Lincolnshire Wolds Research Articles

The Waithe Valley Through Time: 1. The Archaeology of the Valley and Excavation and Survey in the Hatcliffe Area (The Central Lincolnshire Wolds Research Project, vol. 2). By S. Willis and others. Pre-Construct Archaeology, London, 2019. Pp. 446, illus. Price £35. isbn 9781999615543.

The Waithe Valley Through Time: 1. The Archaeology of the Valley and Excavation and Survey in the Hatcliffe Area (The Central Lincolnshire Wolds Research Project, vol. 2). By S. Willis and others. Pre-Construct Archaeology, London, 2019. Pp. 446, illus. Price £35. isbn 9781999615543.

Twelfth-Century Timbers From Sixhills, Lincolnshire, and a Review of Medieval Stave Construction in England

A group of twelfth-century timbers was found re-used as joists in a mid sixteenth-century house on the Lincolnshire Wolds. It is suggested that they were first prepared for use in the nearby priory of Sixhills and dendro-provenancing indicates they are likely to have come from trees in Sherwood Forest. The timber is notably straight-grown. The fine condition of the timber allowed conclusions to be drawn about the tools used to hew it. The joists seem to have originated in a stave structure. The wider evidence for this form of building in England is reviewed and evidence for comparable stave buildings, including the church at Greensted, is considered. It is argued that stave construction was rarely used because of the careful preparation required and the quantity of timber needed.

A chronology for North Sea Lobe advance and recession on the Lincolnshire and Norfolk coasts during MIS 2 and 6

During the last (MIS 2) and older glaciations of the North Sea, a North Sea Lobe (NSL) of the British-Irish Ice Sheet flowed onshore and terminated on the lowlands of eastern England, constructing inset sequences of either substantial ice-marginal deposits and tills or only a thin till veneer, indicative of complex and highly dynamic glaciological behaviour. The glaciation limit represented by the Marsh Tills and the Stickney and Horkstow Moraines in Lincolnshire is regarded as the maximum margin of the NSL during MIS 2 and was attained at ∼19.5 ka as determined by OSL dating of overridden lake sediments at Welton le Wold. A later ice marginal position is recorded by the Hogsthorpe-Killingholme Moraine belt, within which ice-walled lake plains indicate large scale ice stagnation rapidly followed ice advance at ∼18.4 ka based on dates from supraglacial lake deposits. The NSL advanced onshore in North Norfolk slightly earlier constructing a moraine ridge at Garrett Hill at ∼21.5ka. In addition to the large ice-dammed lakes in the Humber and Wash lowlands, we propose that an extensive Glacial Lake Lymn was dammed in the southern Lincolnshire Wolds by the NSL ice margin at the Stickney Moraine. Previous proposals that older glacier limits might be recorded in the region, lying between MIS 2 and MIS 12 deposits, are verified by our OSL dates on the Stiffkey moraine, which lies immediately outside the Garrett Hill moraine and appears to be of MIS 6 age.

The Roman Roadside Settlement and Multi-Period Ritual Complex at Nettleton and Rothwell, Lincolnshire. The Central Lincolnshire Wolds Research Project Volume 1. By S. Willis. Steven Willis and Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd with the University of Kent, Kent, 2013. Pp. xx + 421, illus. 237. Price: £39.95. isbn9780956305497.

The Roman Roadside Settlement and Multi-Period Ritual Complex at Nettleton and Rothwell, Lincolnshire. The Central Lincolnshire Wolds Research Project Volume 1. By S. Willis. Steven Willis and Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd with the University of Kent, Kent, 2013. Pp. xx + 421, illus. 237. Price: £39.95. isbn9780956305497. - Volume 48

Books: Nothing But Grass

Nothing but Grass Will Cohu Chatto & Windus, 2015, HB, 416pp, £16.99, 978-0701187859 Vignettes of brutality pepper Will Cohu’s first novel, set in the Lincolnshire Wolds. An attempted hanging, a graphic animal slaughter, and the drawn-out death of a young mother encircle the central event — the murder and burial of a fellow labourer by Norman Tanner, who utilises his spade for both purposes. At the time the crime seems motiveless, perhaps …

The British Final Magdalenian: Society, settlement and raw material movements revealed through LA-ICP-MS trace element analysis of diagnostic artefacts

