MORTIMER : KILLING PITS. 
145 
Again, in anotlier letter to the same paper, May 3rd, 1889, 
Canon Atkinson further supports his belief that the Killing Pits on 
Goathland Moor were the shafts, or pits, sunk for the purpose of 
extracting ironstone. 
Lastly, in his " Forty Years in a Moorland Parish," published 
in 1891, page 170, he still supports this view, and at page 174 he 
adds, " for my own part, if only the opportunity could be achieved, 
I should go in for an examination of any of these so-called British 
Villages with very definitely preconceived opinions as to what should 
be looked for and the way in which the looking for it should be 
conducted. And for one thing, I should have no more doubt about 
finding horizontal operations than about the fact that the pits were 
there. If I did not find the ironstone, it would be because it had 
been removed." 
This seems strong faith, akin to that of an antiquary of a past 
age, without the least attempt to prove it by the simple application 
of the pick and shovel. 
From the several occurences of the name of Killing Pits given 
by Canon Atkinson from old documents, it seems almost certain that 
their name was derived from Kiln and Pits. In other words, pits 
from which material had been obtained for the kiln, such as ironstone 
for smelting, or it might be, in some cases, limestone for burning into 
lime. This name would be most natural and expressive, and could 
hardly have had any other meaning. But then the name might 
often have been given to similiarly-shaped old pits which had not 
been formed by quarrying for the kiln, and possibly the pits under 
discussion are an instance of this. 
On June 10th, 1892, in company with the Rev. E. M. Cole, of 
Wetwang, I visited the Killing Pits. From descriptions of them, 
and impressed with antiquarian tendencies, we expected they would 
be found uniformly circular and regular in size, just such as we had 
been led to think the remains of sunk dwellings ot a circular form 
might be. In this, however, we were undeceived. These pits are 
very irregular, both in shape and size, and also in arrangement , and 
we unanimously agreed that few, if any of them, were the remains 
of habitations. They measured from 3 feet to 20 feet in diameter. 
