The Evolution of an English Town Part 3

The Celtic people were possessed of a civilisation infinitely more advanced than that of the Neolithic or Iberian races. They were the ancestors of the "Ancient Britons" who offered such a stout resistance to the Roman legions under Julius Caesar.

Not only are there innumerable barrows or burial mounds constructed by this early race on the hills above the Vale, but on Beacon Hill, the slight eminence just to the west of Pickering Castle, at Cawthorne and also at Cropton, there are evidences of what may be their fortifications, while the plough is continually bringing to light more relics of the period. A fine collection of these have been brought together and are to be seen in Mr T. Mitchelson's private museum near Pickering Church. Two large cases contain a most remarkable series of burial urns, incense cups and food vessels all found in barrows in the neighbourhood. The urns are generally ornamented with bands of diagonal or crossed markings and other designs as well as with the impressions of twisted pieces of hide or gra.s.ses. The bases are usually very small for the size of the urns, after the fas.h.i.+on of those in Canon Greenwell's examples in the British Museum.

In that collection may be seen several cinerary urns, incense cups and food vessels from Hutton Buscel, Ganton, Slingsby, Egton and other places in the vicinity of Pickering. They belong to the same period as those in Mr Mitchelson's museum and are, on account of the simplicity and comparative rarity of the bronze implements that have been discovered with them, considered to belong to the earliest bronze period, that is, to the time of the first Celtic invasions. Many of the objects in Mr Mitchelson's museum are not labelled with the place of their origin, the ma.n.u.script catalogue made some years ago having been lost; but with a few exceptions the entire collection comes from barrows situated in the neighbourhood, having been brought together by Mr Thomas Kendall more than fifty years ago.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A COMPLETE SKELETON IN A STONE CIST BELONGING TO THE EARLY BRONZE AGE.

It was discovered by a farmer in a field between Appleton-le-Moor and Spaunton, and is now in the Museum at Pickering. [_Copyright reserved by Dr J.L. Kirk._]

A complete skeleton in a stone cist is now lying in a gla.s.s case in the museum. It was discovered accidentally by a farmer between Appleton-le-Moor and Spaunton. He had decided to remove a huge stone that had been an obstacle when ploughing, and in doing so found that he had removed the top stone of a cist belonging to the early Bronze Age. The man has a round or brachycephalic skull with the prominent brow-ridges and powerful jaws of the Celtic people, and his right arm was arranged so that the hand was beneath the skull. By his left hand was the food vessel that is now placed on the left side of the skull, and at his feet are a number of small bronze studs or rivets.

These Bronze Age men seem to have had a very general belief in the spirit world, for the dead warrior was buried with his weapons as well as food, so that he might be sustained while he hunted in the other world with the spirit of his favourite axe or spear. The museum contains examples of socketed bronze celts and spear heads, as well as an infinite variety of arrowheads, flint knives, stone hammers and celts, and also coloured beads and other ornaments.

Thus we find that in these early days mankind teemed in this part of Yorks.h.i.+re. From all points around the shallow lake the smoke of fires ascended into the sky, patches of cultivation appeared among the trees, and villages, consisting of collections of primitive wooden huts, probably surrounded by a stockade, would have been discernible.

A closer examination of one of these early British villages would have discovered the people clothed in woven materials, for an example of cloth of the period was discovered by Canon Greenwell in this locality and is now to be seen in the British Museum. The grinding of corn in the stone querns, so frequently found near Pickering, would have been in progress; fair-haired children with blue eyes would be helping the older folk in preparing food, dressing skins, making bows and arrows, and the innumerable employments that the advancing civilisation demanded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Quern, now in the Pickering Museum.]

It is at this period that we reach the confines of history, records of an extremely unreliable character it is true, but strangely enough there are references by very early writers to the founding of Pickering. That the place should be mentioned at all in these fabulous writings is an interesting fact and gives Pickering an importance in those distant centuries which is surprising. John Stow in his "Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles," published in 1565, gives the following fanciful story of the father of the founder of Pickering.

"Morindus, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of Danius, began to reigne in Britain: he (as our Chronicles saye) fought with a kynge, who came out of Germanye, and arrived here, and slew hym with all his power. Moreover (as they write) of the Irishe seas in his tyme, came foorthe a wonderfull monster: whiche destroyed muche people. Wherof the king hearyng would of his valiaunt courage, needes fyght with it: by wh[=o] he was cleane devoured, wh[=e] he had reigned viii. yeres."

