Places
On Sunday morning, I led a walk with Angela Forster (from Hertfordshire County Council’s Countryside Management Service) around the Weston Hills, south of Baldock. Taking in parts of Baldock, Clothall and Weston, it goes through a variety of landscapes that help tell the story of the local geology, ecology and archaeology. It is one of the Countryside Management Service’s regular Walks and More events that aim to get people out into the county’s often under-appreciated rural areas both to learn about local wildlife and heritage and to help maintain an active lifestyle.
Learning about geology in a dry valley near Old Wellbury Farm
The walk began in Baldock (in the car park at the rear of Tesco) and we went along South Road and Limekiln Lane and on to the footpath leading to the footbridge over the A505 Baldock Bypass. Here was a good place to stop and for me to tell people about the archaeological importance of Baldock. The line of the road south-east from the ancient town crosses the fields between this point and the A507, eventually falling into line with the footpath close to Old Wellbury Farm before climbing the hill to Clothall. Baldock is really two separate towns: an ancient settlement that was abandoned by AD 600 and the Knights Tempar’s ‘new town’ of the 1140s. The earlier settlement has strong claims to be Britain’s first town, developing in the fifty years or so before Julius Caesar’s invasions in 55 and 54 BC.
From the footbridge over the A505, we walked to Old Welbury Farm and turned right into a dry valley, along the long-distance Hertfordshire Way. This is a good place to discuss the geology of the area, with its underlying chalk bedrock formed 90 million years ago beneath a sub-tropical sea. A period of uplift pushed the tectonic plate above sea level until it sank again, to be covered in a layer of clay when it was at the bottom of a lagoon. Further uplift pushed it above sea-level once again and during the Anglian Glaciation, 475,000 to 424,000 years ago, North Hertfordshire was covered by an ice sheet. As the climate grew warmer, the meltwater wore valleys into the chalk bedrock that are today dry, although they look as if they should have streams in them. The glaciers also fractured the chalk, mixing it with surviving patches of clay, breaking flint nodules and depositing acidic sands in pipes and cracks in the rock. This makes for a very complex geology that is the bane of gardeners and archaeologists alike.
At the top of the hill, we turned right (north-west) off the Hertfordshire Way to cross the large field on a trackway leading towards the triangular woodland. Off to the right is a large crater that often has a pond in it, thanks to the underlying clay that impedes drainage. This is just one of several visible on the top of the hill, which were formed in August 1944 when two American B17 bombers from Parham airfield, near Framlingham, collided. They were on their way to Nazi shipyards at Brest in Brittany as part of the Allied invasion of Europe when the pilots realised that collision was inevitable so, to minimise the danger, they shed their bomb load. Part of the wreckage fell at Friend’s Green in Weston, killing a child and a woman evacuee.
The henge at Weston Hills, seen as a slight hump in the centre of the field in the distance
Beyond the crater, it is just possible to make out a slight rise in the field behind the wire fence. This is better seen from the far end of the triangular wood at the end of the field, where its position at one side of the dry valley we had entered earlier can be appreciated. It is not an obvious monument in the landscape, but if you know where to look, it is visible as a slight earthwork. From here, the ditch that helped to define it is visible. Henges are believed to have been ritual monuments of the Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age (about 3100-1800 BC), but they are not the same things as stone circles, so don’t think of Stonehenge. Norton Community Archaeology Group excavated a similar monument in Letchworth Garden City between 2010 and 2013 and it is possible that this one in the Weston Hills was built as a replacement when the Norton Henge went out of use around 2200 BC.
From here, we crossed another field with more bomb craters either side, to the footbridge across the A505 Baldock bypass. Here, the edges of the cutting were seeded with chalk downland plants, providing an important ecological zone. This was one of the reasons for keeping the tunnel so short, the other being cost. The tunnel, though, reduces the visual impact of the cutting when seen from the east, helping to hide it in the landscape. At the top of the cutting, it is possible to see orange glacial sands filling glacial pipes and cracks in the chalk bedrock, visual evidence for the impact of the Pleistocene glaciation of this area.
