Inside this Newsletter         Issue 06                  6^th February 1999

 

 

 

       

 

TEES AREA NEWS

An Update

by

Dave Shires

 

For many activities, January is the dead month where nothing much seems to be happening, even when it is Archaeology. Like many other outdoor pursuits, Archaeology is at the mercy of the weather and it is a good time to take stock. When forward planning it is as well to remember; if we always do what we've always done, then we'll always get what we've always got. As all good little archaeologists know the past shapes the future.

 

Archaeologists who specialise in the Roman era of Britain are often in danger of fuelling the somewhat erroneous idea that the British Isles was a rather backward sort of place, full of warring tribes of half savages. In fact, the great deal of the work done by archaeologists of the Neolithic era shows the British Isles was a place of wealth, skill and of good trading status. It also had a fairly high degree of sophistication long before Romulus and Remus knew which end of the wolf they should concentrate on.

 

That Rome sprang up to be the most predatory of empires is beyond question. Every schoolchild knows that Julius Caesar was the first Roman to invade Britain, but how many people bother to ask why Suetonius, writing his account of the Caesars, tells us that Julius needed the wealth that the Pearls from British coastal waters would provide to fund his political aspirations. It is also reported that upon his return to Rome, he offered a corslet of British pearls to the goddess Venus. We also learn that the death of Cleopatra was responsible for flooding Rome with sufficient Gold and Silver to reduce the interest rate on borrowed money by eight per cent. Bringing the interest down to four per cent meant the invasion of Britain could be put on the back burner. Caligula was another notable Roman who had a liking for pearls, and had a collar of pearls for his favourite horse. Tacitus is responsible for telling his readers that Britain will reward her conquerors with mines of Gold, Silver and other metals.

 

If we overlay a map of Roman Britain with a map showing Mesolithic sites, coastal pearl beds, and mineral deposits, then we see a different picture emerge to that generally put forward on the colonisation of Britain by Rome. By that I mean the Romans were after specific targets.

 

Lest we forget, the Romans didn't have it all their own way. Agricola must have clenched his buttocks more than once, especially when he met our Caledonian cousins. Severus was another to receive a bloody nose, being very careless with the lives of fifty thousand of his troops.

 

We often stand accused of applying modern thoughts to Roman archaeology. However, here's a point to ponder. In terms of evolution the human brain hasn't changed in thirty thousand years. It is the same shape, size, weight, and formats information in the same way as it has done over that time span. The MIND! Well now, that’s a different kettle of fish. It is peculiar to the individual. Some are more peculiar than others are, me being no exception. Comments on this paragraph are welcome, but if they are adverse and personal to me, please do it tongue in cheek, with good humour in your heart.

 

 

 

 

       

 

N.A.G. PUBLISHED

FOR THE MILLENNIUM

 

The Sunderland Echo are publishing a series of papers entitled Millennium City. The first part, entitled The first ten billion years, priced at 75p, is already out.

 

The whole of page 5 is dedicated to the Northern Archaeology Group argument concerning the Roman presence in Sunderland. There are several quotes from Ray Selkirk about the navigation of the Wear.

 

In a counter argument there are amazing quotes from Clive Hart, Keeper of Archaeology for Tyne and Wear Museums. After a section where Ray described the stones now on the beach, Clive Hart is quoted as saying, “We simply do not have the supporting evidence”.       (The doubly apt phrase - ‘I see no ships’ comes to my mind)

 

Clive Hart seems to base his biggest argument on a contradiction.  He says it is possible that Roman ships may have put into the mouth of the Wear for shelter but there is no evidence of a network of waterways. He also says that they could not have used the Wear because it has a sand bar. We know that the Wear did have a sand bar, both so did the Tyne and the Tees. Also, if it was impossible to cross the Wear sand bar, how could they enter for shelter?

 

The sand bar argument has been used before, but is just another “landlubbers” opinion, as Ray Selkirk often says. It must be remembered that the sand bar must have had a channel for water to escape, even at low tide. Furthermore, high tide would have flooded the sand bar with another 16 feet of water. Maybe Clive Hart has not heard of ships ‘coming in with the tide’.

