·
The
people of the kingdom were given a form of representation by gatherings of
thegns and prelates who became councillors of the witan who were summoned from
time to time by the king.
·
The
export of wool became a mainstay.
·
Roads,
bridges and harbours were maintained publicly.
The new kingdom was
perhaps one of the stablest and richest lands amongst the European states. However its fragile process for the succession of kings (by
a mix of inheritance, bequest and election) was a weakness which would dominate
the following century.
955 CE
Eadwig (955 to 959 CE) was a
teenage king who was perhaps best remembered for being late for his coronation
after sleeping in.
954 CE
Then, in 954 CE, King Eric
I of Norway of the Fairhair dynasty (Eric Haraldson known as Eric Bloodaxe) was
slain at the Battle of Stainmore by King Eadred who retook the city at Jorvik
and completed the unification of England.
946 CE
Eadred (946 to 955 CE) continued
to resist the Danes.
939 CE
Edmund (939 to 946 CE) became king
at the age of 18, having fought with his half brother at the Battle of
Brunanburh. He consolidated Anglo Saxon control over northern England.
937 CE
The Norse-Gaels, Ostmen or
Gallgaidhill became Kings of Jorvik after long contests with the Danes over
controlling the Isle of Man, which prompted the Battle of Brunanburh. After his
victory against an invading army of Irish Vikings, Scots and Britons at
Brunanburh. Aethelstan was proclaimed rex Anglorum, king of the English.
In one of the bloodiest battles faught in Britain, Aethelstan defeated a
combined army of Danes and Vikings, Scots and Celts. The battle meant that for
the first time the Anglo Saxon kingdoms were brought
together to establish a unified England.
927 CE
Aethelstan
defeated the Vikings at York and
there was peace until 934 CE.
There is an In Our Time podcast on the reign of King Athelstan, whose
military exploits united much of England, Scotland and Wales under one ruler
for the first time.
The Vale
of York Hoard, also known as the Harrogate Hoard and the Vale of York
Viking Hoard, is a 10th-century Viking hoard of 617 silver coins and 65 other
items. It was found undisturbed in 2007 near Harrogate. It was deposited in
about the period 927 to 927 CE.
924 CE
Aethelstan (924 to 939 CE) extended
the boundaries of the Anglo Saxon lands.
920 CE
All the rulers in Britain
submitted to Edward the Eler as father and lord.
899 CE
Edward the Elder (899 to 924 CE) retook the south east from the Danes up to the Humber and united Mercia
with Wessex. However there were multiple Danish
invasions including from Ireland and Scandinavia. Edward was killed fighting
the Welsh at Chester.
The Swedish Munsö dynasty became overlords of Jorvik because the Danes in
Britain had promised loyalty to the Munsö Kings of Dublin, but this dynasty was
focused on the Baltic Sea economy and quarrelled with the native Danish Jelling
dynasty (which originated in the Danelaw with Guthrum).
890 CE
In the late 9th century
Jorvik was ruled by the Christian King Guthfrith. It was under the Danes that the ridings and wapentakes of Yorkshire and the Five
Burghs were established. The ridings were arranged so that their
boundaries met at Jorvik, which was the administrative and commercial centre of
the region.
886 CE
Alfred seized London and the Anglo Saxon Chronicle wrote that all the English race turned
to him. This might be taken to be the birth of the English nation, but not yet
the mark of a united English kingdom. Alfred was perhaps the first king who
might have been believed to be king of Angelcynn and defender of the eard
(the land). Yet the English were not yet a nation.
866 CE
Aethelred I (866 to 871 CE) struggled
with the Danes throughout his reign who started to threaten Wessex itself.
In 866 CE, when
Northumbria was internally divided, the Vikings captured York. The
Danes changed the Old English name for York from Eoforwic,
to Jorvik. The Vikings destroyed all the early monasteries in the area
and took the monastic estates for themselves. Some of the minster churches
survived the plundering and eventually the Danish leaders were converted to
Christianity. Jorvik became the Viking capital of its British lands and it would reach a population of 10,000. Jorvik
became an important economic and trade centre for the Danes. Saint Olave's
Church in York is a testament to the Norwegian influence in the area. Jorvik
perhaps prospered from its trade with Scandinavia.
Genetic mapping indicates
that whilst Norwegian DNA is still detectable in northern groups, especially in
Orkney, no genetic cluster in England corresponds to the areas that were under
Danish control for two centuries. The Danes were highly influential militarily,
politically and culturally but may have settled in numbers that were too modest
to have a clear genetic impact on the population.
879 CE
In 879 Alfred summoned his army to meet
at Ecgberht’s Stone and they were joined by the folk of Somerset and Wiltshire,
hey attacked the Danes at Ethandun (Edington) and defeated the Danes who agreed
to be baptised.
875 CE
In 875 CE, Guthrum became leader of the Danes and he apportioned lands to his followers. Most of the
indigenous population were allowed to retain their lands under the lordship of
their Scandinavian conquerors. Ivar the Boneless became "King of all
Scandinavians in the British Isles".
871 CE
Alfred the Great (871 to 899 CE) has been
remembered in history as educated and practical, a Christian philosopher king.
After some initial success against the Danes under Guthrum, the Danish king of
East Anglia, the Danes launched a counter attack and
Alfred famously retreated to the marshland of Athelney in the Somerset levels
to regroup. He established Christian rule over Essex and then more widely
across the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms. He founded a permanent army and a small navy.
He began the Anglo Saxon chronicles.
There is an In Our Time podcast on King Alfred and the defeat
of the Vikings at Battle of Edington and Alfred's project to create a culture
of Englishness.
865 CE
By 865 CE a great heathen
horde (a micel here) attacked in East Anglia and began to challenge the
political balance of the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms. Large mobile encampments arose
across the land, including at Aldwark near York.
858 CE
Aethelbald (858 to 860 CE) was the
second son of Aethelwulf.
Aethelbert (860 to 866 CE) witnessed
the sacking of Winchester by the Danes, although the attackers were then
defeated.
850 CE
After 850 CE, Viking raiding parties
started to camp through the winter. They started to obtain horses and became
more mobile.
839 CE
Aethelwulf
(839 to 858 CE)
was King of Wessex and
father of Alfred. He defeated a Danish army at Oakley.
By the mid ninth century there was an
increasing influence of Scandinavian culture including upon the language. Many
words of modern use in northern dialect have Norse origins, including dale
(from the the Norwegian ‘dalr’, valley), beck (stream) and fell
(mountain).
835 CE
Opportunistic raids by Viking warrior
seamen continued over the next half century. By 835 larger Viking fleets began
to engage in more significant confrontations with royal armies.
The effects of Viking raids on the
indigenous peasant population, who were exposed to violence and enslavement,
must have been profound. The impact was also political as warlords sometimes
made alliances with the Danes, or were forced to
resist them.
827 CE
Egbert
(827 to 839 CE) was the
first Saxon King to establish relatively stable rule across Anglo Saxon
England.
Wave of Egg Kings. Soon after this event,
Egg Kings were found on the thrones of all these kingdoms, such as Eggberd, Eggbreth, Eggfroth etc. None of these, however, succeeded in becoming
memorable, expect, insofar as it is difficult to forget such names as Eggbirth, Eggbred, Eggbeard, Eggfish etc. Nor is it
remembered by what kind of Eggdeath they perished (1066 and
all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).
793 CE
The first known Viking raid on the
British Isles was the assault on Lindisfarne off the modern Northumbrian coast
in 793 CE. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle and accounts by
Alciun in the Frankish Kingdom of Charlemagne describe a violent a bloody
scene.
On 8 June 793 Vikings raided
Lindisfarne, their first attack on the British Isles. The raid was devastating
for the community of Lindisfarne, but had ominous
implications for the wider religious and political world. By 875 CE monks at
Lindisfarne decided to leave and they took St Cuthbert’s coffin with them to
Chester le Street and then to Durham.
