As far as we know, primitive agriculture spread to Britain in about 4,500BC. Slowly, the practice of growing wild plants in plots and herding, or domesticating animals was seen as a reliable way of ensuring food. This didn't mean that hunter/gathering stopped immediately, it was still a good resource. The crucial difference was that families became rooted to the land on which they were growing crops, you couldn't take them with you and if left unattended they were robbed out by the wild life. As soon as agriculture was developed, communities became possible and eventually towns and cities. A group of farming families living together and cooperating was the start of Barlick, or at least elements of it. By this I mean that there would be scattered small communities in favourable locations like Townhead or Coates. This also meant the building of permanent shelters, what we call houses, but they were very primitive constructions, in some cases just a hole in the ground with a thatched roof over it. It takes a very skilled and lucky archaeologist to find firm evidence of these but the field boundaries were more permanent and if you look in the right place you can still find these today in some remote places. The nearest I know to here where the originals can be seen is on the hillside above Blacko.
Luckily, there is an easier way to find them, they are small and usually round as this is the best way to enclose the maximum amount of land with the least effort. If you want to see evidence of this, go to the bottom of Esp Lane and walk down Shitten Ginnel to Calf Hall Lane. Look to your left and note that there is a jumble of small fields which are the remnants of small scale farming in the area. There is another clue in the strange hotchpotch of house sites at the bottom of Esp Lane. There is no regular pattern, they just seem to have been chosen at random and the access road winds in between them. I am almost certain that the footprint of some of these modern buildings is exactly the same as it was 6,000 years ago. If you use your eyes you can find other such sites in Barlick, think of the group of houses at the top of Butts behind Hudson's Buildings and the area in the corner of Skipton Road and Station Road sloping down to Forester's Buildings. These are all potential ancient sites but of course we have no direct evidence, we are forced to use our heads and guess.
What is certain is that these small groupings existed. The fact that they are there proves that this new way of life was preferable to the daily gamble of hunter-gathering. Food could be stored against a hard time and shelter assured. Not plenty in our terms but certainly an improvement.
Esp Lane Bottom
