The Magnesium Limestone Belt of Elmet

For reasons not known, the ancients prized the magnesium limestone belt, settling along the rivers that ran through it - the Aire, Wharf, Nid, Don, Went, as well as the many becks such as Cock Beck, Fryston Beck, among others.

Bronze Age settlements are found there, and the Iron Age followed, where at places, it seems the whole countryside was settled. Places such as Ferrybridge and Ferry Fryston, where the Henge lies, and the Chariot was found. The man within the chariot burial in Fryston Park near Castleford was venerated for five hundred years. They came from all over the country and farther for reasons known only to themselves. But they brought cattle to feast on - heads and forelegs. The man was not from Elmet; he may have been a Pict or from the continent, but it is in Elmet where they laid him to rest and revered him.

In Elmet on the Magnesium limestone, where in the summer the meadows are ablaze with colour, fauna and flora unique to the area, poppies as far as the eye can see. Where the sun, aided no doubt by the white and buff stone of the outcrops and in the walls that stretch along the meadows, shines a presence through the place.

And maybe that's what the ancients searched for, maybe not. Some say it was just because it was easy to traverse across and cultivate - I cannot help but doubt this, the belt of limestone shows Elmet at its best. A place where the woods begin, elms so said, that stretch from the east to the west where the hills rise gently into the Pennines, through Ledstone and Ledsham, Kippax, Barwick, old Loidis into the foothills of the Pennines

Though the magnesium limestone belt runs the length of Yorkshire, it isn't that wide, beginning in the north just west of Tadcaster, down to the west of Sherburn-in-Elmet to just the west of Doncaster. On its western front, it begins to the east of Sheffield, up to somewhere to the west of Methley, and up to Barwick-in-Elmet.

Rivers pass through the belt: the Wharf, Don, Nidd, Went and the Aire, which is particularly important because of the ford at Castleford, allowing two rivers of Elmet to be crossed as one. The river downstream is wide (it thins out past Knottingley along the canals), once teeming with fish. At its widest (somewhere along the Wheldale stretch to Knottingley), the people came and settled, a conduit to the north and south, respectively.

Go south to Sheffield, and Elmet slips away; draw a line to near Doncaster, and you probably have the southern boundary.

Craven in the far east is where the penines become serious and Elmet ends, buffered on its southern part by the high Peak.

The saxons (or Angles) took Craven and marched into Elmet, perhaps overunning Loidis (Leeds) and leaving a thin strip of Elmet either side of the Limestone belt. Running north and east from South Kirby-In-Elmet, to the east of Legecium (Castleford) and up to Barwick whose name still carries the evidence, along with Sutton and Sherburn and others such as Burton Salmon which means the home of the British.

But the place once stretched far wider and I hope still will, enriched by people that need to create in whatever form that may be - Elmet welcomes you.