Raw material movements and group mobility in the British Final Magdalenian is poorly understood. Following a review of the British Final Magdalenian (Creswellian), this paper presents preliminary results of a major LA-ICP-MS trace elemental characterization of British bedrock flint regions, and compare to these characterizations of artefacts from three assemblages from the first half of the Late Glacial Interstadial (the Meiendorf) classed as Final Magdalenian. The results successfully distinguish between major bedrock flint regions, and artefacts can be linked to these with confidence. The results reveal the importance of East Anglia, the Lincolnshire Wolds and the Salisbury Plain as lithic sources for artefacts from Farndon Fields (Nottinghamshire), Bradgate Park (Leicestershire) and Wey Manor Farm (Surrey), to which some flints were transported over distances ranging from the local to >200 km. The results are reviewed in the context of continental raw material movements.

The structure of the market for wool in early medieval Lincolnshire1

Peasant producers are now recognized as having played an important part in the late medieval economy: this can also be said of peasant producers in eastern England before the Conquest. In the wake of the Viking invasions Scandinavian settlers from the second half of the ninth century entered a region that was already commercially active. Independent farmers raised sheep, possibly a newly introduced breed, on the Lincolnshire Wolds and marketed their wool. A network of Anglo‐Scandinavian shippers and traders, members of a merchant elite, controlled important places on river routes. That Lincolnshire was an area of light manorialization and many sokemen had an invigorating effect on its economy. Peasant producers had comparative freedom and by controlling markets and extracting cash from the inhabitants of their sokes Anglo‐Norman lords profited from an economy that had been invigorated by Scandinavian enterprise.

Lincolnshire – gaps and more gaps

The history of the possible flows of rivers through the Lincoln and Ancaster Gaps, and other gaps in Lincoln Edge and the Lincolnshire Wolds, is far from settled; puzzles remain. Quaternary geology influenced the geomorphological phenomena above.

I. Giants' Hills 2 Long Barrow, Skendleby, Lincolnshire

The Neolithic long barrow whose excavation is described in this report is one of a pair known as Giants' Hills, situated in the parish of Skendleby, Lincolnshire (NGR: TF(53)429709; Lat. 53° 12′ 40″ N., Long. 0° 8′ 30″ E.). The general geographical location is an outlier of the chalk at the southern extremity of the Lincolnshire Wolds (fig. 1). The site lay at between 56 and 58m O.D. along the gentle south-facing slope of a small river valley (fig. 2). The maximum slope is 7 degrees. Orientation was approximately south-east/north-west with what can be considered the more important end of the barrow (the front) towards the south-east. The dimensions of the preserved mound were 65 × 13m (maximum) (originally 77 × 19m), and of the entire site from the original outer edges of the ditch, 89 × 29m (maximum).The other barrow of the pair, Giants' Hills 1, was excavated by C. W. Phillips (1936). To the south-east beyond a low chalk ridge and in a topographical position similar to that of the Giants' Hills barrows lies another pair of long barrows, the Deadmen's Graves (fig. 2). On a broader geographical scale, both pairs belong to a group of about fifteen long barrows situated on the Lincolnshire Wolds (fig. 1).Excavation took place under the direction of the authors at the instigation of the Department of the Environment (now the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) because of damage sustained by ploughing. As well as being a rescue operation, the work can be seen as an integral part of research into prehistoric chalkland environments and Neolithic burial practices. Thus, financial support was provided not only by the DoE, but also by University College Cardiff and the University of Leicester. There were three field seasons. In the first two, from 4–28 September 1975 and 27 March to 10 April 1976, the western end of the site (west of line AL, fig. 4) was excavated totally. The main excavation took place between 14 August and 25 September 1976.

