EXCAVATIONS AT EAST AND WEST AYTON. 
85 
alternating, and dovetailing into each other in a hopeless 
confusion. 
From the Reservoir the pipes pass down a sloping field. 
A branch is thrown off to Lonsdale Farm, but the main enters 
East Ayton by the street called Castlegate. The trench was 
dug at a uniform depth of three foot six inches. 
The Castlegate pipe is laid throughout in a solid white 
oolite, which was only blasted with great labour. The 
corallian rocks here occupy the surface of the ground, and the 
houses are built immediately upon them. The rock seems to 
have ended very abruptly near the south end of Castlegate, 
and a slope of made soil conducts the road gently down to 
join the highway. 1 he pipes here branch eastward along the 
principal street of East Ayton. All through the street, the 
giound was heavy and wet, often quite clayey. A very large 
number of boulders were encountered—some sandstone, but 
the gieatei pait were whmstone. Lear the Farm ” five or 
six large masses of whinstone occurred close together. I saw 
no other kind ot rocks here. When the church was reached, 
the soil became light, dry, and sandy, with more or less gravel. 
The pipe bifurcates at the end of East Ayton Street—a short 
branch goes up past the “ Strawberry gardens,” laid in a light 
loam, and a larger branch descends to the Low Mill. The 
soil beneath the top spit is sandy, and full of large angular 
masses of the local oolite. In places it almost consists of such 
fragments. There are also a few boulders, but how these 
large unworn rock fragments accumulated here in such 
quantities is to me a puzzle. 
Returning to the point where the pipe from Castlegate 
enteis the high road, and proceeding westward, we find our¬ 
selves in made soil. At a depth of about three feet, the men 
shuck a solid floor which they all were of opinion, and I think 
conectly, was the old cobbled road descending to the ford over 
the Derwent. I believe the present bridge is more than a 
bundled years old, and before that was built, the old people 
say there was only a foot-bridge lor passengers and a “ wath ” 
(tbe Yorkshire word for “ ford ”) for vehicular traffic. 
I he pipe crosses the river by the Bridge, being laid under 
the flagged footpath, and on reaching the other side enters 