The Weston Hills tunnel in 2013
From here, we descended into the Weston Hills nature reserve, designated as such in July 2012. It is actively managed by the Countryside Management Service and the Friends of Baldock Green Spaces, who keep the site tidy and help maintain the ecologically rich chalk downland landscape around Gibbet Hill. Here, a steep-sided spur is kept free from trees and scrub by grazing, as it would have been in the Middle Ages. It is home to an amazing diversity of wildlife, including the common spotted orchid and field scabious. The name Gibbet Hill is first recorded in the seventeenth century and presumably refers to a place of execution: a gibbet on top of the hill would have been a prominent and stark reminder of the potential fate of criminals at a time before the hills were planted with trees in the 1800s.
The other hillsides, which are largely hidden by woodland and scrub, have a number of ancient quarry scars, particularly to the east of Gibbet Hill. Although the name of Limekiln Lane shows why the chalk was being quarried in recent centuries, we also know that it was quarried in Roman times thanks to chemical analyses of mortar and plaster from buildings in the ancient town. More surprisingly, white tesserae (cubes of stone used in mosaic floors) from a villa in Leicestershire were also found to be from the Weston Hills. This suggests that the quarry owners were able to market their products over a wider area than just the local town. It also means that some of the quarry scars visible in the hillside are likely to be of Roman date; some of the more bowl-shaped scars could well be from then. There are also terraces on the hillside that lead to and from the quarries and many of these are probably also of Roman origin.
Learning about the management of the Nature Reserve
At the north-east end of the reserve, back towards Limekiln Lane, management of the site is done by bringing longhorn cattle onto the site. These are docile and are not disturbed by dogs walked on the hills, unlike the sheep that graze Gibbet Hill (dogs should always be kept on a lead around sheep). By grazing in summer and autumn, they keep the development of scrub to a minimum. Thinning the woodland by hand also helps to allow some trees to grow taller while bringing sunlight down to ground level encourages the growth of woodland plants with the butterflies that feed on them. Birdlife is also abundant, with buzzards and tawny owls the main predators around the hills. Red kites are also becoming common around the Weston Hills and North Hertfordshire more generally, a real success for the conservation movement.
The Weston Hills walk is about 5.5 km (3.5 miles) and takes around two and a half hours at a gentle strolling pace. It can be muddy in places, but this is a reminder of the area’s complex geological history, and although some of the climbs are steep, it is not a difficult walk.
The Museum Service has just published two new booklets on the archaeology of two villages in the District: one on Codicote, the other on Kelshall. The first was published jointly with Codicote Local History Society, the second with the North Hertfordshire Villages Reaearch Group. Using data from the Historic Environment Record maintained by Hertfordshire County Council and the database of metal-detector finds run by the Portable Antiquities Scheme, they tell the story of the origins of the two villages.
The Archaeology of Codicote, published 2016
Codicote
The Codicote booklet describes the landscape setting of the village and looks at the diverse landforms and soil types that have helped shape where people decided to settle in the past. Using prehistoric finds, some published here for the first time, it looks at how people opened up the landscape for farming and buried their dead on hilltops overlooking the River Mimram. By the end of the first century BC, the area was in the hinterland of a growing and prosperous settlement at Welwyn. The sites of two Romano-British farms have been found, but there were probably many others.
In the centuries after the collapse of Roman rule, a man named Cuthhere owned some cottages that gave the settlement its name: Cuþheringcoton, Cuthhere’s people’s cottages. The limited archaeological evidence for the period suggests that they lay somewhere around the present High Street, perhaps around the junction with St Albans Road, where a market was late held in the Late Middle Ages. Documents tell us about a second place, Oxwick, that has been lost. It was mentioned in the will of a man name Wulf, who died about 1050, and in Domesday Book, compiled in 1086. Wulf seems to have been a priest: could St Giles’s Church, which lies 600 m away from the village centre, have been his church at Oxwick? Wulf’s donation of his land to St Alban’s Abbey followed a similar donation by King Æthelred II (the ‘Unready’) of Codicote in 1002. By then, this was a well settled medieval landscape perhaps very similar to today’s.
The Archaeology of Kelshall, published 2016
Kelshall
The Kelshall booklet is based around a remarkable collection of metal detected finds from across the parish, which help to tell a story of a long-lived community. It begins with a site recognized only recently from satellite photographs, which suggest that Thrift Hill was the site of a Neolithic causewayed enclosure, constructed about 3800-3600 BC. These enigmatic sites may have had numerous uses, but their rarity suggests that they were regional centres, perhaps where people gathered on special occasions. Later, the hills in the north of the parish attracted burial mounds, dating from about 3000 to 1400 BC.