Alan Richardson

 

 

 

       

 

 

THE ROMAN NORTH

- PART 1 -

By Tom Wright

 

The first invasion of Britain by the Roman legions was led by Julius Caesar, who landed with two legions on the shores of Kent in 55 BC.  He left after a two month campaign and returned the next year (54 BC) with a stronger force and managed to defeat the Celtic tribes around Kent.  Events in Gaul prevented him from continuing with further conquests in Britain and it was not until almost a century later in 43 AD that the Roman Emperor Claudius decided to invade and conquer Britain.  He sent four legions (about 25,000 men) under the command of Aulus Plautius, who landed unopposed on the south coast.  The southern tribes were quickly overcome and Claudius came from Rome to accept the homage of 11 kings of southern Britain.

 

The Romans had established themselves in the south of Britain, but the island was far from completely conquered.  It took almost another thirty years of intermittent campaigns, meeting stiff resistance, before the whole of southern and midland Britain up to the Humber was under subjugation.  The Brigantes, a large Celtic tribe, held the land from the Humber to the Tyne and Solway, while the land which is now East Yorkshire was held by another Celtic tribe, the Parisi.  Both these kingdoms were 'Client Kingdoms' of the Romans and created a large area of friendly territory between the Romans and the wild tribes to tile north of the Tyne and Solway.  However, in AD 70, the Queen of the Brigantes forsook her husband in favour of his squire.  The Brigantian tribesmen disapproved of this and sided with the queen's estranged husband, Venutious, who unfortunately was very anti-Roman.  The outcome was a revolt by the Brigantes and a Roman regiment had to be despatched north to rescue the beleaguered Queen Cartimandua.

 

Vespasian was Emperor at this time and ordered the Governor of Britain, Petilius Cerialis, to attack the Brigantes, then said to be the largest tribe in the country.  It was a two-pronged attack, Cerialis driving north up the east side of the Pennines where the A1 trunk road now runs, while his fine general Julius Agricola (who would later become the finest Roman governor Britain ever had) drove north on the west of the Pennines.

 

There were many battles in a three-year campaign and many casualties.  Most of Brigantia was either conquered or devastated. The Romans must have built many temporary forts during this campaign, many still await discovery.  The massive earthworks at Stanwick between Scotch Corner and Piercebridge are believed to be the place where Venutius, the Brigantine leader, made his last stand against Cerialis.  Many excavations have taken place, but none have brought to light conclusive evidence of this.

 

After the northern campaign, the Romans consolidated their conquest by building fine roads and permanent forts.  The most well known road in the ­northern area is Dere Street, which follows the line of the old A1 to Scotch Corner then heads off to Piercebridge and Corbridge before passing on into Scotland.  Many of the known Roman forts along this route must have been established about this time.  They also built a road from South Shields to Carlisle, known as the Stanegate (stone road) with interval forts.  The Ninth Legion was moved from Lincoln to York (Eboracum) about this time.

 

In AD 78, Julius Agricola became Governor of Britain and was determined to bring the whole of the island of Britain under Roman rule. His story will be told in Part 2 of The Roman North.

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

Archaeology begins at home

 

Did anyone see Ray Selkirk on Tyne Tees Television, the regional news? Right at the end of his road, in Chester-le-Street, there are road works. One of the usual emergency measures involving the regular hole in the road.

 

Ray “looked into it” and saw a substantial section of stone wall exposed, at approximately 12 feet depth. Ray immediately recognised this as being Roman in origin.  Ray says that this is part of the original Roman Fort wall, now partly under the local school. Ray contacted Tyne Tees Television and they sent out a camera crew.

 

There were obvious questions, which included consideration for the Durham County Archaeologist, who they contacted by mobile phone from the side of the hole. The County Archaeologist admitted knowing about the work, but said that he had told them that there was nothing there. Ray was given the phone and explained that he was in error.

 

Alan Richardson

 

 

 

 

       

 

Northern Archaeology Group.

Annual Report 1998

 

The Northern Archaeology Group has enjoyed increased membership and indeed much more public interest during 1998.  Publicity regarding the Roman Stones on the North Dock and the subsequent acceptance by the establishment of a Roman structure across the Wear at Hylton represents a breakthrough few could have anticipated a year ago.