Viking Raiders, ‘Judgement Day” Stone, c800 to 825 CE – a procession of
seven men, six armed with swords and axes.
At that time, there was no united kingdom called England. Instead
there were smaller kingdoms dominated by Wessex in the south west, Mercia in
the Midlands, East Anglia in the eastern fenlands, and Northumbria in the
north, with which we are most interested. These kingdoms had evolved out of the
chaos after the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain. They are often
collectively referred to as Anglo Saxon kingdoms.
Alcuin, the Scholar of York, wrote
of the Lindisfarne raid: … never before has
such a terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race.
Nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold, the
church of Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of
all its ornaments, a place more venerable than all in England is given as a
prey to pagan peoples.
The Anglo Saxon
Chronicle recorded This year came dreadful forewarnings over the land of the
Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully; these were immense sheets
of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons flying
across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great
famine; and not long after … the harrowing inroads of heathen men made
lamentable havoc in the church of God on Holy Iland, by rapine and slaughter.
The post Roman
period (866 CE back to 410 CE)
During the period 410 to
866 CE, Angle and Saxon farmers settled in the dales and small villages started
to emerge.
The town at
the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss, today known as York, had
developed from Roman Eboracum, following a period of decline, to a
settlement of the Angles by the fifth century CE. By the seventh century CE, Eoforwic
was the chief city of King Edwin of Northumbria. The first wooden monster
church was built in Eoforwic in 627 CE for Edwin’s baptism. After 633 CE
the wooden church was rebuilt in stone. In the eight century CE Alcuin of
Eoforwic was at the centre of a Cathedral school.
There is a separate page
on Alcuin
of York.
The area of Farndale has been described as and area stretching, ‘northwards
from the Wolds, of windswept moors of Hambleton and Cleveland (Cliffland) and still remain much as they were in pre-historic times. A
refuge of broken peoples, a home of lost causes.’ Bede described the area
as ‘vel bestiae commorari vel hommines bestialiter vivre conserverant.’
(A land fit only for wild beasts and men who live like wild beasts). When the
Romans left the Saxons in very small numbers did venture into the dales on the
moors and left their burial mounds and stone crosses on the high ground and
these can still be seen. Thus the people who
today come from the dales of the North Yorkshire Moors were a relatively
isolated population for several hundred years and they had developed very
special characteristics. In many respects, this has provided a uniqueness.
Diet
In Northumbria from about
500 CE, the diet of the folk who lived in Anglo Saxon Britain was likely based
on cereals, bread and porridge with vegetables including onions and leaks,. Peas and white carrots. Meat was eaten very rarely and fish was caught in rivers. Hunting was a sport of
nobles and wild boar and deer might have been taken
from time to time. Food would have been cooked at an open fire in the middle of
a dwelling in a large iron pot hung over the fire. Bread might have been baked
in clay or stone ovens outside.
731 CE
The Venerable Bede (672 or 673 to 26 May 735)
(“Saint Bede”) was an English monk and an author and
scholar who wrote the
Ecclesiastical History of the English People which he completed in
about 731 CE. He was one of the greatest teachers and writers during the Early
Middle Ages, and is sometimes called "The Father
of English History". He served at the
monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul at Monkwearmouth
and Jarrow in the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria.
The Life of
the Venerable Bede, on the state of Britain in the seventh century,
begins: In the seventh century of the Christian era, seven Saxon kingdoms
had for some time existed in Britain. Northumbria or Northumberland, the
largest of these, consisted of the two districts Deira and Bernicia, which had
recently been united by Oswald King of Bernicia ... The place of his birth is
said by Bede himself to have been in the territory afterwards belonging to the
twin monasteries of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at Weremouth and Jarrow. The
whole of this district, lying along the coast near the mouths of the rivers
Tyne and Weir, was granted to Abbot Benedict by King Egfrid two years after the
birth of the Bede.... Britain, which some writers have called another world,
because from its lying at a distance it has been overlooked by most
geographers, contained in its remotest parts a place on the borders of
Scotland, where Bede was born and educated. The whole country was formed
formerly studded with monasteries, and beautiful cities founded therein by the
Romans, but now, owing to the devastations of the Danes and Normans, has
nothing to allure the senses. Through it runs the Were, a river of no mean
width, and of tolerable rapidity. It flows into the sea and receives ships,
which are driven thither by the wind, into its tranquil bosom. A certain
Benedict built churches on its banks, and founded there two monasteries, named
after St Peter and St Paul, and united together by the same rule and bond of
brotherly love.
Bede gave intellectual and religious
significance to as burgeoning nation at Jarrow from where many centuries later John William
Farndale was the youngest member of the Jarrow marchers. Bede first defined
an English identity. Bede produced the greatest volume and quantity of writing
in the western world of his time. At his monastery at Jarrow
he had access to a university library with more books than were in the
libraries of Oxford or Cambridge 700 years later. (Robert
Tombs, The English and their History, 2023, 24, 26).
685 CE
By about 685
CE, the early church at Kirkdale was dedicated
to St Gregory. There are two elegant tomb stones within its grounds which are
once said to have borne the name of King Oethelwald. More recent excavations
tend to suggest that the church at Kirkdale was important.
The origin of
parish churches emerged at about this time. A parish was a district that
supported a church by payment of tithes in return for spiritual services. Some
churches were linked to manor houses and others originated as the districts of
missioning monasteries. The church at Whitby was
near a major settlement, whilst the church of St Gregory’s at Kirkdale was
located remotely in a dale. By 1145, Kirkdale was described as the church of
Welburn. Recent excavations tend to confirm the view that an important church
was at Kirkdale (John Rushton, The
History of Ryedale, 2003, 19).
In
contrast to the trackless moorland wilderness haunted by wild beasts and
outlaws where Lastingham was built, in Kirkdale, an ancient route from north to
south descended out of Bransdale to form a crossroads with an ancient route
from west to east along the southern edge of the moors. Travellers needed
shelter, medical attention and perhaps spiritual sustenance. It may well have
been to provide these Christian ministrations and to teach the gospel in the
region that a small community of monks was established there as a minster
(Latin monasterium) dedicated to Gregory the Great, English Apostle. It
has been speculated that the original settlement in Kirkdale was an early
offshoot of Lastingham. Inside the Minster, two finely decorated stone tomb
covers, generally agreed to date from the eighth century, hint that this early
church had wealthy patrons - perhaps royal patrons at least one of whom may
have been venerated in Kirkdale as a saint.
We
don't know exactly when the first church was built at Kirkdale. It may have
been a daughter house of the monastic community at nearby Lastingham, which was
founded in AD 659. The first church at Kirkdale was a minster, or mother church
for the region. It may have included a chancel - a rarity for Anglo-Saxon
churches. Surviving from that early building are two
finely carved 8th-century stone grave covers inside the church. The quality of
the carving suggests that the church had wealthy patrons, perhaps of a locally
royal family. The Friends of
St Gregory's Minster Kirkdale suggest that at least one of these
8th-century patrons may have been venerated locally as a saint. There are also
three fragments of Anglo-Saxon cross shafts built into the church walls. These
cross shafts date to the 9th and 10th centuries.
Pope
Gregory (St Gregory) sent St Augustine on his mission to convert the English to
Christianity in AD 597 (see below). The Minster is dedicated to him.
It
seems likely that the minster fell into ruin, perhaps as a
result of Danish raids. We know that the church was rebuilt around 1055 because
of the clue in the sundial (see further above).
Pope Gregory had
encouraged the conversion of pagan holy places to Christianity and the church
at Kirkbymoorside is near a large burial mound.
670 CE
In the 670s Cuthbert, said
to have been inspired by a vision of Aidan’s death to have joined to
monasteries at Ripon and then Melrose, joined Lindisfarne as prior and became 7th
Bishop of Lindisfarne in about 685 CE. He aimed to reform the monk’s way of
life in compliance with the religious practices of Rome, rather than Ireland.
