Great Ayton Community Archaeology Project (2003)

We are now (autumn 2003)coming to the end of our first project to research & record landscape features in the parishes of Gt Ayton & Little Ayton. Meeting every Wednesday in the Friends’ Meeting House on High Green, we work under the guidance of a professional archaeologist. Our grant from the Local Heritage Initiative (using Heritage Lottery Fund money) and our Nationwide Building Society Award finish on 31st January 2004. Inspired by our discoveries so far, we will apply for new fund-ing to take us through a further 2-year period with the emphasis on industrial and natural heritage. Over the last few months we have been particularly busy, with field walking, test pit digging, aerial surveys & metal detector searches. We are working on several sites, covering local history over 10,000 yrs. Our activities have attracted “visiting members” from places such as Ripon & Chester! Levensdale. We have now recorded almost 1,000 flint fragments from what were the banks of the River Leven 8,000 years ago. At that time, not long after the last Ice Age, the Leven was a wide meandering stream that crossed the present Stokesley Road near its junction with the back lane to Easby. Although most flints have been collected from the surface, excavations have revealed groups of flint tools and charcoal in what was the gravel of the riverbanks. Flint does not occur locally, & had to be imported, probably from the Yorkshire Wolds. Clearly Mesolithic people were using the area as a hunting ground, & probably camped here for some time before moving on. Our best find so far is a perfect Neolithic arrow from a later period, about 4,000 years ago, in the shape of the playing cards’ spade symbol. Aireyholme Farm. We have traced the way in which the farm buildings have changed over the years as farming practices developed. We have started to look at the site of an Iron Age enclosure near to Roseberry Topping, and have found some pieces of iron. Unfortunately they are likely to be from the Middlesbrough blast furnaces of the 19th century rather than from Iron Age people, but we are having tests carried out (pre-blast furnace iron has a very low carbon content). Alum Works. The hitherto neglected Alum Works above Gribdale has been surveyed by us, and we have plans for a professional survey. Research has been done to locate the boil house site. Hudson NR-E. The background to this WW2 aircraft crash has been fully researched and a book “Lost on Easby Moor – the last flight of Hudson NR-E” has been published. This has generated considerable interest in the village, & 140 people attended a talk about the crash held in August. On 8th October a memorial plaque to the crew was dedicated in a ceremony near Captain Cook’s Monument, attended by RAF Chaplain Rev’d Wing Commander Nick Heron, our Vicar, Rev’d Paul Peverell, schoolchildren, guests and members of the village’s Archaeology Project.

Finally we must record our great debt to farmers and landowners for allowing us onto sites, many of which are not accessible by public rights of way. Ian Pearce If you would like to find out more, please contact Dan O’Sullivan on 723358, Sally Dennison on 723897, David Taylor on 722748 or Ian Pearce on 722964.