s' Diggings," there are details of two long barrows,
sixty-three circular ones, and many others that had been already
disturbed, which were systematically opened by Mr. James Ruddock of
Pickering. The fine collection of urns and other relics are, Mr. Bateman
states, in his own possession, and are preserved at Lomberdale; but this
was in 1861, and I have no knowledge of their subsequent fate.

[Footnote 1: Greenwell, William. "British Barrows," p. 483.]

One of the few long barrows near Pickering, of which Canon Greenwell gives
a detailed account, is situated near the Scamridge Dykes--a series of
remarkable mounds and ditches running for miles along the hills north of
Ebberston. It is highly interesting in connection with the origin of these
extensive entrenchments to quote Canon Greenwell's opinion. He describes
them as "forming part of a great system of fortification, apparently
intended to protect from an invading body advancing from the east, and
presenting many features in common with the wold entrenchments on the
opposite side of the river Derwent...." "The adjoining moor," he says, "is
thickly sprinkled with round barrows, all of which have, at some time or
other, been opened, with what results I know not; while cultivation has,
within the last few years (1877), destroyed a large number, the very sites
of which can now only with great difficulty be distinguished. On the
surface of the ground flint implements are most abundant, and there is
probably no place in England which has produced more arrow-points,
scrapers, rubbers, and other stone articles, than the country in the
neighbourhood of the Scamridge Dykes." The doubts as to the antiquity of
the Dykes that have been raised need scarcely any stronger refutation, if
I may venture an opinion, than that they exist in a piece of country so
thickly strewn with implements of the Stone Age. These entrenchments thus
seem to point unerringly to the warfare of the early inhabitants of
Yorkshire, and there can be little doubt that the Dykes were the scene of
great intertribal struggles if the loss of such infinite quantities of
weapons is to be adequately accounted for.

[Illustration: The Scamridge Dykes above Troutsdale.]

The size and construction of the Scamridge Dykes vary from a series of
eight or ten parallel ditches and mounds deep enough and high enough to
completely hide a man on horseback, to a single ditch and mound barely a
foot above and below the ground le