MORTIMER : KILLING PITS. 
147 
was raised a large pit would be left, and where a small one was taken 
the excavation would be small, much in the same way as we now find 
many of the Killing Pits differing in size. 
May 12th, 1893, I again visited these pits, and this time in 
company with Mr. Chadwick, of Malton. and under very favourable 
conditions, the weather being exceedingly fine and dry, and the 
ground in a great measure freed of the heather by recent tires on the 
moors. Under these circumstances the pits were shown to be more 
varied in size, more numerous, and to cover a greater area than I 
was led to believe on my first visit. Most of them occupy irregular 
postions, and are only partially in two rows. Mr. Chadwick called 
my attention to a large flat stone (which I had previously seen) in 
the centre of a hole in the ground, about half a mile south of the 
Killing Pits. This large flat stone had been bared and excavated all 
round, but from some cause or other had not been removed. On my 
arrival at the place Mr. Chadwick remarked that if this stone had 
been removed it would have left an excavation similar to many of 
those at Killing Pits. My reply was that I had come to the same 
conclusion on my first visit, and showed him the notes I had then 
made. A few days after Mr. Chadwick sent me the following note 
of information he had gathered from residents in the neighbour- 
hood : — " The people living in Goathland, or the freeholders, have a 
right, from time immemorial, of collecting or quarrying stone on the 
moors. The Killing Pits are merely the remains of — or traces left 
of— such excavations, and probably not ancient British at all. Stones 
are to be found in all sorts of positions, in different parts of the 
moor. Some are edge way up ; others are flat ; but in many cases 
some depth would have to be dug to lift them from their positions. 
This process would leave similar cavities to those shown by the 
KiUing Pits." Thus Mr. Chadwick and myself were at one respect- 
ing the probable origin of many of these pits. Besides these Killing 
Pits, similar dish-shaped hollows, produced by the stubbing up of 
large trees, are often visible on many of the untilled sites of old 
forests^ — such as Beverley Westwood and other places, also in 
numerous places on the "Wold hills of Yorkshire, where chalk and 
flints have been quarried in early times, and are often erroneously 