[Sidenote: B.C. 311]

His two youngest sons were Vigenius and Peredurus, and of them Stow writes: --

"Vigenius and Peredurus, after the takyng of their brother [Elidurus, the former King] reigned together, vii. yeres. Vigenius th[=a] died, and Peredurus reygned after alone, ii. yeares. He buylded the towne of Pyckeryng after the opinion of divers writers."

[Sidenote: B.C. 270]

Raphael Holinshed, who was a contemporary of Stow and used many of his sources of information, gives the following account of the same period[1]:--

[Footnote 1: Holinshed, Raphael; "Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland," p. 461.]

"Vigenius and Peredurus, the yoongest sonnes of Morindus, and brethren to Elidurus, began to reigne jointlie as kings of Britaine, in the year of the world 3701, after the building of Rome 485.... These two brethren in the English chronicles are named Higanius and Pet.i.tur, who (as Gal. Mon.

[Geoffrey of Monmouth] testifieth) divided the realme betwixt them, so that all the land from Humber westward fell to Vigenius or Higanius, the other part beyond Humber northward Peredure held. But other affirme, that Peredurus onelie reigned, and held his brother Elidurus in prison by his owne consent, for somuch as he was not willing to governe.

[Sidenote: Caxton.] [Sidenote: Eth. Bur.]

"But Gal. Mon. saith, that Vigenius died after he had reigned 7 yeares, and then Peredurus seized all the land into his owne rule, and governed it with such sobrietie and wisedome, that he was praised above all his brethren, so that Elidurus was quite forgotten of the Britains. But others write that he was a verie tyrant, and used himselfe verie cruellie towards the lords of his land, whereupon they rebelled and slue him. But whether by violent hand, or by naturall sicknesse, he finallie departed this life, after the consent of most writers, when he had reigned eight yeares, leaving no issue behind him to succeed in the governance of the Kingdome.

He builded the towne of Pikering, where his bodie was buried."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BURIAL URNS AND OTHER VESSELS IN PICKERING MUSEUM.

They were found in barrows in the following places, reading from left to right, top row:--(1) Blansby Park (containing bones and ashes); (2) Cawthorne; (3) Hutton Buscelmoor; (4) c.o.c.kmoor Hall Warren; (5) Snainton Moor; (6) Raindale, "No Man's Land." Lower Row:--(1) Blansby Park; (2) below Ebberston; (3) Newton Towers, near Helmsley; (4) Fylingdales (a food vessel); (5) Cawthorne (contains ashes.)

[_Copyright reserved by Dr John L. Kirk._]

Whatever memorial was raised to this legendary king of the Brigantes, has totally disappeared. It may have been a mighty barrow surrounded with great stones and containing the golden ornaments worn by Peredurus, but if it existed outside the imaginations of the Chroniclers it would probably have been plundered and obliterated during the Roman occupation or by marauding Angles or Danes.

Mr Bateman tells us that in 1853, two Celtic coins in billon or mixed metal of the peculiar rough type apparently characteristic of and confined to the coinage of the Brigantes, were found by quarrymen engaged in baring the rock near Pickering.

There may have been two British fortresses at Pickering at this time, one on the site of the present castle and one the hill on the opposite side of the Pickering Beck, where, as already mentioned, the circular ditches and mounds indicate the existence of some primitive stockaded stronghold.

At Cawthorne, a few miles to the north, there are British enclosures adjoining the Roman camps; and at Cropton, on the west side of the village and in a most commanding position, a circular hill-top shows palpable evidences of having been fortified.

Of the megalithic remains or "Bride Stones," as they are generally termed in Yorks.h.i.+re, it is difficult to say anything with certainty. Professor Windle, in his list of those existing in the county,[1] mentions among others--

1. "The Bride Stones" near Grosmont (Circle).

2. "The Bride Stones," Sleights Moor (Circle).

3. Simon Houe, near Goathland Station.

4. "The Standing Stones" (three upright stones), 1-3/4 miles S.-W. of Robin Hood's Bay, on Fylingdales Moor.

[Footnote 1: Windle, Bertram, C.A., "Remains of the Pre-historic Age in England," pp. 203-4.]

