DAVIS: THE LAKE-DWELLINGS IN EAST YORKSHIRE. 
Ill 
be used. To construct in ten or twelve feet of water, float- 
ing over a ciuagmire, a solid compact island, with a circular area of 
100 feet or more, and capable of enduring for centuries as a retreat 
for men and animals, was a work requiring no small amount of 
engineering and meclianical skill on the part of these early Crannoge 
builders. The method of procedure suggested by Dr. Monro is that 
immediately over the chosen site a circular raft of trunks of trees, laid 
above branches and brushwood was formed, and above it additional 
layers of logs, together with stones, gravel, etc., were heaped up till 
the whole mass grounded. As this process went on upright piles, 
made of oak and of the required length, were inserted into prepared 
holes in the structure, and probably also a few were inserted into the 
bed of the lake. When a sufficient height above the water line was 
attained a prepared pavement of oak beams was constructed, and 
mortised beams were laid over the tops of the encircling piles, which 
bound them firmly together. AVhen the skeleton of the island was 
thus finished a superficial barrier of hurdles, or some such fence, was 
erected close to the water. Frequently a wooden gangway, probably 
submerged, stretched to the shore, by means of which secret access to 
the Crannoge could be obtained without the use of a canoe. 
The remains of pile structures were exposed near London Wall 
in 1866, when excavations were made for the foundation of a wool 
warehouse ; associated with the piles there was a large number of 
various implements of a comparatively modern date, together with 
Roman coins which had been used by the inhabitants. 
The lake-dwellings of Holderness bear the impress of greater 
age than any others in the British Islands, and they are of sufficiently 
characteristic structure to distinguish them from the island-like 
Crannoges of Ireland and Scotland. The ancient people who built 
them, having found a suitable situation, proceeded to cut down large 
trees by means of their rude flint axes ; these, cleared of branches, 
were dragged to the lake side, and in five or six feet of water were 
laid horizontally along the bottom, and held there by stakes driven 
into the sandy or peaty shore. The level of the platform was raised 
by means of smaller trunks and branches to the level of the water, 
and an even surface obtained by twigs, gravel, and sand. On this 
