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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2012
The district with which these researches are connected lies in North Tynedale, in Western Northumberland. Until recently, when the North British Railway opened the Waverley route into Scotland, it formed an isolated portion of a remote valley, being shut in by the rivers North Tyne and Rede. Situated a few miles to the north of that remarkable monument of the Roman power, the Barrier Wall of Hadrian, and directly connected with it by the old Roman road, the Watling Street, on its eastern side, the district around the ancient village of Birtley, formerly Birkley, was still more secluded by the rivers bounding it on the north and west sides. This isolation, however, together with the fact that these wind-swept uplands, rising in places to about 1,000 feet above the sea, have never been under the plough, except for a short time in the beginning of the present century, has tended to preserve many vestiges of very ancient occupation. Primitive entrenchments or camps abound wherever such simple castrametation was possible, thrown up on the summit of the rounded hills, on the bare escarpments, or on the level plateaux beneath these higher positions, that characterise the lower series of the carboniferous formation. Even the great “crags,” the occasional protruded faults of columnar basalt, were made available as “coigns of vantage” by the early inhabitants.
page 356 note a New Series, part 21, 1866, pp. 3–17.
page 356 note b Vol. i. part ii. pp. 151–167, and vol. iii. part i. pp. 32–53.
page 356 note c “Transactions” for 1861 and 1862.
page 357 note a A copious supply of water would be obtained from a well at the base of the cliff, now obliterated by recent draining.
page 357 note b The larger peles or peel-towers, fortified baronial residences, are chiefly found in Tynedale, the earliest and most imposing being Chipchase Castle, near Birtley, the seat of Hugh Taylor, Esq. for a memoir on which see Nat. Hist. Trans, of Northumberland and Durham, New Series, vol. v. p. 295, et seq. by the writer; Sax. pil. moles, low Latin pela, pelum, a pile, fortress, originally applied to defences of earth mixed with timber, strengthened with piles or palisades, like the fortresses of the Britons, described by Cæsar, De Bell. Gall. v. 21.
page 359 note a Horæ Ferales, or Studies in the Archæology of the Northern Nations, edited by Dr. Latham and A. W. Franks, 1863, plate xxvi. fig. 1. See also plate xxvii. and p. 202, et seq. where the Teutonic iron swords are well described. Here it is said that “Anglo-Saxon swords were of two kinds ; one, the sword proper, was about three feet long, with a rounded point and perfectly flat; it had but little guard, and the handle was formed of ivory, horn, or some other perishable material; the other, the seax or scramasaxus, had a solid one-edged blade and a sharp point. The latter variety is rarely found in England, but frequently on the Continent.” … “I assert that the sword was not the weapon of any man under the rank of a king's thane; that the spear was, as the representative of the spear—the bayonet—is to this day, the weapon of the common soldier; and that the swords found in the Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and German graves, with skeletons, were broad swords, which could only be wielded by a horseman.” He shows this by a reference also to the Anglo-Saxon law of heriots, especially in its revision under Cnut. Henry of Huntingdon, iv. a.d. 752, speaks of the viri electi of an army, or chosen troop only, having swords: “Recentes quippe qui supervenerant, et viri electi erant, securibus et gladiis horribiliter corpora Brittonum findebant.” Elsewhere he refers to the proceres et fortissimi as using both the sword and the double-edged battle-axe.
In the Inventorium Sepulchrale of the Rev. Bryan Paussett, edited by Mr. C. Roach Smith, 1856, plate xiv. fig. 6, is given one of the very few Anglo-Saxon swords found in Kent which has a pommel of globular form, similar in appearance to this Birtley example, but very small. At p. xxxv. Introduction, Mr. Smith says, “There is an extremely interesting representation upon a sepulchral monument at Mayence of one of the Eoman auxiliary horsemen, armed with a sword, the very counterpart of the Anglo-Saxon weapon. It hangs by the side of the rider (fastened high upon the breast), who is spearing a prostrate foe; and behind the horse stands a foot-soldier with a couple of long spears like that used by the horseman,” who belonged to an ala of the Norici, in the third century. Compare Tacitus, Agric. c. 36.
page 361 note a The swords found by Mr. Faussett in Saxon cemeteries of Kent, 1757–1773, Invent. Sepulc. Introd. p. xxxiv. are generally about 2 feet 7 inches in length, width near the handle 2½ inches, and slightly tapering towards the point. The British glaive, still larger than the Roman spatha, is represented between three and four feet long. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (Gladius).
page 361 note b Vol. xiv. p. 90. In the Appendix to the Archseologia, vol. xliii. plate xxxvii. fig. 5, there is a similar buckle. Figs. 6 and 7 are also “rings probably for straps,” and the various objects represented, found near Abergele, North Wales, formed, Mr. Franks thinks, p. 557, “part of the trappings of a horse.” An ornamented ring of bronze and iron of similar “Late Keltic” type has been noticed recently by the Rev. W. Greenwell, F.S.A. as found with chariot-wheels, &c. near Arras, in Yorkshire. See “British Barrows,” p. 455–6.
page 361 note a Archæologia Æliana, part xxi. 1866, New Series, vol. vii. pp. 19–21. Cassar's description of the war-cliariot, De Bello Gall. iv. 33, is well known. The Rev. William Barnes, B.D. in his “Notes on Ancient Britain and the Britons,” pp. 62–67, compares the British rhodawg with the iron-chariots of the East.
page 361 note b Archæologia, vol. xxxv. p. 65. See Dr. Brace's “Roman Wall,” 3rd edit., p. 436.
