Pudding Pie Hill – Sowerby (Thirsk)

  Pudding Pie Hill is a large burial mound located in a field to the east of Sowerby village, near Thirsk.

  In the past, Pudding Pie Hill was believed to be a fairy dwelling – just Like the Willy Howe tumulus near Wold Newton in East Yorkshire. Writing in the 1850’s, the Darlington historian William Hylton Longstaffe, listed several fairy locations in this region, noting that ……

“The site of the old fortress of Conyers, at Bishopton, called Castle Hill, is hollow, if folk-lore be true, and the abode of fairies. The same may in truth be said of almost every circular mound in the north.“
He then adds ……
“A most notable specimen near Thirsk, a large tumulus, possesses the euphonious cognomen of Pudding-pie-hill, inasmuch as the fairies there were positively so good as to furnish pies and puddings for their juvenile votaries, who went for the good things of the fairies of its palaces within*.
Moreover, they heard the Fairies’ music, which thing may be believed, as they had to go so many times round the hill before they put their giddy heads to the ground to hear the strains of the little green people. (*The appointed day for all this condescension was Pancake or Shrove Tuesday.“)
(Hylton Longstaffe 1850)

 A few years later William Grainge noted a slight variation on this folklore …..

“The popular legend is—that this hill was raised by the Fairies, who had their residence within; and if any person should run nine times round it, and then stick a knife into the centre of the top, then place their ear to the ground, they would hear the Fairies conversing inside.” (Grainge 1859)

  It has been suggested that the hill received its name because it is shaped like a pudding, although the folklore suggests that in the past, anyone visiting the mound on Shrove Tuesday might find pies and puddings provided by the fairy residents. Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) is the last day before the start of Lent, so it was traditionally a day to indulge in the rich foods that would be prohibited during the fasting period of Lent. It is worth noting here that it was a general folklore rule not to accept food or drink offered by the fairies, as this could result in the person being trapped in the fairy world. However, there are also stories where people ate and drank with the fairies, and came to no harm.

  Sticking a knife in the top of the mound is also worth noting because folklore again records that the fairies could not abide iron. This metal seems to have counteracted the fairies magical powers, and so they would not go near any object made of iron. In one folktale, a man rescues a friend from a fairy mound by sticking a knife in the door way, so that the fairies could not pursue them as they made their escape.
In another old story, an iron knife was to be thrown over the head of the Reverend Robert Kirk (Minister of Aberfoyle in Scotland) who it was believed had been ‘taken’ by the Fairies of Doon hill. The iron knife would have broken the faerie enchantment and set him free, but unfortunately when his spirit appeared no one threw the knife, so the reverend was trapped in fairy land forever. The reference to sticking a knife in Pudding Pie Hill might be all that remains of a lost story about a similar type of encounter with the faerie folk there.

  The Pudding Pie Hill folklore recorded in the 1850’s is likely to have been just fragments of older and more detailed stories and beliefs connected with the mound. Hearing faerie music and the sound of their voices within the mound is reminiscent of the story connected with the Willy Howe burial mound. Here a passer-by “… heard, as it were, the voice of singing and revelling on an adjacent hillock, …..and perceiving in the side of the hill an open door, he approached, and, looking in, he beheld a house, spacious and lighted up, filled with men and women, who were seated, as it were, at a solemn banquet.“ This story dates from the 12th century, and shows how old some of these folklore beliefs are – dating back many hundreds of years.

  Circling the mound nine times could have been a vague memory of some ritual practices once connected with such burial mounds, while the pies and puddings ‘shared’ at the barrow might recall a time when the mound was visited on certain days of the year to feast, or perhaps share food with the ancestors?

Competing Histories

  By the mid 1800’s, questions were being asked about the true origin of Pudding Pie Hill. Local tradition had it that the mound was built by the fairies as a dwelling for them, while the Thirsk historian Joseph Jefferson wrote that the mound was built as a lookout tower connected with Thirsk castle, and thirdly, the Yorkshire Antiquarians proposed that it was actually an ancient burial mound. This led to the mound being excavated in 1855, when it was found to contain several skeletons, one of which was described as a ‘warrior’ – buried with a shield and a spear. There were also masses of cremated bone, and 3 Roman coins were found with one of these cremations. The modern archaeological record lists the mound as being a prehistoric Bowl Barrow, which was re-used much later for several Anglo Saxon burials.

  So many of our ancient burial mounds have been destroyed, with many being ‘ploughed out’ in relatively recent times, so it is a wonder that Pudding Pie Hill has survived. This may be due to its large size and its location on a ridge making it more difficult to plough over. However, in the past there would also have been a real fear that the fairies would take revenge on anyone who destroyed their dwelling. Referring to the Fairies Cradle Hill at Hetton Le Hole, Hylton Longstaffe noted “…. and there, says village superstition, which has ever saved the little green mound from the plough’s attacks — there danced the Fairies in their moonlight circles,“

  After notes
Thankfully, Pudding Pie Hill was reinstated after the excavation, so today it looks relatively undamaged (unlike Willy Howe). I did shudder when i read that James Ruddock of Pickering was paid to supervise the 1855 excavation of Pudding Pie Hill. Ruddock was a prolific barrow digger on the North York Moors, and by prolific i mean that he destroyed many burial mounds on the moors in his search for artifacts that he could sell on to antiquarian collectors. He seems to have employed several men to quickly dig out the centre of any barrows that caught his eye, often taking only a day to “turn over” smaller mounds before moving on to the next. He kept virtually no record of his digging, noting only that the items he sold came from “a barrow x miles from Pickering”. This suggests that he did not have the landowners permission to dig into these burial mounds, and so he adopted a ‘hit and run’ tactic. The scale of the damage done by these early barrow diggers is pretty depressing, and there are stories of them stamping on funerary urns and other finds that they could not sell on.

  There was another Pudding Pie Hill tumulus (now destroyed) at Maryport in Cumbria . This mound was also known as “The King’s Burying Place”, from a local tradition that it was the grave mound of a Celtic king.

Unfortunately, even the Fairies could not save the Fairies Cradle Hill at Hetton Le Hole (mentioned above). This large burial mound was cleared away a few years after Hylton Longstaffe noted the folklore there, when coal mining came to the area and destroyed the open fields where the mound once stood.

Reference
Grainge, W. (1859) The Vale of Mowbray.
Hylton longstaffe, W. (1850) St James magazine vol 1
Jefferson, J.B. (1821) The History of Thirsk.