Pocklington

The town of Pocklington in the East Riding area of Yorkshire, England has a recorded written history that goes back around 1,500 years, and archaeological evidence shows settlement at the site as long as 2,500 years ago. This gives it a longer history of settlement than larger contemporary settlements in the region and country such as York and even London.

Pocklington has prospered where other market towns have failed. It has always been the commercial and civic centre for the district and was at one point the second largest settlement in Yorkshire. It is the focal point of an area which has seen significant events through the centuries, many influencing English history.

Bronze Age Pocklington

It is not known exactly when there was first a settlement at Pocklington – archaeologists have found Iron Age remains in and around the town and many Bronze Age burials and other finds have been discovered in the neighbourhood. More recently in 2016 builders uncovered an earlier, Bronze Age, settlement, dating to around 800 BC.

Iron Age Pocklington

Iron Age Pocklington relates that the Parisii an ancient Briton tribe (with branches in France, and after which Paris itself is named) inhabited a large part of what is now the East Riding of Yorkshire. They were probably displaced to Britain by population movements on the continent.

It is possible that Pocklington was settled by the Parisii as early as the 5th century BC, but certainly by the time the Parisii participated in the general rising of Vercingetorix against Julius Caesar in 52 BC there is strong evidence that their regional capital was based at Pocklington itself.

In 2017, a Celtic warrior's grave, dated to about BC 320 to 174, was discovered at a housing development under construction in Pocklington at the Yorkshire Wolds. After archeologists had completed a very long excavation project, the site was found to include a bronze shield, remains of a chariot and the skeletons of ponies. The shield's boss bears a resemblance to the Wandsworth shield boss (circa BC 350 to 150), owned by the British Museum One design element on the extremely-well preserved Pocklington shield, a scalloped border, "is not comparable to any other Iron Age finds across Europe, adding to its valuable uniqueness"