Pre-Devensian glaciation of Lincolnshire (eastern England) and adjacent areas

Recent work by several authors relating to older (pre-Devensian) glacial deposits in eastern England is evaluated. Different interpretations of till stratigraphy and lithology, pattern of ice flow, and age of the deposits render necessary an examination of the various methods and techniques employed. Perrin, Rose and Davies concentrated on till matrix analysis (Perrin et al., 1979), but their data and its spatial representation could be unduly influenced by sampling bias, and interpretation of their results weakened by failure both to acknowledge that North Sea ice followed several routes into eastern England and to appreciate the variety of materials that contributed to the tills. Field observations permit identification of several till facies and determination of distinctive assemblages of clasts of local rocks which in turn allow the inference of specific directions of ice flow. These, referable to the later phases of glaciation, are shown to be generally southward, in contrast to the massive movement of ice through the Wash gap and west and northwest over Lincolnshire claimed by Perrin et al. (1979). Such contrasting patterns might be reconciled if tills belong to different glaciations as claimed by some workers. However, an argument is presented for a Wolstonian age for the tills in Lincolnshire and around the Fenland, and is extended to consider the limit to which the Wolstonian ice sheet reached. Because general southerly flow of ice over Lincolnshire does not account for the transfer of north Lincolnshire rocks to the West Midlands, a dynamic model for the pattern of ice flow during the Wolstonian glaciation of eastern England is outlined. In this model the central mechanism comprises North Sea ice crossing the northern Lincolnshire Wolds, in force, to occupy central and northwest Lincolnshire and the lower Trent valley before being replaced and deflected southwest and south by the more powerful Vale of York ice, while coastal North Sea ice passed over the central Lincolnshire Wolds, the Wash gap and west Norfolk to reach the Brecklands and Cambridgeshire.

The Geomorphological Significance of the Wolstonian Glaciation of Eastern England

The Wolstonian Glaciation is a somewhat controversial event in the glacial history of eastern England, particularly in Norfolk. Facies changes in the older tills of Lincolnshire, consistent with the north-south outcrops of Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks on which they rest, betray ice movement from the north, a direction also to be inferred from the tills of central and west Norfolk. These tills are overlain by Ipswichian or later materials, and at two localities pre-Devensian tills are underlain by deposits incorporating fossils of supposed Hoxnian character. In East Anglia the Wolstonian limit is considered to lie broadly from Aylsham by Norwich toward Diss and Bury St Edmunds, east Norfolk and Suffolk remaining unglacierized. Wolstonian drifts collectively form a convenient datum by which landforms may be judged older or younger. Thus although erosion by Wolstonian ice created new surfaces in central Lincolnshire, the Fen basin, and the Vale of Belvoir, and probably breached a former drainage divide near Gainsborough, elsewhere either little-modified land surfaces are buried by drifts or younger landforms have developed after drift deposition. In other areas, the glacial impact appears minimal, and pre-Wolstonian landforms survive as part of the present land surface. The land surface of the Vale of Belvoir and surrounding areas contains just such a variety of features, and the Bain valley in the western Lincolnshire Wolds provides a measure ofpost-Wolstonian 'fluvial' erosion at the mean rate of about 3 3 tonnes/hectare/ year.

Reflections on the historical origin of regions and pays

This paper examines the historical origin of two related but distinct types of country-side or pays in England: those based on early-settled river-valleys and those associated with areas of wold. W. G. Hoskins has pointed out that in Devon early places like Tawton and Taviton derived their names from rivers and were associated with outlying stocks or cattle-farms—Tawstock and Tavistock—which originally formed distinct but related parts of the same river-estate. A similar association is found in many areas. Two examples in Kent, where the evidence for early settlement is unusually abundant, are examined in detail: the estates of the Darenth people and the Bourne people. In both cases settlement pressed inland from the river itself, far up into the wooded Downland or wold. As well as their original river communities they thus developed an outlying area of summer pasture based on isolated forest shielings. The former may have originated before the English invasions and were certainly very early. The development of the shielings into permanent farms occurred later, mainly in the middle- or later-Saxon period. The Kentish evidence is significant for three reasons. First, there can be no doubt that in the county as a whole the wold region or Downland originated as the outlying summer pasture of the river-estates. Secondly, as the isolated shielings evolved into permanent farms, the region developed an independent life of its own, with distinct characteristics from those of the parental river-settlements. Thirdly, the word wold occurs widely in the Downland place-names of East Kent, where it definitely denotes woodland or forest, and not simply the “elevated stretch of open country” which it is often said to signify. Did other areas of wold, now largely woodless, such as the Cotswolds and Lincolnshire Wolds, also originate as the outlying wood-pasture of early river-peoples?

