INTRODUCTION The present-day landscape of the Yorkshire Wolds, forming an unambiguously definable area, has been shaped by man's activities, influenced by geological and topographical constraints, over the last 10,000 years.Today, the Wolds form an essentially agricultural region; enclosed farmland and isolated farmsteads, surrounded by shelter belts, and numerous plantations form the most distinctive elements of today's landscape.

Distributions of Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Romano-British sites extend across the entire Wolds in profusion. These early landscapes were modified by medieval settlement and agrarian patterns, which were, in turn, swept away by the parliamentary enclosures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Urban growth in the region has been limited to the development of Bridlington, Driffield, Market Weighton and Pocklington as market and service centres. The remainder of the population lives, predominantly, in small nucleated villages of historic-period origins.

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