In the years before 100 BC, new earthworks were dug across the landscape, running for many kilometres across the slopes in the north of the parish. In places, up to four parallel banks and ditches were made. At one time, they were thought to have been tribal boundaries but we now know that there are too many of them and that rather than defining boundaries, they seem to have made people travel along them in particular directions, funneling them towards Baldock. Here, a town developed during the first century BC and its hinterland prospered. Metal detector finds show that a community was developing around Thrift Hill and Coombe Bottom.
At the top of the hills, a new village began to grow around the same time. It was connected by a road through Coombe Bottom to Avenell Way, an ancient track linking Baldock with Cambridge. Here, a spectacular find of a wealthy Roman burial was made by a local detectorist, Phil Kirk. This adds to a picture of Roman settlement in and around Kelshall that has been known since other burials were first discovered in 1877. The settlement around Thrift Hill survived the end of Roman rule and metal finds suggest that it continued to exist without a break until after 800. A few centuries later, Kelshall was mentioned in a charter of King Edward the Confessor (1042-1066) and it may be that the church of St Faith was established by then. Its Old English name, Cylleshyll, may mean ‘the hill of pots’, perhaps referring to early medieval discoveries of Roman burials; Orwellbury, one of the medieval manors, seems to derive from Old English hordwiell, ‘treasure spring’, hinting that more valuable things had also been dug up nearby.
The booklets
Both booklets tell the stories of communities: we often think of villages as unchanging relics of the Middle Ages or before, but archaeology shows that people often moved their homes between different parts of the landscape. They deal with people, rather than dusty artefacts and crumbling monuments.
The booklets are available from Codicote Local History Society and the North Hertfordshire Villages Research Group. They will also be on sale in North Hertfordshire Museum when it opens its doors later this year.
A late sixth-century jar from Gosmore (not the pot from Gaping Lane)
Coincidences can be quite alarming. Ten days ago, I was asked by Isobel Murray, a student on work placement with the Museum, if I knew anything about a “Saxon pot” found close to Samuel Lucas School in Hitchin. I replied that I didn’t and that it sounded rather unlikely: Saxon pots are notoriously rare in Hertfordshire.
Nevertheless, I did a quick search of Heritage Gateway, a website that gives access to Historic Environment Records across England. It brought up this record, describing a “Roman or early medieval pot, Gaping Lane, Hitchin”. “Early medieval” is a term that many archaeologists and historians now prefer for the period from around 400 to 900, replacing the old term “Saxon” or “Anglo-Saxon” with its assumptions about the ethnic origin of people, which may not be correct. These are all better than the horrible term “Dark Ages”, which implies that everything between the collapse of Roman rule in Britain and the Norman Conquest is unknown and unknowable.
Early medieval Hitchin
Early medieval material is rare in Hertfordshire. Unusually, there is some from Baldock that shows that the old Roman town struggled on into the sixth century. Its inhabitants were descendants of Romano-Britons, not Anglo-Saxons, which is why the term “early medieval” is so much more appropriate. There are finds from a few other sites, including Blackhorse Road in Letchworth Garden City, Therfield Heath and, significantly, Hitchin.
Excavating an early medieval burial in Queen Street during 2001
Here, excavations in 2001 uncovered what were clearly Christian burials off Queen Street. There had been stories circulating for years about the discovery of skeletons in this area, which were always said to be burials from the Great Plague of 1665 (or, even less plausibly, from the fourteenth-century Black Death). The excavators thought that they were Christian Anglo-Saxons, buried between the seventh and tenth centuries. As a result, the new development on the site was named Saxon Court.
When the radiocarbon dates came back, they were surprising. They put the burials between the fourth and sixth centuries. In other words, they were contemporary with the very late (‘sub-Roman’) finds from Baldock. No Anglo-Saxons were Christian before St Augustine’s mission in 597, so these people had to be Britons (again, another reason to use the term “early medieval”!).
