On a very wet sunday the 29 April, a small band of the volunteers showed some brave members of the public around Yearsley. The volunteers each have there own specialisms and Geoff and Elizabeth showed what they had found, in terms of the park pale (the park pale was a ditch and bank enclosure protected with a wooden palisade fence around, the park pale was for keeping deer in). The various parts of the deer would have been used, for meat, antlers for tools and ornament, skins for clothes, rugs and coverings etc. The deer park was first given permission  in the 13 century. Not much of it can be seen now, apart from a relatively shallow ditch in places and a small earth bank. Geoff and Elizabeth have mapped out the whole deer park boundary- quite an impressive feat! Gudrun, another volunteer gave us a tour of what she and Chris (not there that day) had learnt about the Bell pits. Coal mines that were established at the end of the 16 century and were part of Yearsley’s industrial past. Although there isn’t much to see on the surface,  the outlines are visible- if you know what you are looking for. Judy and Catherine have worked a lot on the archive side of things and have gleaned a lot of information which has been invaluable in telling the Yearsley Moor story and so talked about their side . Geoff being the main guide for the day talked about and showed us the 18 century dams, in an area called the ‘Wilderness’. These, again like a lot of Yearsley’s past history have been changed and covered by tree and scrub cover. Again the buildings made an appearance, with exclamations of ‘Wow I didn’t know they were there!’  and showed how much the volunteers had worked on the site. The wet weather didn’t dampen people’s spirits to much and I think they came away from the day being suitably impressed. Well done to the volunteers for their contribution and Geoff for being the guide on the day.

The building uncovered by the volunteers is located in the ‘Wilderness’ area’ of Yearsley  it is  medieval in age and  dates  from the 14th to the 16th century. The building underwent two phases of construction.  It was not possible to determine the use of the building in the time that the investigation had, but as can be seen from the photos, substantial walling was uncovered. The building would have had quite a large period of  use. It seems as though the walls have been pushed out when the roof has failed, either this has led to it’s eventual abandonment or it stopped being in use for some other reason.  The doorway was also delibrately blocked up with substantial rocks, a reason for this  may have been to deter people getting in.  During the excavation, medieval pottery (green glazed) and bricks were found within the rubble deposit appearing to date from the 15-16 th century, giving an approximate lifespan of two hundred years. Due to restricted time and resources it was not possible to establish the full size of the early dwelling, nor its use or reason for abandonment. Nevertheless, it is evident that not long after the first building went out of use a second one had been erected using part of the former structure. There is still a need to understand the reason why the former building was reduced in size, and what was the actual purpose for this dwelling? Had it a function as part of the medieval park?  Was it the house for the game keeper, or was it part of a small hamlet?

In the last posting there was work being done on the iron age ‘ditch’. It turns out not to be an iron age ditch, instead it is a medieval trackway, a fairly common earthwork in many places and used by horses and carts to transport, well almost anything. Some of the volunteers have also been busy helping to excavate the remains of a building at Yearsley, which began before Christmas and continued for two weeks in January 2012. I will provide some more information about this building later, (see pictures above). The excavation has revealed one older building  on top of a newer one. It looks like at some point the wall has collapsed in, probably after it had been abandoned.   The building my also have had another storey, although evidence of this does not exist. No wood was found during the excavation and it may have been removed and reused, this may be the case  for some of the stone as well. The area is very wet/boggy and wood doesn’t last long in this environment.

The volunteers have been hard at it again along with Gigi- the Archaeologist. They are hoping to discover if  a ditch at Yearsley is Iron Age. They are also looking at  the foundations of a building near the lake, which could be 17 or 18th Century in date. The day got off to a good start and the volunteers cleared the top layer of the site of bracken and bramble. The ditch can be seen fairly easily once the vegetation has been removed. After more of the top soil material had been cleared off, spades and mattocks were swapped for trowels to do some of the more finer work. This involved looking for post holes and organic layers which can be carbon dated.  At about 2pm we had a walk around to see if the ditch could be continued along it’s length as the volunteers think this is the case. The volunteers will be carrying on with this excavation and the building excavation and hopefully in the next blog there will be more insight.

Uncovering the ditch

Here the ditch can clearly be seen

The ditch excavation at the end of the first day

Our loyal band of volunteers gathered  at Yearsley Moor to look at the information so far gleaned from their hardwork on site, in libraries and record offices in the region. The purpose of this was to see how this information will be conveyed to the public when they visit the area and the aim being that they will learn something about the richness of the history of Yearsley Moor as well as enjoying a gentle walk.  With all this in mind the volunteers guided us on a whistle stop tour.