He later became a hermit on St Cuthbert’s island and
later on Inne Farne. He died on 20 March 687 and is
buried inside he church at
Lindisfarne.
Bishop Eadrith
(died in 721 CE) later commissioned Bede to write the Life of Saint Cuthbert.
In about 700 CE Eadrith also created the illuminated
manuscript Lindisfarne
Gospels, in honour of St Cuthbert. Bishop Aethelwold of Lindisfarne bound
it and Billfrith created a jewelled metalwork cover. The manuscript combined
influences from Mediterranean, Irish and Anglo Saxon
traditions.
There
was for a time some disagreement between the Roman and Lindisfarne missions.
This caused conflict within the church until the issue was resolved at the Synod of Whitby in 663 by Oswiu of Northumbria opting
to adopt the Roman system.
The
schism had come about because the church in the south were tied to Rome, but
the northern church had become increasingly influenced by the doctrines from
Iona. The Synod was held in the monastery at Streoneschalch near to Whitby.
659 CE
Christianity in Ryedale
and the stone crosses of the Ryedale School
Many local churches in
Ryedale date back to the Anglo-Saxon period. The churches are not the earliest
evidence of the arrival of Christianity to the north of England. The first
evidence was the establishment of a chain of monastic sites from Lindisfarne down
the coast to Whitby,
their influence then extending inland to Crayke, Lastingham and Hackness. The
Venerable Bede recorded that in 659 CE the monk Cedd hallowed an inauspicious
site at Lastingham and established there the religious observances of
Lindisfarne where he had been brought up. By the time Bede was writing in circa
730 CE, there was a stone church at Lastingham.
Christianity was spread through
the work of missionaries who travelled the countryside, often erecting
preaching crosses. They were originally made of wood, but with the re
introduction of building in stone, stone crosses became the norm. These
preaching crosses depicted scenes from the Bible and were often elaborately
decorated with motifs from the Mediterranean. The carvings may have originally
been painted in bright colours. In the central part of Ryedale there were local
Craftsman who produced such crosses which were unique in their design. A
typical Ryedale School cross was about 6 feet tall with a slightly tapering,
flat, oblong section shaft. The style occurs in Kirkbymoorside, Levisham and
Middleton. The Ryedale dragon is an ornamentation on the back panel of the
cross shaft. A single beast, often in an S shape, filled the whole panel.
There is an In
Our Time podcast on the Celts.
Bede,
in his History of the English Church and People (731
CE), records that in 659 CE, a small monastic community was planted at
Lastingham under royal patronage, partly to prepare an eventual burial place
for Ćthelwald, Christian king of Deira, partly to assert the presence and
lordship of Christ in a trackless moorland wilderness haunted by wild beasts
and outlaws.
Chap.
XXIII. How Bishop Cedd, having a place for building a monastery given him by
King Ethelwald, consecrated it to the Lord with prayer and fasting; and
concerning his death. [659-664 a.d.] The same man of God, whilst he was bishop
among the East Saxons, was also wont oftentimes to visit his own province,
Northumbria, for the purpose of exhortation. Oidilwald,425 the son of King
Oswald, who reigned among the Deiri, finding him a holy, wise, and good man,
desired him to accept some land whereon to build a monastery, to which the
king himself might frequently resort, to pray to the Lord and hear the
Word, and where he might be buried when he died; for he believed
faithfully that he should receive much benefit from the daily prayers of those
who were to serve the Lord in that place. The king had before with him a
brother of the same bishop, called Caelin, a man no less devoted to God, who,
being a priest, was wont to administer to him and his house the Word and the
Sacraments of the faith; by whose means he chiefly came to know and love the
bishop. So then, complying with the king's desires, the Bishop chose himself
a place whereon to build a monastery among steep and distant mountains,
which looked more like lurking-places for robbers and dens of wild beasts,
than dwellings of men; to the end that, according to the prophecy of
Isaiah, “In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, might be grass with
reeds and rushes;”426 that is, that the fruits of good works should spring up,
where before beasts were wont to dwell, or men to live after the manner of
beasts.
650 CE
An
aristocratic burial ground at Street House near
Loftus and Carlin How, dates to about
650 CE, a period of transition from paganism to Christianity in England. The
cemetery was superimposed on a prehistoric monument and contained a high ranking woman on a bed surrounded by 109 graves,
arranged two by two. The location would have been just within the northern
border of Deira. The royal princess watched over Carlin How (“the hill
of witches”) for thirteen centuries until she was excavated in 2005 to 2007.
The cemetery was only used
for a short period of time. The cemetery is focused on one burial near the
centre of the cemetery, known as grave 42. The objects from this grave were the
first indication to archaeologists that this was an important person. The grave
contained three gold pendants, each one unique in
northern England. The female had been placed on a wooden bed with iron fittings
and decoration. Bed burials are very rare and had only been found previously in
southern England.
There are only a small
number of bed burials in England including two at the royal cemetery at Sutton
Hoo in Suffolk. The bed was placed in a chambered tomb with a low mound marking
the site of the grave. Other graves define the extent of the burial area as an
irregular square 36 metres by 34 metres. There are two buildings within the
cemetery, one possibly a mortuary house where the princess from grave 42 may
have been laid prior to her burial. The cemetery was created within an earlier
Iron Age enclosure dating to about 200 CE and the link to the past may have
been deliberate. Grave 42 is the richest single Anglo-Saxon grave in the North East defined by the quantity and quality of the
material found. The main pendant is unique in its shield like
shape. The pendant is made of gold with 57 small red gemstones sitting on a
thin gold alloy foil. The pendant may have been made from gold coins from the
continent that had been debased.
During the seventh century CE, burial
practises in England had changed. The people had converted to Christianity and
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had emerged. The more gold or precious objects the more
important the person.
This diorama
at the Kirkleatham
Museum represents the Royal Saxon settlement
excavated at modern day Street House. It shows the unusual layout of the
cemetery, including the bed burial structure, the people and the building of
the settlement, and a small ship at the beach at nearby Skinningrove, as her
crew traded goods with the local inhabitants.
Lindisfarne became one of
the focal Christian centres in Europe between about 650 to 750 CE. It gained
power and wealth, taking grants of land from kings and noblemen, and many
precious objects.
642 CE
Oswald died after a short
reign in 642.The new king was Oswy (Oswald’s brother). He gave land on six
estates to monasteries through Deira including Streoneshalch (later Prestby)
near Whitby in 657.
634 CE
Edwin's successor, Oswald (634 to 642 CE), dominated the northern region from
his royal fortress at Bamburgh. He was sympathetic to the Celtic church and
around 634 he invited Aidan from Iona to found a
monastery at Lindisfarne as a base for converting Northumbria to Celtic
Christianity. The monastery at Lindisfarne observed Irish Christian customs.
Aidan was the first Bishop
of Lindisfarne. He was known as the ‘Apostle of Northumbria’. He died in 651
and was reportedly buried in the church at Lindisfarne.
Aidan soon established a
monastery on the cliffs above Whitby with
Hilda as abbess.
Further monastic sites were established at Hackness and Lastingham and Celtic Christianity
became more influential in Northumbria than the Roman system.
There is a traditional
story that a monastery was built at Oswaldkirk in Ryedale,
but was never finished.
633 CE
Edwin’s defeat at the
Battle of Hatfield Chase by Penda/King Caedwalla of Mercia in 633 was followed
by continuing struggles between Mercia and Northumbria for supremacy over
Deira.
The Northumbrian empire
briefly fell apart, but it was recovered by the Christian King Oswald.
627 CE
Edwin converted to the
Christian religion, along with his nobles and many of his subjects, in 627 and
was baptised at Eoforwic. Edwin built the first church at Eoforwic (York)
amidst the Roman ruins and it was later replaced by a
larger stone church.
When
Augustine came to Britian, he does not appear to have attempted to bring his
mission to Northumbria. However
Edwin, King of Northumbria, married the daughter of Ethelbert, the converted
king of Kent and it was agreed that she should freely exercise her religion.
