Professor English starts her Chapter 5 with some statements about Holderness’ basic geology, as has been done here over the last few blogs. She then goes on to that line of thought which is always so interesting; that being to come to reasonable speculations about the pre-historic flora, fauna and landscape.
Mesolithic Holderness might be divided into two sections – pre-6000B.C., that is before the North Sea filled-in to roughly its present extent, Holderness had no coast but was a western bit of the landmass of Doggerland, the name given to the land of the southern North Sea which was then above sea-level. Of course that far back the post-Devensian melt was still in progress so the flora and fauna of what was to become Holderness was sub-arctic, this explaining the discovery of some mammoth evidence for example. After about 6000B.C. the rising sea level engulfed Doggerland, even its higher ground which was to becomes the Dogger Bank of fishing history. The transition to a maritime climate would have enabled less hardy trees, shrubs and wild plants to migrate north. By about 3000B.C. Holderness would have been characterised by dense deciduous woodland on land above the meres and any homo-sapiens in the area would have still been hunter-gatherers, maintaining a harmony in Nature long-lost today. Professor English reminds us of Bede’s quote (often referred-to in earlier blogs) that when John (by the late 11th century St. John) sought respite from his responsibilities as 4th Archbishop of York he established an Anglo-Saxon monastery ‘in the woods of Deira’ (later Beverley, see above). This is evidence of a wooded environment above water level but whether Beverley can be classed as in Holderness is questionable, however it wasn’t far away.
Professor English then states that ‘few of these wood-lands however, lasted into the Norman era’.
(to be continued).