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Funded by a range of heritage bodies (including Grassroots Grants, the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust, English Heritage and the Community Foundation), and run under the auspices of the Yorkshire Dales Landscape Research Trust, the project is the latest in a history of investigations of this intriguing site. Roger explained how a succession of antiquarians have already made their mark with their own excavations and investigations – from local man, Ernest Speight (founder of the Upper Wharfedale Exploration Committee) in 1892, to the Reverend Bailey Harker, who dug into four barrows around the area north of Grassington during the 1890s, including the one in High Close which he found to contain an Early Bronze Age beaker. He was helped in this by local chemist and enthusiastic antiquarian John Crowther, who later founded Grassington Museum.
In the late 1920s Elliott Curwen examined what he called the “Celtic cultivation areas” of High Close, and excavated “hut circles”. He failed to unearth any artefacts, and showed no interest in paying attention to the features which he could not interpret as “prehistoric huts”. He published a paper about his work in High Close in the journal “Antiquity” in 1928. Dr Arthur Raistrick continued the investigations of the field between 1929 and 1937.
Yet even with all this activity, the complex nature of the High Close earthworks is such that they are still an enigma. The enclosures appear to show a wide variety of shapes, and suggest several historical phases and types of activity. The enclosure wall is undated but certainly earlier than the straighter, more standardised parliamentary enclosure walls of neighbouring fields.
The topographical survey of High Close will be complemented by an oral history project to record some of the more recent history of agricultural practices in the area.
Roger’s presentation was followed by a talk from Dave MacLeod, an aerial photograph specialist, who provided an introduction to prehistoric field systems in Britain. At least six phases of prehistoric coaxial field systems have been identified in the Grassington area alone, and another 36 across the Yorkshire Dales. Indeed, prehistoric Yorkshire was probably more intensively enclosed than in the present day.
Local field systems can be compared to field systems identified in other parts of Britain – a series of aerial photographs provided us with excellent examples from the Vale of York, Nottinghamshire, Lambourn Down in Southern England, and Norfolk. The overall impression is that prehistoric field systems were of many different types which do not necessarily indicate changes over time, but may have existed simultaneously, indicating cultural differences across regions.
The Nottinghamshire “brickwork” field systems were interspersed with trackways and droveways winding between the enclosed fields. In the Yorkshire Wolds, there are examples of funnel-shaped fields feeding into smaller enclosures, indicating large scale livestock farming. On the Lambourn Downs in southern England, “banjo enclosures” are overlaid with later Iron Age co-axial field systems, indicating a radical change in the farming economy. These fields appear to have continued developing, as enclosures were repeatedly sub-divided. The “Cord Rig” system can be found in parts of northern England and southern Scotland – these were characterised by open fields, cultivated by hand-digging, and are usually attributed to the Iron Age. At Aughertree Fell, Cumbria, yet another variation in found in the form of banjo-like enclosures associated with ad hoc field systems.
It is within this context of complex regional and local variation in field systems that the study of High Close will be set.
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