88 
EXCAVATIONS AT EAST AND WEST AYTON. 
itself a way into the Vale of York. This glacier advanced as 
far as Wykeham. The hill which forms the park of Wykeham 
Abbey is its terminal morraine. The drainage from the north 
comes through Forge Valley and is deflected by the glacier 
sharply to the west, and deposits on the hill sides the gravels 
which the trench cuts as it rises up the slope by the Infant 
School of West Ay ton. 
3. A Prehistoric Period. 
The temperature has risen again. The glacier is gone, 
leaving behind it the clay and the boulders found in East 
Ayton street. The River Derwent has more or less taken 
shape, hut it is fringed with marshes and great floods are 
frequent, bringing down quantities of sand and spreading these 
sands far beyond the river’s limits. These floods often surprised 
the flocks and herds of the neolithic men, whose burial places 
and flint weapons are so common on the moors and their 
carcases were deposited in elbows of the torrent (as near 
Derwent Mills). Fragments of a very coarse early pottery 
indicated the presence of man at this period. 
4. A Historic Period. 
The church at East Ayton has been built, is perhaps grow¬ 
ing rather old, with its Norman font and beak-head doorway. 
Lord Evers has erected his massive castle upon a gravel terrace 
of the hill slope, and availed himself of the watery character 
of the low ground to guard it with a double moat. There is a 
road now from Pickering to Scarborough, hut traffic, except 
of foot passengers and pack horses, is so small, that no bridge 
except a footbridge is necessary over the Derwent. Only a 
cobbled way is laid across the river, which in summer (owing 
to the absence of dams) no doubt dwindled to a mere thread, 
and in winter was often an impassable torrent. Careless people 
dropped their money now and then, just as they do now. 
Such is a brief account of the trenches dug at East and 
West Ayton, and of the past conditions they seem to indicate. 
I believe my observations have been correct, and I hope the 
conclusions I have drawn are fairly well supported by those 
observations. 