She was accompanied by a zealous pupil of Augustine, Paulinus, and this
provided the basis for Edwin’s conversion. From that time, Paulinus was
increasingly employed in conversion across the region of Northumbria (South Yorkshire, the History and Topography of the
Deanery of Doncaster in the Diocese and County of York by Rev Joseph Hunter,
1828, page xiv, Bede’s Ecclesiastical
History, Chapter 9).
Stone
crosses or spelhowes/spel crosses started to appear in the landscape,
which seem to have been meeting places of early local government. There is a story that Kirkdale church was first built on
the site of such a stone cross.
617 CE
A later ruler, Edwin of
Northumbria (son of Aelle of Northumbria)(617 to 633)
completed the conquest of the area by his conquest of the kingdom of Elmet,
including Hallamshire and Leeds, in 617 CE. He killed Ćthelfrith and became
King of all Northumbria.
Edwin married Princess
Aethelburgh of Kent who brought a priest, Paulinus, from Augustine’s mission in
Canterbury and Edwin was baptised in 627 CE.
604 CE
Ćthelfrith took over Deira
in about 604 CE and there was significant expansion of Anglo
Saxon power.
From about 604
CE, Ćthelfrith was able to unite Deira with the northern kingdom of Bernicia,
forming the kingdom of Northumbria, whose capital was at Eoforwic,
modern day York.
By the early seventh
century, there was a diversity of language – Germanic, Brittonic, Gaelic and
Pictish and later Norse. In the north, predatory chieftains were occupied in
raiding, rustling and slaving. Rival kingdoms appeared with Northumbria emerging
as the most powerful, with its main city at York. (Robert Tombs, The English and their History, 2023,
23).
Place
names which end ingaham, ing, ham, ington, burn,
lea, feld, tun were originally Anglo Saxon homesteads.
599 CE
King Aethelric ruled Deira in about 599 to 604 CE.
597 CE
Pope Gregory sent Augustine,
prior of a Roman monastery to Kent on an ambassadorial and religious mission to
convert the Angli, and he was welcomed by King Aethelberht.
The English church would
come to own a quarter of cultivated land in England
and it brought back literacy. English identity began in a religious concept.
The country was now
almost entirely inhabited by Saxons and was therefore named England, and thus
(naturally) soon became C of E. This was a Good Thing, because previously the
Saxons had worshipped some dreadful gods of their own called Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday … (1066 and
all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).
580 CE
The historian Procopius
(500 to 565 CE) described the people of Brittia as Angiloi to
Pope Gregory the Great, Gregory had seen fair haired slaves for sale and
replied that they were not Angles, but angels. His pun is sometimes
taken to define the origin of the English and Gregory continued to class them
as a single peoples.
Noticing some fair haired
children in the slave market one morning, Pope Gregory, the memorable Pope,
said (in Latin), “What are those?” and on being told they were Angels, made the
memorable joke (‘not Angels, but Anglicans’) and commanded one of his saints
called St Augustibne to go and convert the rest (1066 and
all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).
Hence there grew a single
and distinct English church. It adopted Roman practices in its dogma and
liturgy (as later confirmed at the Synod of Whitby in 663 CE), but it venerated
English saints and developed its own character.
569 CE
King
Aella ruled Deira in about 569 to 599 CE. You will find a dynastic history of
the Kings of Deira.
560 CE
This
was followed by the subjugation of all of eastern Yorkshire and the British kingdom of Ebruac in about
560 CE. The name
the Angles gave to the territory was Dewyr, or Deira. Early rulers of
Deira extended the territory north to the River Wear.
There is a legendary story
that an Anglian called Soemil founded the Kingdom of Deira. There were early settlements
at Fyling south of Whitby. Early movement inland tended to branch out along the
old Roman roads.
The indigenous population
suffered from mid sixth century plague and rising water levels, so it is
possible that there was little resistance to the Angles.
Circa 500 CE
In the late fifth and
early sixth centuries Angles from the Schleswig-Holstein peninsula began
colonising the Wolds, North Sea and Humber coastal areas.
Fifth Century CE
At the end of Roman rule
in the fifth century, the north of Britain may have come under the rule of
Romano-British Coel Hen, the last of the Roman-style Duces Brittanniarum (Dukes
of the Britons). However, the Romano-British kingdom
rapidly broke up into smaller kingdoms and York became the capital of the
British kingdom of Ebrauc. Most of what became
Yorkshire fell under the rule of the kingdom of Ebrauc
but Yorkshire also included territory in the kingdoms of Elmet and an unnamed
region ruled by Dunod Fawr, which formed at around this time as did Craven.
Saxon settlements appeared across Britain, especially to the south and east,
but also in the north. The Saxons didn’t displace the indigenous population,
but there was violence evidenced by hoards of treasure buried to escape the
increasing threat.
The population of Britain
fell from a few million to fewer than one million people after the Romans left
in the fifth century. Over the next few centuries, groups of Angles and Saxons
arrived from northwest Germany and southern Denmark, taking advantage of a
‘failed state’. They established a dominant Anglo-Saxon culture which
influenced the lands that would become England.
Life was nasty, brutish
and short. This was the context of the Arthurian legends.
Genetic mapping indicates
that most of the eastern, central and southern parts of England formed a single
genetic group with between 10 and 40 per cent Anglo-Saxon ancestry. However,
people in this cluster also retained DNA from earlier settlers. The invaders
did not wipe out the existing population; instead, they seem to have integrated
with them.
Transforming events were
taking place across the world at this time – the Chinese Empire reunited under
the Tang dynasty, the Roamn empire reestablished itself at Constantinople and
Islam began its conquest of western Asia and Iberia (Robert
Tombs, The English and their History, 2023, 21).
The Scots (originally
Irish but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven
the Irish (Picts) our of Scotland; while the Picts
(originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is
essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce
vice) (1066 and all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).
The Roman Period
(410 CE back to 71 CE)
Yorkshire
was part of the Roman Empire between 71 CE and 410 CE. The Romans did not
advance into north eastern Yorkshire beyond the River
Don, which was the southern boundary of the Brigantian territory.
The legions were recruited
from all across the Roman Empire. However, there is
very little evidence today of a genetic legacy from other Roman dominions.
The Romans built roads
northwards to Eboracum (modern York), Derventio (Malton) and Isurium Brigantum
(Aldborough).
During the period 700 BCE
to 410 CE, the climate was cooler and wetter. Soils on the high ground of the
North Yorkshire moors had been exhausted. Farmers moved to lower ground. The
moorland generally reached about the same extent as exists today.
410 CE
There is an In Our Time podcast on the causes and events leading to the fall of the Roman Empire
in the 5th century and assesses the role of Christianity, the Ostrogoths,
the Visigoths and the Vandals.
The withdrawal of the
Roman legions … left Britain defenceless and subjected Europe to that long
succession of Waves of which History is chiefly composed (1066 and
all that, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, 1930).
408 CE
Roman Britain faced
threats from north Britain and Scots in Hibernia. Saxons from northern Germans
and southern Scandinavia started to threaten the north sea
coast and the Romans stationed increasing troops along the coast and built
extensive fortifications. By the time of a significant Saxon attack in 408 CE,
Britain was becoming a drain on Roman resource who were facing simultaneous
threats across Europe.
402 CE
In 402 CE the Roman garrison at Eboracum was
recalled because of military threats from other parts of the empire. The
Roman legions started a process of withdrawal from Britain.
306 CE
Constantius I died in 306 CE during his stay in Eboracum, and his son Constantine the Great was
proclaimed Emperor by the troops based in the fortress.