CHAPTER V

_How the Roman Occupation of Britain affected the Forest and Vale of Pickering_

B.C. 55 to A.D. 418

The landings of Julius Caesar, in 55 and 54 B.C., and the conflicts between his legions and the southern tribes of Britain, were little more, in the results obtained, than a reconnaissance in force, and Yorks.h.i.+re did not feel the effect of the Roman invasion until nearly a century after the first historic landing.

The real invasion of Britain began in A.D. 43, when the Emperor Claudius sent Aulus Plautius across the Channel with four legions; and after seven years of fighting the Romans, taking advantage of the inter-tribal feuds of the Britons, had reduced the southern half of England to submission.

Plautius was succeeded by Ostorius Scapula in A.D. 50, and from Tacitus[1]

we learn that he "found affairs in a troubled state, the enemy making irruptions into the territories of our allies, with so much the more insolence as they supposed that a new general, with an army unknown to him, and now that the winter had set in, would not dare to make head against them." Scapula, however, vigorously proceeded with the work of subjugation, and having overcome the Iceni of East Anglia and the Fen Country, he was forcing his way westwards into Wales when he heard of trouble brewing in the North. "He had approached near the sea which washes the coast of Ireland," says Tacitus, "when commotions, begun amongst the Brigantes, obliged the general to return thither." The Brigantes were the powerful and extremely fierce tribe occupying Yorks.h.i.+re, Durham, c.u.mberland, and Westmorland, and among them were the people whose remains are so much in evidence near Pickering. They had probably been under tribute to the Romans, and their struggle against the invaders in this instance does not appear to have been well organised, for we are told that when the Romans arrived in their country, they "soon returned to their homes, a few who raised the revolt having been slain, and the rest pardoned." We also know that in A.D. 71 Petilius Cerealis attacked the Brigantes and subdued a great part of their country; and as the Romans gradually brought the tribe completely under their control, they established the camps and constructed the roads of which we find so many evidences to-day. The inhabitants of the hills surrounding the Vale of Pickering were overawed by a great military station at Cawthorne on a road running north and south from that spot. It may have been the Delgovicia mentioned in the first Antonine Iter., and in that case Malton would have been Derventione, and Whitby, or some spot in Dunsley Bay, would have been Praetorio, but at the present time there is not sufficient data for fixing these names with any certainty. It has also been supposed by General Roy[2] that Cawthorne was occupied by the famous 9th legion after they had left Scotland, owing to the similarity of construction between the most westerly camp at Cawthorne and the one at Dealgin Ross in Strathern, where the 9th legion were supposed to have had their narrow escape from defeat by the Caledonians during Agricola's sixth campaign. But this also is somewhat a matter of speculation.

[Footnote 1: Tacitus, the Oxford Translation, revised 1854, vol. 1, book xii. pp. 288-90.]

[Footnote 2: Roy, Major Gen. William: "The Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain," 1793, Plate xi.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Sketch Map of the Roman Road from Malton to the Coast, and a Plan of the Camps on the Road at Cawthorne. (_From the Ordnance Survey_.)]

Coming to the firmer ground of the actual remains of the Roman roads and camps, we find that traces of a well-constructed road, locally known as Wade's Causeway, have been discovered at various points on a line drawn from Malton to Cawthorne and Whitby. Some of these sections of the road have disappeared since Francis Drake described them in 1736,[2] and at the present time the work of destruction continues at intervals when a farmer, converting a few more acres of heather into potatoes, has the ill-luck to strike the roadway.

[Footnote 2: Drake, Francis: "Eborac.u.m," p. 36.]

In the month of January this year (1905), I examined a piece of ground newly taken under cultivation at Stape. It was about half a mile north of the little inn and just to the west of Mauley Cross. The stones were all thrown out of their original positions and a pile of them had been taken outside the turf wall for road-mending and to finish the walls against the gate posts, but the broad track of the roadway, composed of large odd-shaped stones, averaging about a foot in width, was still strikingly in evidence--a mottled band pa.s.sing straight through the chocolate-coloured soil.

All who have described the road state that on each side of the causeway where it remains undisturbed there is a line of stones placed on their edges in order to keep the stones in place, but in this instance the stones were too much disturbed to observe their original formation. Among the furrows I discovered quant.i.ties of flint-flakes, indicating the manufacture of stone implements on this site, no flints being naturally found in the neighbourhood.