page 361 note c Ibid. p. 91, plate iii. figs. 11 and 12.
page 361 note d Coins of Victorinus are very numerous in the remarkable and recently discovered Roman treasure-well of Coventina at Carrawburgh, the property of Mr. John Clayton, F.S.A.
page 361 note a The Latin bascauda, as well as our word basket, is a form of the Welsh basged or basgawd, from the British basg, plaited work. Juvenal, Sat. xii. 46, ranks the imported British baskets among the precious possessions of the most wealthy Romans. Compare Martial, lib. xiv. 99, and Archæologia, vol. xliii. part ii. p. 367.
page 364 note a Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Circles, &c. p. 125. See “British Barrows,” p. 7, especially p. 342 and note, and “Parish of Kirk Whelpington,” p. 433.
page 364 note b This stone has been since presented by Mr. Greenwell to the British Museum.
page 365 note a Eccles. Hist. bk. iii. c. 10, p. 125, Bohn's edit. It seems doubtful from this legendary history whether the dwelling in question was British or Saxon, in which the pilgrim from the grave of St. Oswald, “King and Martyr,” of Northumbria, at Macerfield, took refuge for a night. (The site of the memorable victory of Oswald over the British Cadwalla at Heavenfield is about six miles south-by-east from Birtley.) The habitations of both Britons and Saxons would be made of similar perishable materials, although in form those of the conquered race, “more Scottico,” would be readily distinguishable from the dwellings of their conquerors.
page 366 note a Probably from the Shap district in Westmoreland. The blocks or “boulders” of red and grey granite, frequently found in North Tynedale, prove that two currents of the glacial drift converged in the valley.
page 367 note a Archseologia Æliana, New Series, vOl. vii. p. 4. Since our partial examination here the hut-circles have been nearly obliterated by draining operations.
page 367 note b On a projecting spur of the Cross-Fell range, where it abruptly descends into the great basin or plain of Cumberland, close to the village of Castle-Carrock (which still retains its Celtic name), are several ancient circular pit-dwellings of undoubtedly British origin. They have not yet been properly examined, as they will be, I hope, ere long. But outside, upon this well-sheltered plateau, were found, in digging for lime, two earth-ovens, stone-lined circular pits of about a yard in depth, bearing marks of long-continued use by the primitive inhabitants of the adjoining dwellings in the reddened stones of which they were formed.
Sir Samuel Baker has described the similar modes of cooking food, and the excellent results obtained in this way, in Abyssinia. “The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia,” ch. xxi. pp. 361–2, edit. 1872.
page 368 note a Davies's Celtic Researches, p. 175. It would be an interesting discovery if this tumulus proved to be the last resting-place of the last British chief of the ancient fort or town, or of the owner of the early Anglo-Saxon sword found in hut-circle No. I.
page 370 note a Nat. Hist. Trans, of Northumberland and Durham, vol. i. part ii. p. 164, 1866. The Rev. John Thompson gave me a small javelin-head of flint, found on the Warkshaugh farm by a labourer in 1874.
page 370 note b See Archæologia Æliana, vol. i. p. 1.
page 370 note c North Tynedale and its Four Graynes, by Edward Charlton, M.D. D.C.L. p. 8, 2nd edition.
page 370 note d Through the kindness of Mr. Hugh Taylor, Chipchase Castle, Mr. Hunter Allgood, Nunwick, the Rev. William Greenwell, F.S.A. Mr. Arkle, High Laws, Morpeth, and Mr. Hall, Dunnshouses, Otterburn, several implements and weapons of stone and bronze were exhibited when this paper was read.
page 370 note e Fig. 91, p. 138.
page 371 note a Pre-Historic Times, 1st edition, fig. 2, pp. 13 and 15. See also Archæologia, vol. xiy.pl. xxiii.
page 371 note b Archæologia, vol. xliii. p. 480, fig. 176.
page 371 note c Grave Mounds and their Contents, fig. 299, p. 191.
page 371 note d P. 16, fig. 14, 1st edition.
page 372 note a History and Antiquities of the County and City of York, in which see the account of the discovery at Arras, by the Rev. E. W. Stillingfleet, in 1816–17.
page 373 note a De Bello Gallico, lib. iv. c. 33, already cited. This mode of fighting with chariots seems to have been limited to the Britons, and not to have been in use among the other nations of Europe in the Roman period. As we know from many references in the Old Testament and from sculptures on the ancient monuments, war-chariots were common among the Jews, Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Trojans. Hence, Geoffrey of Monmouth argues that the Britons were of Trojan origin. Scythe-bearing chariots (ἅρματα δρεπανηΦόρα) held a prominent position in the military arrangements of the ancient Persians especially. See Xenophon's Anabasis, bk. i. c. vii. §§ 10, 11; described Ibid, bk, i. viii. 10, on which is a note in Dr. White's edition. It is said that scythed-chariots were first introduced by Cyrus the Great, but, according to Diodorus, Ninus possessed one. Compare Josh. xvii. 18, where Gesenius (Hebrew Lexicon) translates “chariots with scythes;” occurring also Judges, i. 19, iv. 3, et passim.
page 373 note b This may be an allowable conjecture, but no proof of a later occupation of British sites than that of the early Saxon invaders, as in this Carry House Camp, has been discovered hitherto, so far as I am aware. Further explorations may throw light on this point.
page 374 note a The ancient weapons, &c. found in the course of these explorations in the Carry House Camp, near Birtley, have also found an appropriate resting place in the same museum.