296 CE
A century or so of relative
peace seems to have ended by about 296 CE and Eboracum became more of a
command post for the Dux Britanniarum, the Roman Commander of northern
Britain. The Dux Britanniarum was a military post in Roman Britain, probably
created by Emperor Diocletian or Constantine I during the late third or early
fourth century. The Dux (literally, "(military) leader" was a senior
officer in the late Roman army. His responsibilities covered the area along
Hadrian's Wall, including the surrounding areas to the Humber estuary in the
southeast of today's Yorkshire, Cumbria and Northumberland to the mountains of
the Southern Pennines. The headquarters were in the city of Eboracum
(York). The purpose of this buffer zone was to preserve the economically
important and prosperous southeast of the island from attacks by the Picts
(tribes of what are now the Scottish lowlands) and
against the Scots (Irish raiders).
There is an In Our Time podcast on the Picts.
The fortifications at
Malton were rebuilt.
Romano British site near
Hutton le Hole (Ryedale
Historian Vol 2, 1966)
The Beadlam
Villa (Ryedale Historian Vol 3, 1967)
Excavations Roman
Villa at Beadlam, 1996.
207 CE
During his stay 207–211
CE, the Emperor Severus proclaimed Eboracum capital of the province of Britannia
Inferior, and it is likely that it was he who granted York the privileges of a
'colonia' or city.
122 CE
The Emperor Hadrianus
sealed off the far north by a military zone focused on Hadrian’s Wall which was
built between 122 to 138 CE and was one of the most significant engineering
projects of the ancient worlds.
During the Roman period,
Most of Britannia remained rural: 80 per cent of the population lived in over
100,000 small settlements and some 2,000 villas (Robert
Tombs, The English and their History, 2023, 12).
77 CE
In 77 CE Agricola became
governor and extended Roman domination northwards.
The rulers organised
agriculture and economic activity, some based on slave labour, around villas in
the countryside. They expanded towns and built roads to speed the progress of
their legions between military forts. Yet in the more remote areas of western
and northern Britain, life continued much as before.
The Romans came into the
area further east to patrol the coast. They built roads, part of which still
exist and warning stations on the cliffs at places like Huntcliffe. It is
possible that Roman patrols may have passed through the heavily forested dales
flowing from the high moors, including Farndale, but there is no
evidence that they stopped there, and it seems more likely that they would have
ignored the impenetrable woodland areas.
There is an In Our Time podcast on Roman Britain.
A
significant military camp was founded by the Romans as Eboracum (modern day York) in 71 CE.
Urban settlements grew around the Roman fortifications at York (Eboracum),
Malton and Stamford. Eboracum became a significant Roman provincial capital.
To the south Roman urban settlements grew around fortifications
at Calcaria (Tadcaster) and Danum (Doncaster).
The Roman legions brought
with them craftsmen who made nails, shoes and pottery, or maintained iron edged
tools, lead piping and the like. The towns around the military zones developed
their own craftsmen and patterns of trade. The Roman army needed food, clothes,
horses, drink and the like. The towns developed forms of amusement and
relaxation and amenity and administration.
Evidence of imported goods
from the Roman period have been found, Bronze statues of
Venus and Hercules have been found around Malton. Pieces of toilet seats have
been found in Gillamoor.
There has been a find of a bronze arm-purse on a high moor track
above Farndale in 1849.
Roman copper-alloy arm-purses appear to have been principally, if not
exclusively, a male, military accoutrement, with examples found both in
auxiliary and legionary contexts in Britain and on the Continent. British
examples include finds from Birdoswald (x2), Corbridge, South Shields,
Thorngrafton (near Housesteads), Colchester, Wroxeter, Silchester and Farndale.
The
find is from a track above Farndale, so may not evidence Roman
activity within the dale, but it does suggest some influence, perhaps
patrolling, in the immediate vicinity.
At the time
of writing, the purse can be seen in the British Museum (Museum Reference
Number 1873,1219.175), on display in Room 49, case 9. This gallery is located
on the upper floor of the museum.
43 CE
From the year 43 CE, Roman
influence had transformed the way of life of people in southern and eastern
Britain. The emperor Claudius commanded a force of some 40,000 men, with
elephants to boot. They were grouped into four legions supported by auxiliaries.
Over the following decades
the Romans came to dominate Britain. Resistance by Caratacus was quickly
subdued and the druids were massacred on Anglesey in 60 CE. He then faced
revolt to the east from the Iceni and their king’s widow, Boadicea.
There is an In Our Time podcast on the Druids.
There
is an In Our Time podcast on Boudica.
55 and 54 BCE
Prior to the Roman period
in Britain, Julius Caesar, having expanded northwards and fighting his wars in
Gaul, was drawn to an early invasion when Britons allied with the Gauls. He
landed in Kent with a force about 30,000 strong and advanced to the Thames.
Though he met a disunited resistance, he withdrew quickly to deal with the
ongoing threat to the Roman army in Gaul.
The Iron Age (70 CE
back to 700 BCE)
The
Bronze Age people, such as the Beaker Folk were conquered by Celtic speaking
invaders from the Mediterranean and later focused in
northern Gaul. They settled in Britain and became known as the Brigantes, who have colloquially been referred to
as Ancient Britons. The Celts were skilled horsemen. They went into battle with
iron wheeled, horse drawn chariots, and attacked their enemy with swords and
spears.
There is an In Our Time podcast on the dawn of the European Iron Age, 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).
The
Brigantes were a highly organised society, with a hierarchy of military rulers.
The mobility provided from their horsemanship enables them to control lager
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 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.
There are
outlines of other such settlements near Grassington and Malham. The most
impressive Iron Age remains are at Stanwick, north of Richmond.
The Brigantes fought hard 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 Brigantes were a
Celtic tribe who lived between the Tyne and the Humber.
The Brigantes and Parisii
were led by a tribal leader, sometimes elected, and sometimes from a leading
aristocratic family such as Boudicca who later fought the Roman army. They
lived in large settlements, sometimes on hilltops and sometimes in the lowlands.
There is such a site at Stanwick near Darlington where pottery has found
covering a large area which had come from the continent. 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.
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). It is a large Iron Age promontory
fort dating to about 500 to 400 BCE.
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 advancement was 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 in Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Excavations from
ther 1920s have 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.
In 320 BCE, the Greek
explorer, Pytheas sailed around Britain and called it Pretannike,
probably from the Celtic for ‘tatooed’, from which evolved 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 Bronze Age (700
BCE back to 1,800 BCE)
The use of
bronze was probably introduced into Yorkshire by the Beaker Folk, who arrived in the area via the Humber
Estuary in about 1800 BCE.
Beaker folk
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 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. They exported ornaments made of Whitby jet. They traded in salt and had sea
connections with Scandinavia.
Possibly transition into the Bronze Age
came about by invasion, or it may have evolved through trade and peaceful
contacts.
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 were buried beneath 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.
There is a Street
House Long Barrow (later added to by an Anglo Saxon
royal burial site) at 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.
Yorkshire
Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 22 January 1936: In Cleveland, and especially on the eastern moorlands,
remains are few and far between. Yet Guisborough has produced a bronze helmet,
and Farndale moor a bronze arm purse, probably loot; while on the coast from
Saltburn to Filey stand the foundations of five watchtowers erected at the time
of Saxon peril.
The Ryedale
Windy Pits are archaeologically significant natural underground features
within the North York Moors National Park. This series of fissures in
the Hambleton hills, near Helmsley, is located on the western slope above the
river Rye. Warm or cold air rises from the fissures and comes
into contact with the air outside the entrance. In winter a steamy
vapour rises in puffs or jets from the holes. There are over 40 known windy
pits, but only four windy pits have known significant archaeological deposits.
These are Antofts, Ashberry, Bucklands and Slip Gill. The windy pits have
strange vertical shafts with occasional horizontal chambers rising within the
limestone cliffs. They are accessed from the surface through small openings in
the woodland floor. The near vertical shafts are sometimes 70 feet deep. In all
the skulls and bones of at least eight people were found in Antofts and animal
bones from pigs, wild boar, red deer, roe deer, sheep, goat and dog as well as
four or five beakers have also been found. The human remains include the skull
of an elderly woman with a fatal wound inflicted by a long sharp, metal weapon
and many disarticulated human bones.
