MORTIMER : KILLING PITS. 
149 
There was no trace of a baud of impure ironstoue observable in the 
sides, or at the bottom of the pit, neither was there tunnelling, or 
even undermining at the bottom, giving the pit the bell-mouth shape 
so firmly expressed by Canon Atkinson. 
After excavating (clearing out) the other three pits, we found 
they had originally measured from 5^ to feet in diameter, and 
from 4 to 4 J feet in depth. The sides of these were not quite vertical, 
and the bottoms were more or less roughly dished, just as they would 
have been made in extracting stone slabs. The outlines of all the 
pits were very clearly shown by their sides having been stained a 
dark colour, from the percolation of water charged with peaty matter 
finding its way down the sides of the original pit, between the 
filling-in. . We could find no evidence of their ever having been pit 
dwellings, neither could we find any trace of ironstone having been 
extracted from the pits we examined. Still, some of the larger and 
deeper ones may liave been made in searching for ironstone, ani a 
little may have been extracted, ns small quantities of this impure 
stone were observed in the sides of the little gullies, at a little lower 
level on the escarpment near the pits. Besides, some of the larger 
may have been made in obtaining calcareous shale to be used as a 
flux, or to otherwise aid in reducing the ores believed to have been 
smelted in the bottom of the valley in the immediate neighbourhood, 
hence their name of Killing Pits. 
We may, therefore, surmise that these irregular pits on the edge 
of Goathland Moor were most probably formed for various purposes 
at very different periods, not solely for any one purpose, certainly 
not for dwellings. 
