144 
KILLING PITS. BY J. R. [MORTIMER. 
(Read 8th May, 1896.) 
Killing Pits are some mysterious excavations on the north- 
west brow of the Goathland Moor, between Scarborough and Whitby, 
about \\ miles south-west of Goathland Church. Of these and others 
much has been written at various times, and by many authors ; and 
various have been the views given to account for them. 
By early writers on antiquities these and others similar have 
been described as Pit Dwellings and the sites of British villages. 
Professor Phillip!? thus writes : — In several places these pits 
are associated in such considerable numbers as to give the idea of a 
village. Such are the Killing Pits, on the gritstone hill, less than 
one mile south of Goathland Chapel ; the pits in Harwood Dale ; 
those which encircle Rosebery 'flopping ; be.'^ides many on the side of 
Glaizdale, and in other situations." 
The following abstract is from a rather lengthy paper on Pit 
Dwellings by the Rev. J. C. Atkinson, Vicar of Danby (now Canon 
of York), in the Gentlemen's Magazine for 1861 : — After having 
described several clu.sters of pits, he adds " The Goathland settle- 
ment occupies a space of 600 feet by 150 feet, but the pits are not 
so thickly clustered as in that last-named. The name by which this 
site has been known, time out of mind, is Killing Pits." He also 
remarks, " Besides these, several others might be named." 
The above extract clearly proves that Canon Atkinson, like most 
other Archaeologists, firmly believed in the habitation theory. After - 
wards, however, he changed his views, and in a letter to the Whitby 
Times, April 6th, 1889, strongly combats the habitation theory, and 
in referring to the Killing Pits says that, ''In nearly every case, if 
not in every case, the so-called British Villages were neither more 
nor less than the traces left by mediaeval iron mining." He also 
gives from old documents three other instances of Killing Pits in the 
neighbourhood of Danby, viz. : Hither Killin Pits, Far Killin Pits, 
and the Lower Killin Pits. 