The first historic stop was the Park Pale.  The ‘pale’  is a wooden fence around a large woodland park with an accompayning ditch and a bank.  The fence has long since disappeared but the ditch and bank can still be seen. The park and pale were used to keep deer captive for the purposes of being hunted for sport.  The saying ‘going beyond the pale’ refers to when you go beyond a set boundary.  Going beyond the park pale in this case leads  beyond the boundary of the pale and into scrubby woodland.

The next stop was to the ponds sites. These sites contain landscaping as well as the two ponds. There are also a series of sluices for the ponds. The area is overgrown and the landscaping is slipping back into wilderness. The site may have evidence of Medieval influence- possibly part of the sluice system. A massive flood water event at sometime in the middle 17th Century has destroyed some of the landscaping and possibly some of the Medieval and later sluice mechanisms, as a result it is proving a challenge to work out the exact sluice mechanism of the ponds with probably only half the evidence remaining. 

Next on the list was a visit to one of the known temple sites. Although nothing remains of the temple, beneath the undergrowth is a layer of hardcore type rock used as a base.  The temple is in a good position with a view of the surrounding area. There are also Yew trees growing around the temple site, acting as a screen for the temple?  The temple is near to Lady Barne’s walk, where there are some large specimen Beech trees.

The volunteers led us along through the woodland path to Gilling Castle which opens out into an avenue of Beech trees stretching down to Gilling Castle and would probably have formed a great impression on the people travelling down to to the castle in horse and carridge. A  rise or hump in the road, half way along the avenue’ of trees obscures the castle. After getting over this bit of the road, the castle is ‘revealed’ – a  feature that was probably intended in order to give the maximum impact when at last  the castle was seen by visitors.

As part of the project the YMAP volunteers were involved in filming both at Yearsley Moor and the Northallerton County Records Office. Over two days on the 15 March 2011 and 28 March 2011. The first day of filming started of with Jeff the cameraman and May  filming the Bronze age burial mound (barrow) at sunrise -to try and get evocative  shots of the sun coming up. Unfortunately this didn’t work out as there was thick fog. However the day got nicer and film with volunteers talking about the history of the barrow- was ‘in the can’! Film was also taken of the boundary markers-(see other post)  and ancient trackway. Filming finally finished on the first day with footage at the coal pits in an area called ‘coal pit slack’ Names of areas can give good information about the origins and resources (such as this example).

On the 28th filming took place at the Northallerton CRO. The staff there were very helpful and filming went very well. In the afternoon we returned once more to Yearsley and the volunteers talked to camera about the Deer Park, Park Pale (fence/earthwork structure to keep the deer in). Everybody worked  hard and it will be nice to see how the film turns out.

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During October, the volunteers met to discuss what direction they would go in. Some of the volunteers are looking at old maps of the area- back to the 17th century and other volunteers are looking at on the ground physical archaeology. So by the time the interpretation of Yearsley Moor is decided in whatever form we will have a lot of information to choose from!

the volunteers at their first foray into Yearsley

one of the large ponds, suggesting both industrial use and recreation

In June of this year a visit for the public was organised to Yearsley Moor led by Geoff Snowdon-one of our volunteers. Showing a  group of 10 around the Yearsley Moor area. Geoff  showed what the volunteers had been working on, such as looking at the origins of a medieval Deer Park and also the remains of the 18th Century Park land that still exits. This can be seen in the large specimen trees and the avenue of Beech trees which line the way to Gilling Castle.  

Avenue of Beech trees leading to Gilling Castle

A specimen Oak tree in Yearsley

Archaeological Project  (YMAP) is still continiuing at a great pace and Chris and Gudrun have been looking at it’s industrial past, such as the Bell pits. These small scale depressions in the ground were probably dug for extracting coal (they are hard to see in the photograph)

remains of a bell pit heavily grown over with vegetation

Chris Williams, Gudrun Gaudian and John Lister- three of our volunteers have been busy tracing the Yearsley Moor boundary stones. The results are very interesting and follow a 1976/77 survey done to try and locate them. Chris, Gudrun and John traced the ones that had been found in the previous survey and found that a couple had been relocated to areas nearby. Some of the others have disappeared and both the 1st survey and their survey failed to locate them. The boundary and boundary stone/markers

one of the boundary stones at Yearsley Moor/Gilling boundary

 were set up following a dispute in 1796 between Mr Charles Gregory Pigott Fairfax and Lord Fauconberg regarding the definition of a boundary between their estates.  A map was produced from the volunteers findings showing the line of the Yearsley Moor/Gilling  boundary. (bm= boundary marker).

boundary stones map Yearsley Moor and Gilling

Volunteers at aerial photography training- to help in distinguishing features at Yearsley Moor

On the 29th May we are due to have some aerial photograph training from Yvonne Boutwood (Senior Investigator, Aerial Survey and Investigation) in order to help the volunteers interpret the photographs taken of Yearsley Moor- more on this after the training.