86 
EXCAVATIONS AT EAST AND WEST AYTON. 
pure sand—evidently a natural river deposit; not made soil as 
on the other side. A few yards further a hard floor was 
encountered composed of stones cemented together by water 
charged with iron. This gave the workmen immense trouble to 
break through. It extended westward beyond the Forge Valley 
Hotel, and is, I believe, a good example of a geological “ pan.” 
The pipes do not follow the lane by the river, but turn up 
the next road leading north. A few yards after leaving the 
high road, the trench entered a mass of unctuous black peat 
with a strong smell. The low lying ground at this point has 
evidently been a riverside marsh, the black soil occupying the 
space as far as the point where a rise commences. This black 
soil yielded wood and twigs, bones of fish (perhaps pike), and 
Bos and Ovis. Directly the ground begins to rise, very coarse 
glacial gravels were encountered, and the pipes are laid in 
these gravels up to the point where they terminate a little 
above the school. There is little doubt that these gravels 
were deposited by a powerful stream flowing through Forge 
Valley and making its way to “ Lake Pickering,” between the 
hill and the flank of the glacier of the North Sea. It was 
here that far the greatest variety of boulders was found, 
including many blocks of granite of various composition. The 
largest of these has been taken to my garden. A strong man 
was just able to fetch it in a barrow. It is a very fine-grained 
granite, of a greyish colour. Some of the granite was very 
full of iron pyrites, and the men were seized with the usual 
conviction that they had found gold. 
A short arm leaves this pipe at a little distance from the 
point where the ground begins to rise, and takes a downward 
course in the direction of Derwent Mills, terminating at my 
own house. At first it passed through gravel with many small 
boulders, of great variety, and then struck brashy coralline 
rock, and on reaching the wide road-space near the river, 
entered what must once have been an elbow of the stream — 
low, sandy ground, crowded with bones of Bos and Ovis. I 
expect the carcases had been carried down by floods and 
deposited here. Near my own house, it is made ground. A 
coin of William III. and a Nuremburg token were found at 
some depth in the mixed detritus. 