In a way, this ought not to have been surprising. The placename Hitchin derives from Hicce, a name found in a seventh-century document known as Tribal Hidage, which lists all the kingdoms in England south of the River Humber. At this time, many of them were small and that of the Hicce was among the smallest, with only 300 families due to pay tax. But Hicce is not an Old English (Anglo-Saxon) name: it only makes sense as a Celtic word, *sicco-, meaning ‘dry’, probably a reference to the River Hiz. In other words, the Hicce people were Britons.
Back to the Gaping Lane pot
All of this background makes it very unlikely that anyone would have found an “Anglo-Saxon” pot in Gaping Lane. To make matters worse, the Heritage Gateway record describes the vessel as “a small globular pot, a mica-dusted feeding bottle of the late 1st or early 2nd cent AD, from a garden in Gaping Lane”. It also gives an Accession Number for the vessel, Hitchin Museum 6. Turning to Idealist, Hitchin Museum’s old database, we read “Small mica-coated globular vessel. “If genuinely local could be evidence of local Roman pottery industry” Farrar, A.H. Partly blackened, handle missing.” I do not know who A H Farrar was.
I therefore assumed that we were dealing with a Roman vessel. This seemed to be confirmed by Heritage Gateway, which speculated that it was the same pot as this one, although I was worried that the size of the two vessels did not tally and the second one was also accessioned to Hitchin Museum, this time as number 7. They did not sound to me to be the same thing at all. Even so, I guessed that the pot from Gaping Lane would have been Roman.
The pot itself
The pot found in Gaping Lane, Hitchin, in 1932
Then, on Friday of last week, I was looking through boxes in the Bulk Store at the Museums Resource Centre at Burymead Road, Hitchin. This is where environmentally stable archaeological finds from across the district are stored and houses ceramics, stone and bone. In one box, I found a small hand-made pot with a number 6 prominently written in Indian Ink on one side and thought to myself that it looked odd but had forgotten the details of the Gaping Lane pot.Coming back into the office, it suddenly struck me that this was indeed the Gaping Lane pot. I got it out from the box and found that it was even stranger than I had first appreciated. It is basically a thumb pot, hand made but shaped into a round-bottomed globular cup with a vertical rim. It originally had a handle that ran from the rim almost to be base, but this had broken off before the vessel was thrown away. It isn’t mica dusted, which is a Romano-British technique for making pots sparkle as if they are made from bronze. Instead, the pot is covered in a slip that has particles of mica in it, but they are much more sparse than in true mica dusting. The lower part of the handle has a tiny hole in the middle, which shows that it was made by rolling up a thin sheet of clay to make a cylinder before applying it to the cup: this is why someone thought it might have been a feeding bottle. The hole does not go through to the inside of the cup, so it can’t have been used for feeding.
The most interesting aspect of the cup is that there are similar “Anglo-Saxon” vessels from the East Midlands and East Anglia that date from the end of the fifth and beginning of the sixth centuries. But the fabric of the pot (the clay type, the mix of material added to it and the way the pot has been fired) is not Anglo-Saxon. Instead, it looks like the fifth- and sixth-century pottery found in small quantities at Baldock. In other words, we have a pot made using indigenous sub-Romano-British techniques but copying a form used by Anglo-Saxon settlers.
The implications
This pot brings us right into the transformation of Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England. Instead of the old school-book view of Anglo-Saxon invaders slaughtering most of the Britons and driving the remnants into Wales, we can see that something more subtle and a good deal more interesting was going on. During the fifth century, the Britons of North Hertfordshire were clinging on to Roman ways of doing things. Perhaps this was partly because this is what they had done for centuries but also perhaps partly because being seen as “Roman” remained a good way of showing your status. By 500, though, they had stopped doing this. As the Anglo-Saxon settlers became powerful landowners and then politically dominant, so your status depended on being seen to be English (which is the word the settlers used to describe themselves). The Gaping Lane pot shows this very transition: the Hicce, a people who kept their British name but who became English, perhaps without even noticing.
The lesson of this story is to go back to the original data every time: while there may be authorities describing objects in our collections, these authorities may be mistaken. They had less knowledge about the past than we do today, so in the words of Bernard of Chartres, “we are like dwarves on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than them”. Some day, people will no doubt criticise my conclusions because they have seen even more. I have Isobel to thank for bringing this pot to my attention.