Iron Age evidence found near Seaton Burn

Dec 11 2008 by Tony Henderson, The Journal

IRON Age communities were thriving in what is now south east Northumberland, archaeologists have learned.

Earlier this year one of the most complete Iron Age settlements to be excavated in the North East, which consisted of around 50 roundhouses in an enclosed two-hectare area, was unearthed by the Tyne Wear Museums archaeology team at Banks Mining’s Delhi surface mine on the Blagdon Estate near Seaton Burn.

Now more excavations by the team in advance of opencast mining at Banks’s nearby Shotton site have uncovered a further Iron Age settlement, dating from around 2,300 years ago.

A similar settlement was found in advance of development at Brunton in the Great North Park on the edge of Newcastle.

Also found at Shotton was a line of pits, similar to those discovered in digs at Blagdon Hall and Dinnington in the same area. Archaeologists say these pit boundaries date from 700BC to 500BC and represent the first major division of the landscape into farming units.

“We are getting a picture of a grid of these settlements about a kilometre apart. What is exciting is the density of settlements in the area,” said Paul Bidwell, head of archaeology at Tyne Wear Museums. The pit alignments go on for miles. The whole of the landscape is divided up and it really is quite densely populated. It suggests a highly organised society with people’s landholdings being respected. This is all a new and important picture.”

Mr Bidwell said that the settlements had complex histories, with changes and alterations stretching over hundreds of years. But many of the settlements go out of use around the time of the Roman occupation.

He said: “Why this should be so is the big question we are hoping to follow up. It may be that the population is being cleared out by the Romans for four or five miles in front of Hadrian’s Wall.” The six-month dig at Shotton has also unearthed the remains of a medieval village.

The site of the village green with a road on either side has been uncovered by the team, along with demarcated plots of land extending backwards from the central area.

A pottery kiln, and evidence of other industrial production activity was also discovered on the site, which is thought to date from around the 13th to 15th Century. A number of mining galleries, which date from the 19th Century, in which pick and shovel marks made by the miners can still be seen, have also been laid bare.

Mr Bidwell said that the current settlement at Shotton was a fragment of the 30 or 40 homes which made up the village around the 14th Century. This was a turbulent time with border warfare and the Black Death.

Northumberland County Council archaeologist, Nick Best said: “Finding evidence of industrial processes at a site dating from medieval times helps to broaden our understanding of how manufacturing and production activities were carried out by people in the North East more than 500 years ago. The mining galleries also provide a more recent example of local industrial history, and the clear evidence of the marks that miners made on the land they worked resonate down to present day Shotton.”

Steven Harrison, managing director of Banks Mining, said: “It’s exciting to be involved with this excavation, and to see how this area was worked.”