Richard

Toot Hill, Little Coates, Lincolnshire. View from the North-
Eastern boundary. The basal portion of the hill is entirely natural, and is now
being excavated for sand. The upper portion, surmounted by the tree, has been
modified artificially. Towards the summit, however, there were undoubted
signs of man’s work. A slight fall of snow had rendered
discernible a shallow trench which encompassed the hill slope.

Interestingly, it’s in the section headed . . . Churches on Pagan Sites !

Best
Rod

I’ve just noticed a small but possibly significant point. Are we sure that the reference in Byways in British Archaeology to the excavations in 1903 (top of this thread) are to the Toot Hill in Little Coates? Chris Keyworth (14-12-09) quotes from Loughlin & Miller, Archaeology in Humberside, which gives the grid ref as TA 2779 0886. If you follow that up, it takes you to – Holm(e) Hill brick works! And ‘Now levelled’: that suggests to me more Holme Hill, on the E side of Grimsby, than Toot Hill at Little Coates, of which the grid ref is something like 2460 0885. Bear in mind that Little Coates only officially became part of Grimsby in 1927, and that people can sometimes be a bit loose in using local names – touching on another thread, I’ve heard of Haile Sand Fort referred to as ‘the Bull fort’, and the shifting of the ‘Holme Hill’ name may be another instance.

Richard Oliver

I imagine, whatever the size of the hills, they were mostly natural, some enhanced perhaps the smaller ones almost entirely natural. Certainly archaeological evidence on what’s left suggests that Richard.

I know there’s a lot of comments but there are actually explanations where some of the hills actually ‘went’ as it were, most robbed out for sand and building materials etc.
Best
Rod

I’m putting this onto the Toot(e) Hill thread, but the general principle applies to all the other ‘hill threads’ on this site:

I passed Toot Hill on the bus to and from school every day in 1963-5. Towards the end of that time I got hold of Bob Lincoln’s The Rise of Grimsby and was more than a little surprised to read about these hills, and their stated former size. I found out much later that Bob got his info from the Rev Dr George Oliver, who seems to have been more enthusiastic than entirely accurate! If some of these these hills really had been of the order 100 feet vertical height bottom to top in the early 19th century you’d expect the Ordnance Survey to have noticed they fact when they were doing their first survey c.1820!

Taking Toot Hill: the 1886 OS 6-inch map (posted 21 March 2010) shows a level of 20 feet above mean sea level on the road to the west, and 46 on top on Toot Hill. This is nothing like Dr Oliver’s 100 feet, but, before the area was built-up, would still have given a terrific view right across to the Humber and the Yorkshire coast, and possibly much of the way to Cleethorpes in one direction and away beyond Immingham in the other. So it could be both a good place for a pre-Roman burial mound and for a Roman or other signal station or look-out point. (If you doubt what a small hill can do for a view in flattish country, go to Kilnsea, above Spurn, and stand by the cliff on the edge of the caravan site, amidst the ruins of Godwin Battery!)

I think that we can reconcile Dr Oliver’s idea of these Grimsby versions of Silbury Hill with the fact that in Oliver’s time these hills weren’t actually that high if we accept that (1) these are in origin natural low hills of glacial debris (though some may have been used for burial mounds, lookout posts, ‘druidic sites’, etc) with markedly sloping sides, but flattening out at the top, and (2) that Dr O assumed for whatever reason that the steep slope had continued upwards at a uniform gradient, which if it ever had done might well have reached about 100 feet vertically at Toot Hill. Note: glaciers don’t produce conical hills in areas like Grimsby!

‘Two sides of the same coin’: (1) if Toot Hill and some of the others, e.g. Holm(e) Hill, really were once 100 or more feet in vertical height, who built it, why, and where did the get all the material from? (2) When exactly was it all removed, and where did it go to?! Grimsby remained practically unchanged in size till after 1800 and the coming of the Ordnance Survey. (See above!) The OS didn’t record a giant Toot Hill or Holme Hill!

Thanks once again.

Richard Oliver
Exeter
[and NO relation of Dr George Oliver!!!]

There are a lot of comments on this one but they’re well worth a read - I think you’ll enjoy them.
Kind regards
Rod

My folks still love at the bottom of Curry Road on Yarrow Road, large parts of that area including Curry Road, The Trawl, old rifle range etc were built on landfill. You must remember digging bottles on toothill as a kid, I’d spend hours down there! there were some archaeological finds too when they built the golf course, i remember my gt grandpop telling me, that land is sand and could well have been quarried, there are also some pretty good hills on the gollie too (didn’t you ever come sledging with us!?)

I haven’t read all the threads bit intend to, it’s very interesting, the map though I reckon is a bit inaccurate. I appreciate it’s an attempt to show the layout in pre roman times before the outmarsh etc was drained. I know exactly where the source of the freshney is and I’ve walked it several times, to my knowledge the freshney was only altered below Wybers (golf course?), between church meadows and the willows and into town for the docks and haven. The source is at the foot of welbeck hill near Irby, the hill above it is/was a saxon cemetry that I dug as a junior school boy with Mr Bashforth (?) at Macaulay St school. Link to the map centred on the source of the freshney (copse ctr) and above around 11pm is a funny enclosure probably something to do with the burials that were directly across the road from the spring, Mr Bashforth (?) found lots of stuff here including gold broaches etc. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=53.518727,-0.16192&hl=en&num=1&t=h&vpsrc=0&z=15 This is a link to some of the archeaological records http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archsearch/browser.jsf

When the garage was there there was always a dip in the ground behind Ashley Becketts house etc on Cherry Tree Ave and the back of the garage, never knew what it was but played in there as a kid too. Didn’t Rayners used to own the big house on the corner? I remember Sally Ann Rayner can’t think why!!

Take care and keep up the good work, fascinating!

H

Kind regards,
Rod

Regards

Rich