A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 
At Yarlswood near Thurleigh there is a strange little work of the 
kind, with a fair sized flat mound in one corner, and four other smaller 
tumps round about it outside. This site has certain strange tales told 
about it and is avoided by the villagers at night. It is known as the 
* Devil’s Jumps.’ 
All the moated places so far mentioned are distinct and isolated, 
but along the Wyboston road, on both side, for more than a mile, 
there is a continuous series of lesser moated sites, which must have be- 
longed to much humbler inhabitants. Domesday notes the former 
presence of twelve sokemen at Wiboldestune. This coincidence led to 
the special examination of other places where the settlements of soke- 
men are recorded ; as at Keysoe, where there were twelve, and Har- 
rowden (Herghetone), where there were fourteen. In both these places 
the same series of small, slightly banked and moated enclosures occur, 
over a distance of about three-quarters of a mile. If these sokemen 
were of Scandinavian origin, it would be quite in keeping with their 
custom at home to surround their small ‘tunes’ or farms with banks 
of earth. At any rate the coincidence is suggestive, and worthy of 
further examination. 
At Holme there is a small square moat about 100 feet each way, 
with a circular raised platform in the centre some 50 feet across and 
about 3 feet above the rest of the ground. There are also several de- 
tached traces of moat lines in the fields near. At this place Domesday 
mentions two batches of sokemen, one of three, and the other of two. 
All these positions have small streams running past them. 
Curious works remain behind Limbury Manor farm, consisting of 
certain moats, which, with their dividing banks, interlace in a maze of 
squares and triangles, a little after the fashion of what is called the 
Etruscan, or ‘key pattern.’ These were certain fish-stews which were 
the subject of a lawsuit in the time of Edward II. 
As time goes on it may become possible, by means of further ex- 
amination and research, to bring our various earthworks more into 
relation with the periods of human life to which they belong. The spade 
is, however, the agent most in request to let in fresh light on the subject, 
and the only one that can really help us to any certain knowledge of 
those earliest works which are amongst the first achievements of man on 
the surface of our land. 
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