THE PLEISTOCENE CONTEXT OF FAUNAL REMAINS AND ARTEFACTS DISCOVERED AT WELTON-LE-WOLD, LINCOLNSHIRE

SUMMARY Quarry sections at Welton-le-Wold, Lincolnshire, reveal up to 13 m of glacial tills overlying some 8 m of silts, sands and flint gravels. The gravels are the source of a sparse fauna of straight-tusked elephant, deer and horse, and of four Acheulean handaxes. The sub-till deposits, here designated the Welton Gravels, display two divisions. The upper was deposited by periglacial aeolian and niveo-fluvial processes, whilst the lower contains more water-bedded sands. Derived Lower Cretaceous materials are common. The youngest of the overlying tills is of Devensian age, while the Galcethorpe Till and the Welton Till (newly designated) are probably Wolstonian and form part of the Older Drift of the Lincolnshire Wolds. The faunal and artefact assemblages of the Welton Gravels have a Hoxnian affinity, and therefore the gravels were emplaced as valley-floor sediments during early Wolstonian or late Hoxnian times. They confirm the pre-Wolstonian existence of a valley draining eastwards through the Welton-le-Wold area from a head located in the eastern Wolds and possibly on Lower Cretaceous rocks.

THE LOESS OF EASTERN YORKSHIRE AND LINCOLNSHIRE

Summary Thin, silty, superficial deposits cover parts of the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Wolds outside the Late Devensian glacial limit, and also occur on the Hambleton Hills. Their particle size distribution and mineralogy suggest that they are composed mainly of loess derived from the Devensian glacial debris. On the Yorkshire Wolds the loess was deposited before the ice reached its extreme limit, as it is incorporated in a chalky, flinty head beneath the till. The silty deposits are probably the decalcified residues of similar head deposits formed extensively in Late Devensian times.

Lithology of the Chalky Boulder Clay

The distribution of the Chalky Boulder Clay was established1 by 1880 and later Harrner2,3 concluded that the ice passed from the present North Sea across parts of the Lincolnshire Wolds, being deflected southwards by another stream from the Vale of York and fanning out into East Anglia and the Midlands. He believed a further stream of the same glaciation entered Norfolk across the present north coast coming in contact with the North Sea Drift (Cromer Till and Norwich Brick-earth). There has been long-standing controversy on the boundary between the two deposits and on the status of the Contorted Drift and Marly Drifts, which occur on the coast and a short distance inland in north Norfolk. There has also been much disagreement as to whether the Chalky Boulder Clay represents more than one major glaciation. On criteria of general description and erratic content6 and of stone orientations7, the co-existence of a lower Lowestoft and an upper Gipping Glaciation has been widely accepted for nearly 20 yr but recently this division has been seriously challenged8,9.

The Development of the Middle and Lower Bain Valley, East Lincolnshire

THE COURSE of the River Bain, the longest stream in the Lincolnshire Wolds, is a curious one. In general, this river flows southward for twenty-two miles from its source in the central part of the Chalk Wolds to join the River Witham near Tattershall, and the most striking feature is the way in which it transects obliquely the various Lower Cretaceous rocks that outcrop along the western part of the Wolds. Thus from its source on the Lower Chalk west of Ludford, it successively crosses the Red Chalk, Carstone, Upper Tealby Clay, Tealby Limestone, Lower Tealby Clay, Claxby Ironstone and Spilsby Sandstone to pass on to the Kimmeridge Clay at Donington-on-Bain. From this village to Hemingby, it flows over the Kimmeridge Clay, but the outcrop of the latter is never more than one mile wide. The divisions of the Cretaceous rocks indicated in Figure I are more generalized than those described by the Geological Survey,1 but the outcrops of these rocks and the areas of superficial deposits were mapped by the author in the field on relevant sheets of the Ordnance Survey I:25,ooo map between 1955 and 1959. The differentiation of the glacial drifts is a further result of this fieldwork, though it was clearly anticipated in the descriptions of the deposits contained in the various Sheet Memoirs of the Geological Survey, and in the writings of A. J. Jukes-Browne.2 Influenced by the rocks and drifts over which the river flows, the Bain valley shows great variety of form (Fig. 2). The uppermost part of the Bain occupies a broad shallow valley, directed generally eastward, flanked by remnants of the highest planation surface to be identified in the Wolds, the High Street-Bluestone Surface.3 Below Wykeham, the river turns south across the upper members of the Lower Cretaceous until the Lower Tealby Clay is exposed in the valley floor near Girsby. Here the eastern valley side is developed in glacial drift, and is steeper and less broken than the western side, where two tributary streams enter the Bain. At Biscathorpe, the river turns sharply east to collect Grimblethorpe Beck, which occupies a fairly deep valley trending north-east to south-west and cut into the Chalk, Carstone and Tealby Beds. This tributary in turn receives, from the south-east, Gayton Beck which is etched deeply into the High Street-Bluestone Surface along the strike of the Chalk. South of Biscathorpe, the middle section of the Bain passes into a broad vale, the east side of which is formed by both Lower and Upper Cretaceous rocks rising in a bold but fretted escarpment. The western side, however, is part of a ridge that is largely composed of glacial till overlying gravel, resting on the lower members of the Lower Cretaceous. The floor of the vale south-south-east of Donington is composed mainly of gently inclined plateaux of Spilsby Sandstone, to the west of which the Bain has excavated a relatively deep asymmetrical trench into the Kimmeridge Clay. Towards Goulceby, this vale is obstructed by Colley Hill, an outlier of Tealby Limestone capped by highly weathered gravelly drift, west of which the