Bronze age
hoards of axes cast in bronze have been found at Keldholme and Gillamoor. There
are barrows and tumuli such as at Whinny Hill Farm near Kirkbymoorside and
Keldholme and a road in the centre of Kirkbymoorside, Howe End, circles the
site of a howe, a large round mound which contained several burial sites.
Ryedale
Historian Vol 9, 1978:
There is an In Our Time podcast on the Bronze Age collapse,
sudden, chaotic change around 1200 BC, mainly in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Neolithic
Period, the New Stone Age (3,000 BCE to 1,800 BCE)
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.
A revolutionary advance
was made in the cultural development of northeast Yorkshire at around 3000 BCE.
This was the arrival from continental Europe of the first Neolithic (New Stone
Age) settlers. These people must have crossed in boats; probably in dug out
canoes. The Neolithic Revolution involved arable farming and the domestication
of animals.
Neolithic society made pottery, weaved cloth and
made baskets. These people no longer lived a semi nomadic existence. 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.
Ulrome
The Neolithic people buried their dead with ceremony, in chambered mounds called barrows. There are examples of long and round barrows.
The
start of stone age farming in
the area of the north Yorkshire moors
was in about 3,000 BCE, though there is some evidence of
farming from about 5,000 years ago. By 3,000 BCE permanent settlements were
built by Neolithic people.
From about 2,000 BC huge prehistoric
monuments appeared in the Megalithic Period. The organisation required erect the
large megalithic structures and the barrows suggests highly developed society.
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.
Small village communities
became settled, more reliant upon domestic animals and less on hunting. They
built stone enclosures for animals, and developed
rituals for the dead and forms of religion. Burial was in long barrows, in
caves and in stone lined graves.
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 Yearsley Moor long barrow has been excavated at
the home of the later ancestors of the Ampleforth line of
Farndales.
The Mesolithic
Period (3,000 BCE back to 9,500 BCE)
3,000 BCE
Over the past half millennium, the landscape of Britain had been
transformed and by 3,000 BCE ritual sites spread southwards from the inlands
far to the north.
4,000 BCE
The earliest evidence of
domestic crops and animals in the region dates back to
about 4,000 BC. Permanent
settlements were built by the Neolithic people and their culture involved
ceremonial burials of their dead in barrows. The development of farming in the
Vale of Pickering during the Neolithic period is evident in the distribution of
earth long barrows throughout the area. These early farmers were the
first to destroy the forest cover of the North York Moors. Their settlements
were concentrated in the fertile parts of the limestone belt and these areas
have been continuously farmed ever since. The Neolithic farmers of the moors
grew crops, kept animals, made pottery and were highly skilled at making stone
implements. They buried their dead in the characteristic long low burial mounds
on the moors.
We discover the first hints of our distant ancestors who would
beget their poacher
descendants and the inspiration for Robin Hood.
Their food came from wild animals, birds and fish and from berries
and other fruit. They sheltered in caves, such as Kirkland Cave near Pickering. There
is evidence in such caves of animals which had previously flourished in a
warmer sub-tropical climate such as the bones of lions, elephants, rhinoceros
and hippopotami. The Leeds Hippopotamus was found in a clay pit at Wortley in
1854. However when the first humans arrived, the
climate was still sub-arctic and the earlier animals which were found were
mammoths, woolly rhinoceros and reindeer.
5,000 BCE
In a different area of
Britain, the Severn Estuary footprints date back to about 5,000 BC. On the southern edge of the Vale of
Pickering lies West Heslerton, where recent excavation has revealed
continuous habitation since the Late Mesolithic Age, about 5,000 BC. This
site has revealed a great deal of dwelling and occupation evidence from
the Neolithic period to the present day.
6,500 BCE
As the climate continued
to warm, sea levels rose, and Britain became an island. By about 6,500 BC, the British Isles became an island. By 5,000 BC Britain was separated
from mainland Europe after rising sea levels had created the southern area of
the North Sea. Chapel Cave, near Malham in the northern Pennines, may
have been used as a hunting lookout during the Mesolithic period.
Trapezoidal microliths used in wooden shafts as arrows were found in
the collection of flint when the cave was excavated. Animal bones which were
found there included hare, fox, roe deer, badger and a large bird. Fish scales,
particularly perch, were also found. Further south, the Marsden area of
the Pennines also became a seasonal hunting ground for early humans in the Mesolithic
period. There were seasonal hunting encampments on the high ground by
7000 BC. Stone Age tools have been found at Pule Hill, Warcock Hill,
Standedge and March Hill.
Those who inhabited these
lands from its isolation are the genetic ancestors of those of us who live in
the isles today.
The population was
initially perhaps only a few thousand hunter gatherers, but those folk began to
slash and burn the forests and lay out fields for growing cereal and rearing
animals.
8,500 BCE
By about 8,500 BC, the Howick House was built.
9,000 BCE
The first 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, or travelled in boats along the Atlantic coast to the western parts
of Britain. When the first people arrived the climate would have been sub
arctic and the animals that the Paleolithic groups found would have been
included the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and reindeer The
appearance of the terrain differed greatly from that which exists today. There
was a land connection between what is now Germany and eastern England, making
it possible for groups of hunters to wander into the area.
There
is an In Our Time podcast on Doggerland,
and the humans, plants and animals once living on land now under the North Sea,
submerged in the Stone Age.
The first people appear to have arrived in the area of the North Yorkshire Moors about 10,000 years
ago (perhaps about 8,000 BCE). They were hunters, hunting wild animals in the
forests that covered the moors. Over time the woodland was cleared to provide
grazing for animals and the start of agriculture. Large areas of high ground
were cleared. Fields were cultivated. Hillforts and dykes started to appear.
During
the 5,000 years following the arrival of the first migrants the climate
improved steadily and a richer natural vegetation started to cover the land
including birch, hazel, elm, pine and oak trees.
On the North York Moors 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. The earliest
known evidence of human presence in the area of the
Vale of Pickering dates back to the Mesolithic period, around 7,000 BCE.
The most important remaining settlement of this period is that at Star
Carr near Seamer south of Scarborough in the area called The Carrs, where,
due to waterlogged conditions, a considerable quantity of organic remains as
well as flint tools, have survived. This is Britain’s best-known Mesolithic
site. The site, on the eastern shores of glacial Lake Pickering, was
surrounded by birch trees, some of which had been cleared and used to construct
a rough platform of branches and brushwood. Lumps of turf and stones had been
thrown on top of this construction to make a village site. The site was
probably visited from time to time by about four or five families who were
engaged in hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants as well as manufacturing
tools and weapons and working skins for clothes.
A Mesolothic 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 Pickering. Star Carr is a Mesolithic archaeological site, about 5 miles south of
Scarborough. It is generally regarded as the most important and informative
Mesolithic site in Great Britain. It is as important to
the Mesolithic period as Stonehenge is to the Neolithic period.
The site was occupied during the early Mesolithic archaeological period,
contemporary with the preboreal and boreal climatic periods. Though the ice age
had ended and temperatures were close to modern
averages, sea levels had not yet risen sufficiently to separate Britain from
continental Europe. Highlights among the finds include Britain’s oldest
structure, 21 red deer stag skull-caps that may have
been head-dresses and nearly 200 projectile, or harpoon, points made of red
deer antler. These organic materials are preserved due to burial in waterlogged
peat. Normally all that remains on Mesolithic sites are stone tools.
Another site was occupied by fishermen and hunters at Flixton, a
few miles from Filey.
Archaeological finds at Star Carr provide
evidence of early human activity. Microlith sites have
been found on the Moors at Brandsale,
Blakey, Bilsdale, Farndale and many more locations including flint and stone chippings and
tools. Star Carr was first occupied in about 9,000 BC.
