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THE ORIGIN OF SOME LINES OF SMALL PITS ON JLLLERSTON AND 
EBBERSTON MOORS, NEAR SCAMRIDOE DYKES, IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 
OF SCARBOROUGH. BY J. R. MORTIMER. 
{Communicated 1st August. 1896). 
Various suggestions have been made by different persons, as to 
the origin of these pits, some from an antiquarian, others from a 
geological point of view. 
Thus, Dr. Young, in his History of Whitby (published in 1817), 
page 676, after describing an extensive collection of pits, called 
" stone hags," on Blakey Moor, on the road between Castleton and 
Kirby Moorside, adds, referring especially to the Ebberston Common 
group, the subject of my paper : — 
Another cluster, similar to this, remains to be described. It 
is within the rabbit warren of Mr. M. Herbert at Scamridge, near 
Ebberston, where it occupies a space of about 500 yards, but not 
more than 50 broad, on a dry bank facing the east. The pits are 
generally smaller than those at Stone Hags, but, like them, are of 
various forms, chiefly oblong." He continues : " This remarkable 
cluster is surrounded by trenches that will afterwards be noticed ; 
and it is observable that some of the trenches on Scamridge moor, 
and on the moors between that and Danby, have pits at regular 
distances on the sides of the trench." He then adds : " By this time 
the reader must be prepared for admitting the opinion that these 
excavations are the remains of human abodes of a very ancient 
date." 
In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1865, Canon Atkinson aho 
expresses this opinion ; and Canon Greenwell in the Archceological 
Journal, 1865, vol. xxii. p. 99, thus writes : 
We find in both districts the same mode of constructing the 
habitations ; for, though in the North Riding the foundation of the 
hut is generally a circular hollow, sunk in the surface of the ground, 
yet I have found near Ebberston, in connection with an entrance 
through the well-known Scamridge Dykes a number of hut-circles 
