Between 1815 and 1817, a group of Yorkshire antiquaries investigated a monument at Arras Farm, near Market Weighton, in East Yorkshire. Their discoveries included two burials containing the remains of chariots. One was dubbed the ‘King’s Barrow’ on account of the richness of the harness fittings and the two horses buried in the grave. Another was named the ‘Charioteer’s Barrow’. A third grave – the ‘Queen’s Barrow’ – contained the remains of a woman buried with a gold ring, bronze brooches, iron mirror, and glass-bead necklace.
Exactly 200 years later, in 2017, another chariot burial was found at Burnby Lane, Pocklington, some seven miles north-west of Arras Farm (see CA 327), and another followed in 2018, at The Mile, a different site on the northern edge of Pocklington. The latter grave was particularly spectacular because the chariot had been buried intact and the two horses pulling it were interred in a standing position, while the male occupant of the grave had been laid on the floor of the chariot, on top of a highly decorated shield.
These astonishing interments are characteristic of what Vere Gordon Childe described as the Arras Culture, named after the place – once a medieval village but now reduced to a farm and a few cottages – where the first chariot burials were found. The earliest description we have of the Arras cemetery is contained in a letter dated January 1699 from Abraham de la Pryme, curate of Hull’s Holy Trinity church, to his friend, Dr Gale Dean of York, in which he says, ‘I saw on my journey to York many hundreds of tumuli, which I take to be Roman, at a place called Arras, on this side [of] Wighton, not mentioned in any author, which I intend next summer to dig into.’ (It appears that he did not follow up on his intentions, as there is no further mention in his diary.)