The last glaciation left a series of smaller
lakes and meres and a vast deposit of mud on the bed of lake Pickering as the
river Derwent, rushing through Kirkham Gorge, drained the Vale. Around the
meres life had once abounded, Reed swamps fringed the shores and aquatic plant
life grew in profusion. The higher land was densely forested by birch willow
and later hazel as the climate warmed. In 1947 John Moore of the Scarborough
and District Archaeological Society discovered flints which in turn lead to excavations
by Professor J G D Clark near Flixton at Star Carr. On the eastern fringe of
the long lost Lake Pickering, long after the larger
waters had drained away and the area had become productive agricultural land,
he discovered the remains of human occupation dating to 9,000 BCE beneath the
pasture. He excavated in the peat where once a lake shore had existed and named
the area Lake Flixton. There he found a platform of felled beech trees and on
it some 16,000 pieces of flint, stone and amber beads, worked bone, antler
points, implements and numerous bones of animals which had been hunted for food
and for their skins.
The first
settlers in Star Carr built a camp within the birch forest, close to the lake
on a peninsula, with willow and aspen trees along the shore. The settlement
continued in constant use for two or three hundred years. A
large number of worked flints have been recovered in the area showing a
variety of different tools were produced. They would have been used for wood
and antler working; hide processing; for cutting and working plant material;
and for butchering animals. Much use was made of wood for building homes. A
shore side platform was perhaps used in the form of a landing stage between
water and shore. The canoes, paddles, spears, harpoons, mattock handles, and
bows and arrows, were all fashioned in wood. Hunting took place away from the
settlement, sometimes by boat and involving a wide range of animals. Aurochs
and deer were largely hunted in woodland, or by the water when they came to
drink. Beavers would have been hunted around the lake. Family groups would roam
the countryside collecting nuts, edible plants, fruit, and gathering raw
materials for the manufacturer of artefacts such as baskets. Star Carr people
might have travelled at least 16 miles to gather suitable flintstones from the
coast, often walking through dense birch woodland. The camp site would have
been buzzing - flintstones to knap; arrows to be tipped and fletched; bows to
be painstakingly fashioned into dependable weapons. The jobs were endless, and
the days never long enough. Burnt stones have revealed where groups of families
sat about a fire to cook, share food and tell stories. This would have been a
damp and swampy region with strong pungent smells from the water side reeds;
the cooking food; from freshly killed game being gutted and skinned; and from
the aroma of skins curing and of the leather and heavy woven clothing being
worn. This was a place where people would experienced
familiarity through their senses (from Kirkleatham Museum).
There is an exhibition of
artefacts at Scarborough
Museum and the Yorkshire
Museum.
A hunter’s camp dating to
about 6,500 YBP has been excavated at nearby West Heslerton in the Vale of
Pickering. This marks a record of the later hunter gathering community.
11,000 BCE
The Middle Stone Age was the period after the ice had receded. The
Ice Age ended by about 11,000 years ago.
There is an In Our Time podcast on the Ice Ages.
At that time, there was a land connection with
continental Europe, across the southern half of the North Sea. Early stone age
hunters were able to wander from north Germany and Jutland to eastern England
in search of food and shelter.
The Palaeolithic Period or the Old Stone Age (10,000 BCE
to 2.6 million year ago)
The Palaeolithic Period, also known as
the Old Stone Age, is a period in human prehistory distinguished by the
original development of stone tools. This period covers about 99% of
human technological prehistory. It extends from the earliest known
use of stone tools by hominids in Africa about 3.3 million
years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene.
Between about 115,000 to 11,000 years ago, there
were warm and cold fluctuations. The warm periods lasted long enough to explain
the presence of sub tropical animals in Kirkdale cave.
For instance during a
warm period about 80,000 years ago, the ice receded and sub tropical forest
covered the land. This included the area of Kirkdale
Cave, where hyena remains have been discovered. Those hyena continued to use the den into the following cold
spell, then the land became more like the steppes of Russia today, so that
mammoth and sabre tooth tigers roamed. At that time ice filled the North Sea
and dammed up the drainage of the vale to the east.
Then a warmer period returned
and the ice melted again to flood the Vale of Pickering.
The last ice age then froze the British Isles and
made the lands uninhabitable for about 10,000 years from circa 22,000 BCE.
Around
11,600 years ago the temperature began to rise very rapidly and the ice that
had covered most of Britain began to retreat to the Arctic.
Humans in Britain
during the Palaeolithic period
There
is evidence from bones and flint tools found in coastal deposits
near Happisburgh in Norfolk and Pakefield in Suffolk that
a species of predecessors to Homo sapiens were present in what is
now Britain at least 814,000 years ago, when the land was tropical
and hippos swam in the Thames. At this time, Southern and Eastern Britain were
linked to continental Europe by a wide land bridge (Doggerland)
allowing humans to move freely. The species itself lived before the ancestors
of Neanderthals split from the ancestors of Homo sapiens 600,000
years ago. The current position of the English Channel was a large
river flowing westwards and fed by tributaries that later became
the Thames and Seine. Reconstructing this ancient environment
has provided clues to the route first visitors took to arrive at what was then
a peninsula of the Eurasian continent. Archaeologists have found a string of
early sites located close to the route of a now lost watercourse named
the Bytham River which indicate that it was exploited as the earliest
route west into Britain.
Sites
such as Boxgrove in Sussex illustrate the later arrival in
the archaeological record of an archaic Homo species called Homo
heidelbergensis around 500,000 years ago. These early peoples
made Acheulean flint tools (hand axes) and hunted the large native
mammals of the period. One hypothesis is that they
drove elephants, rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses over
the tops of cliffs or into bogs to more easily kill them.
The
extreme cold of the following Anglian Stage is likely to have driven
humans out of Britain altogether and the region does not appear to have been
occupied again until the ice receded during the Hoxnian Stage. This
warmer time period lasted from around 424,000 until
374,000 years ago and saw the Clactonian flint
tool industry develop at sites such as Swanscombe in Kent.
The period has produced a rich and widespread distribution of sites by
Palaeolithic standards, although uncertainty over the relationship between the
Clactonian and Acheulean industries is still unresolved.
Britain
was populated only intermittently during this period, and even during periods
of occupation may have reproduced below replacement level and needed
immigration from elsewhere to maintain numbers.
According
to Paul Pettitt and Mark White: The
British Lower Palaeolithic (and equally that of much of northern
Europe) is thus a long record of abandonment and colonisation, and a very short
record of residency. The sad but inevitable conclusion of this must be that
Britain has little role to play in any understanding of long-term human
evolution and its cultural history is largely a broken record dependent on
external introductions and insular developments that ultimately lead nowhere.
Britain, therefore, was an island of the living dead.
From
180,000 BCE to 60,000 BCE there is no evidence of human occupation in Britain,
probably due to inhospitable cold in some periods, Britain being cut off as an
island in others, and the neighbouring areas of north-west Europe being
unoccupied by hominins at times when Britain was both accessible and
hospitable.
The
earliest evidence for modern humans in North West
Europe is a jawbone discovered in England at Kents Cavern in 1927,
which was re-dated in 2011 to between 41,000 and 44,000 years old. The
most famous example from this period is the burial of the "Red Lady of
Paviland" (actually now known to be a man) in
modern-day coastal South Wales, which was dated in 2009 to be 33,000 years
old. The distribution of finds shows that humans in this period preferred the
uplands of Wales and northern and western England to the flatter areas of
eastern England. Their stone tools are similar to
those of the same age found in Belgium and far north-east France, and very
different from those in north-west France. At a time when Britain was not an
island, hunter gatherers may have followed migrating herds of reindeer from
Belgium and north-east France across the giant Channel River.
The
climatic deterioration which culminated in the Last Glacial Maximum,
between about 26,500 and 19,000–20,000 years ago, drove humans out of
Britain, and there is no evidence of occupation for around 18,000 years after
33,000 BCE.
