A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE At Yarlswood near Thurleigh there is a strange little work of the kind, with a fair sized flat mound in one corner, and four other smaller tumps round about it outside. This site has certain strange tales told about it and is avoided by the villagers at night. It is known as the ' Devil's Jumps.' All the moated places so far mentioned are distinct and isolated, but along the Wyboston road, on both side, for more than a mile, there is a continuous series of lesser moated sites, which must have be- longed to much humbler inhabitants. Domesday notes the former presence of twelve sokemen at Wiboldestune. This coincidence led to the special examination of other places where the settlements of soke- men are recorded ; as at Keysoe, where there were twelve, and Har- rowden (Herghetone), where there were fourteen. In both these places the same series of small, slightly banked and moated enclosures occur, over a distance of about three-quarters of a mile. If these sokemen were of Scandinavian origin, it would be quite in keeping with their custom at home to surround their small 'tunes' or farms with banks of earth. At any rate the coincidence is suggestive, and worthy of further examination. At Holme there is a small square moat about ioo feet each way, with a circular raised platform in the centre some 50 feet across and about 3 feet above the rest of the ground. There are also several de- tached traces of moat lines in the fields near. At this place Domesday mentions two batches of sokemen, one of three, and the other of two. All these positions have small streams running past them. Curious works remain behind Limbury Manor farm, consisting of certain moats, which, with their dividing banks, interlace in a maze of squares and triangles, a little after the fashion of what is called the Etruscan, or ' key pattern.' These were certain fish-stews which were the subject of a lawsuit in the time of Edward II. As time goes on it may become possible, by means of further ex- amination and research, to bring our various earthworks more into relation with the periods of human life to which they belong. The spade is, however, the agent most in request to let in fresh light on the subject, and the only one that can really help us to any certain knowledge of those earliest works which are amongst the first achievements of man on the surface of our land. 308
