So much for the ‘lake-dwellers’ of Ulrome. Up on the Wolds there were men living a somewhat different life. These hunted and ate the same kinds of creatures, and they used the same kinds of weapons, but their dwellings were dug out of the soil—shallow circular or elliptical pits each covered over with a conical roof of branches and turf, supported on a central post; or deeper troughs covered over with sods and scrub laid on slabs of chalk, so that the roof was level with the surrounding earth and indistinguishable from it.
Of the former kind of pit-dwelling an example has been discovered in the hollow known as Garton Slack, the pit measuring rather less than 9 feet by 6 feet in length and breadth, and 5 feet in depth; while one of the latter kind has come to light under Kemp Howe, a few miles north of Driffield.[[3]] The underground chamber here measured 25 feet by 4½ feet, had a depth of 6 feet at its deeper end, and was approached by a sloping passage 11 feet in length, the entrance to which would doubtless be hidden with scrub. The roof had been supported on six upright posts, and for twelve feet along one side of the chamber ran a stone ledge—this last being evidently a luxury.
It is probable that these two kinds of dwellings may have been respectively the summer and winter houses of the same people. For the Roman historian Tacitus says of the ancient tribes on the other side of the North Sea:—
Besides their ordinary habitations, they have a number of subterranean caves, dug by their own labour and carefully covered over with soil, in winter their retreat from cold and the repository for their corn. In these recesses they not only find a shelter from the rigour of the seasons, but in times of foreign invasions their effects are safely concealed.
Of the men who lived on the Yorkshire Wolds we know a great deal; for it was their custom to raise over the burial places of their chiefs circular mounds of earth, some still very large, others now only a foot or two high. The relative size of a burial mound, which we speak of either by the Latin name tumulus or by the English names barrow and howe, marks the importance of the chieftain whose body or ashes once lay under it.
These tumuli, or barrows, are very plentifully strewn over the Yorkshire Wolds, and for more than fifty years the late Mr. J. R. Mortimer, of Driffield, devoted all his leisure time to their excavation. The results of his labours are to be seen in his private museum—the Mortimer Museum—and details of his ‘finds’ are recorded in his large book on the Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire, some of the illustrations in which are here reproduced.
A general idea of how a barrow has been constructed, and of what it may contain, can be gained from the illustration on the next page.
Howe Hill, Duggleby, is one of the larger barrows, built on a sloping hillside, and having at its base a diameter of 125 feet and at its flattened top one of 47 feet.
Section of Howe Hill, Duggleby.