Kirkdale
Cave
St Gregory's Minster is
an Anglo-Saxon church in Kirkdale near Kirkbymoorside
in the Vale of Pickering. It was rebuilt in 1055 to 1065 perhaps after a
Danish raid. In 1821, a quarry close to the Minster was
being worked for road stone. The quarry men cut through a cave entrance. They
spread stone chippings on the road, not noticing small bones. This cave was
later found to have been covered by many inches depth of animal bones beneath a layer of dried mud. The local
vicar later spotted the bones and reported his find to the Reverend William
Buckland, who was a professor of minerology and geology at Oxford University.
Buckland came to the site in 1822. He later reported to the Royal Society in
London the discovery of (1) straight tusked elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus,
bison and giant bear finds from the earlier warmer period; and (2) mammoth,
woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, horse and sabre tooth tiger remains from the later
cold spells. The hyena bones were abundant and evidenced that hyena dragged
animal parts into the cave to eat them.
All the bones at
Kirkdale were accumulated across the cave floor and later a sediment of mud was
introduced on a single occasion. This covered thousands of bone
remains. Perhaps this mud was carried in by a rush of water, perhaps from
glacial melt flooding through Newton Dale to lift Lake Pickering to a height of
250 metres. Thereafter a gradual reduction in the depth of Lake Pickering
followed over many years, as water escaped through Kirkham Gorge, to flow
towards the Humber Region. The Vale was then left as a great wetland of
scattered small lakes, later turned by humans to agricultural land.
Travelling even
further back in time - Migrations of humans from Africa across the globe, to
Europe
Humans
have been on the move since our ancestors first evolved in Africa, meeting and
mixing, staying and separating, as they tried to survive in changing
circumstances. Human relatives of the species Homo erectus began
to spread across the world two million years ago. Modern people are all
descended from members of our species, Homo sapiens (first
skull image), some of whom came out of Africa much more recently – less than
100,000 years ago.
The
period when human relatives first arrived in Britain, the period, geologically
speaking, in which we still live, has swung between ice ages and relatively
warm interludes such as we enjoy today. Species of Homo – such
as Homo neanderthalensis (second skull image) and Homo
heidelbergensis (third skull image) were in Britain from 800,000 years
ago, living by hunting wild animals and gathering plant foods as long as the climate was warm enough.
The
migration of modern humans into Europe
To 37,500
YBP
To 35,000 YBP
To 32,500 YBP
Up to 30,000 YBP
The recent
expansion of anatomically modern humans reached the periphery of
Europe around 40,000 years ago from Central Asia and the Middle East, as a result of cultural adaption to big game hunting of
sub-glacial steppe fauna. Neanderthals were present both in the
Middle East and in Europe, and the arriving populations of anatomically modern
humans (also known as "Cro-Magnon" or European early modern
humans) interbred with Neanderthal
populations to a limited degree. Populations of modern humans
and Neanderthal overlapped in various regions such as the Iberian
peninsula and the Middle East. Interbreeding may have contributed
Neanderthal genes to palaeolithic and ultimately modern Eurasians and
Oceanians.
An important
difference between Europe and other parts of the inhabited world was the
northern latitude. Archaeological evidence suggests humans, whether Neanderthal
or Cro-Magnon, reached sites in Arctic Russia by 40,000 years ago.
Cro-Magnon are
considered the first anatomically modern humans in Europe. They
entered Eurasia by the Zagros Mountains (near
present-day Iran and eastern Turkey) around 50,000 years ago,
with one group rapidly settling coastal areas around the Indian
Ocean and another migrating north to the steppes of Central
Asia. Modern human remains dating to 43–45,000 years ago have been
discovered in Italy and Britain, as well as in the European Russian
Arctic from 40,000 years ago.
Humans
colonised the environment west of the Urals, hunting reindeer
especially, but were faced with adaptive challenges; winter temperatures
averaged from −20 to −30 °C (−4 to −22 °F)
with fuel and shelter scarce. They travelled on foot and relied on hunting
highly mobile herds for food. These challenges were overcome through
technological innovations: tailored clothing from the pelts of fur-bearing
animals; construction of shelters with hearths using bones as fuel; and digging
“ice cellars” into the permafrost to store meat and bones.
The timing
of global human migration
Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans) are
assumed to have emerged about 300,000 years ago. Previously, the Omo remains,
excavated between 1967 and 1974 in Omo National Park, Ethiopia,
and dated to 200,000 years ago, were long held to be the oldest known fossils
of anatomically modern humans.
In July 2019,
anthropologists reported the discovery of 210,000 year old remains of a Homo
sapiens and 170,000 year old remains of a Homo
neanderthalensis in Apidima Cave in
southern Greece, more than 150,000 years older than previous Homo
sapiens finds in Europe.
Populations
of Homo sapiens migrated to the Levant and to Europe between
130,000 and 115,000 years ago, and possibly in earlier waves as early as
185,000 years ago. These early migrations do not appear to have led to
lasting colonisation and receded by about 80,000 years ago. There is a
possibility that this first wave of expansion may have reached China (or even
North America as early as 125,000 years ago, but would
have died out without leaving a trace in the genome of contemporary humans.
There is some
evidence that modern humans left Africa at least 125,000 years ago using two
different routes: through the Nile Valley heading to the Middle East,
at least into modern Israel (Qafzeh: 120,000–100,000 years ago); and a second
route through the present-day Bab-el-Mandeb Strait on the Red Sea (at
that time, with a much lower sea level and narrower extension), crossing to the
Arabian Peninsula and settling in places like the present-day United Arab
Emirates (125,000 years ago) and Oman (106,000 years ago), and
possibly reaching the Indian Subcontinent (Jwalapuram:
75,000 years ago). Although no human remains have yet been found in these three
places, the apparent similarities between the stone tools found at Jebel Faya,
those from Jwalapuram and some from Africa suggest that their creators were all
modern humans. These findings might give some support to the claim that
modern humans from Africa arrived at southern China about 100,000 years ago (Zhiren Cave, Zhirendong, Chongzuo City:
100,000 years ago; and the Liujiang
hominid (Liujiang County):
controversially dated at 139,000–111,000 years ago ). Dating results of
the Lunadong (Bubing Basin, Guangxi, southern China) teeth,
which include a right upper second molar and a left lower second molar,
indicate that the molars may be as old as 126,000 years. Since these
previous exits from Africa did not leave traces in the results of genetic
analyses based on the Y chromosome and on MtDNA (which represent only a small
part of the human genetic material), it seems that those modern humans did not
survive in large numbers and were assimilated by our major antecessors. An
explanation for their extinction (or small genetic imprint) may be
the Toba eruption (74,000 years ago), though some argue it scarcely
impacted human population.
The so-called
"recent dispersal" of modern humans has taken place after beginning
about 70–50,000 years ago. It is this migration wave that led to the
lasting spread of modern humans throughout the world.
A small group
from a population in East Africa, bearing mitochondrial haplogroup L3 and numbering possibly fewer than
1,000 individuals, crossed the Red Sea strait at Bab el
Mandib, to what is now Yemen, after around 75,000 years ago. A recent
review has also shown support for the northern route through Sinai/Israel/Syria
(Levant). Their descendants spread along the coastal
route around Arabia and Persia to the Indian
subcontinent before 55,000 years ago. Other research supports a migration
out of Africa between about 65,000 and 50,000 years ago. The coastal
migration between roughly 70,000 and 50,000 years ago is associated with
mitochondrial haplogroups M and N, both derivative of L3.
A fragment of a
jawbone with eight teeth found at Misliya Cave, Israel, has been dated to
around 185,000 years ago. Layers dating from between 250,000 and 140,000 years
ago in the same cave contained tools of the Levallois type which
could put the date of the first migration even earlier if the tools can be
associated with the modern human jawbone finds.
Along the
way Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals and
Denisovans, with Denisovan DNA making 0.2% of mainland Asian and Native
American DNA.
The end of a journey
Here we end our
travels backwards through time. To go further still, you might explore the
evolutionary history of life on earth, perhaps starting with Darwin’s theories.