THE EROSION SURFACES OF EAST LINCOLNSHIRE

Summary Five dissected erosion surfaces in the Lincolnshire Wolds are described, ranging between 550 and 80 feet O.D., and a lower well-preserved wave-cut platform is shown to underlie the Marsh to the east. The age and origin of these features and the drainage are discussed. The Humber fault and the Audleby monocline are believed to have strongly influenced the development of the surfaces and evolution of the drainage in the northern Wolds. It is suggested that these structures are younger than the summit surface and were formed about the end of the Pliocene period.

Drifts, Meltwater Channels and Ice-Margins in the Lincolnshire Wolds

Drifts, Meltwater Channels and Ice-Margins in the Lincolnshire Wolds

III. The Excavation of the Giants' Hills Long Barrow, Skendleby, Lincolnshire

Before describing this excavation a few introductory remarks must be made on the circumstances which brought it about.As early as 1924 Mr. O. G. S. Crawford was convinced from a study of the 6-inch maps that long barrows existed on the Lincolnshire Wolds, but the matter was not tested in the field until the writer began a general revision of the archaeological information on the Lincolnshire sheets in 1929. After a careful examination of the Wold area it became apparent that Mr. Crawford's belief was amply justified, and that an important group of long barrows existed between the Humber and the Wash. An account was given of these in the Archaeological Journal for 1932, and details of further discoveries were given in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. Altogether eleven certain examples are known, two more have been destroyed, and there are two doubtful cases (fig. 1)

Megaliths of the Trent Basin

BY the publication of the map of the Trent Basin (Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton. 4s. net) the scheme for a complete survey of the megalithic and allied remains of England and Wales is nearly half-finished. It is, in fact, the fourth of the series of twelve half-inch maps to be issued; and two more are in course of preparation. The survey of the Trent Basin is the work of Mr. C. W. Phillips. In one respect his work is especially noteworthy. It has resulted in the discovery of a previously unknown group of long barrows on the Lincolnshire Wolds, centred on two areas, the valley of the Swinhope Beck in the north and the terminal massif between Alford and Spilsby on the south, their distribution being rigidly confined to the chalk. Happily, it would appear, they have not been disturbed, except in two instances, in which digging does not appear to have penetrated to the deposit. It is regrettable that the same cannot be said of the western of the two groups into which the megalithic monuments of the area fall. In Derbyshire and on the confines of Cheshire and Staffordshire, the monuments, though not numerous, are among the most famous and interesting of their kind in England. Unfortunately, Arbor Low is the only one which has been investigated scientifically. The others were examined in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, and in some instances it is now impossible to determine their exact character archseologically, either from examination of the monuments themselves or the records where any exist. One feature in which the map of the Trent Basin differs conspicuously from its immediate predecessor, the map of Neolithic Wessex, is in the absence of any indication of ancient vegetation. This is due to differences of opinion among ‘vegetarian experts’.