 

Archaeological investigations and digs at Hartburn, Netherwitton and Chester-Le-Street.  The dig at Hartburn proved the line of the Roman Road across the Hart Burn, which contradicted the line given on the OS Map of the area.  OS Maps will of course have to be amended following this dig.  Well Done! I understand that during this investigation a further road has been found but as yet remains un-excavated.  Also a suspected Aqueduct has been noted in the same area.

 

The three lane Roman Road at Netherwitton has always grabbed the attention of many in the group.  So much has been said in the past claiming either that these roads did not exist in Britain, or that again they were figments in the imagination of eighteenth century clergymen who roamed the landscape, recording quite faithfully what they had seen.  Indeed I myself have met an archaeologist who claimed that we could not accept any written evidence from the past.  This I find odd, since the Latin and Greek writers are still studied and accepted as authoritative by most Universities.  The archaeologist cannot of course be named, but is well known in South Tyneside!

 

However, to cease digression, The Chester-Le-Street dig found the Roman Road in two places and again the line of this structure does not accord with the line given by OS.  This dig was advanced as part of the research for the Chester-Le-Street Millennium book currently being written by Ray, this is another project which 1 am sure will be found of considerable interest by the wider public.

 

Surveys and investigations have been extended to South Durham and the River Tees.  A very interesting survey has been carried out in the Winston area and a number of clues, which point to one or more major sites in the area, which we will shortly be investigating further.

 

A number of our group visited Scarborough just over a year ago, seemingly metal detectors continue to make remarkable finds in the area and it is reported that Roman coins have been found at points along the line of the Sea Cut.  Our contact there offers a welcome, should we wish to make a return trip.

 

We also have an outstanding promise to Colonel Bell at Staward Manor to excavate the Roman Road on his land.  Our first visit there was very successful and we were made very welcome. I think this project might be a good start for our younger members, who have expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for the Group.

 

Finally, in response to the young people who have expressed an interest in joining us, perhaps members might consider getting together to produce a book for young people, as an introduction to Archaeology. I really do think that there is room for such a book, but that it should include a chapter on reading the landscape.  Such a chapter would not only be of interest to young archaeologists, it would I believe command a wider interest to anyone from Hill walkers to people interested in natural history.

 

Many natural historians often fail to recognise the influence of man upon the landscape.  As an example, the evidence of "Hushing", an early practice to find metal ores, as in Weardale, have been variously described as ancient scars simply made by water draining off the hills, or indeed "lost" tributaries of the larger rivers!

 

I have no doubt that the Northern Archaeological Group will go forward to an even more successful 1999 and to all our members may I wish you a happy and prosperous New Year.

Stephen L. Marchant

 

 

 

       

 

 

TIME TEAM UPDATE

The award-winning Time Team returned for its sixth series on Channel 4 on January 3rd. It is also the longest series so far, with 13 programmes. Again presented by Tony Robinson, the team - including Professor Mick Aston, Phil Harding and Carenza Lewis - travel up and down the country and abroad in search of the answers to archaeological mysteries, using the latest in technology as well as their well-worn trowels to dig up the facts about the way we lived then. We will have more details soon.

details from the Channel 4 web-site - www.channel4.com

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

Internet Research

Whilst preparing this newsletter, I came across a wealth of information on the Interenet. The following is an extract from a sitge dedicated to being a gazetteer of Roman Military sites in Britain.

 

“The Gask Ridge frontier is a group of towers, forts and fortlets that run from south of Ardoch fort to Bertha. It is possible that the series extends further south to Doune or even to the Clyde-Forth isthmus. The little dating evidence that exists gives its abandoment at circa 87AD, but there is now evidence for a longer occupation than the traditional very short one that has been dated from either before the building of Inchtuthill fortress or just after that fortresses abandonment. The Gask appears to be the oldest known frontier system anywhere in the Empire. See  for site entries”

            http://www.morgue.demon.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

In Defence of the Glassmakers of Ancient Rome.

 

Stephen L. Marchant.

 

Some time ago, while doing some six months research on Roman Glass I visited Hartley Wood’s remarkable, but sadly now non-existent Glass Factory in Sunderland.  I asked the then manager there about the possibility of making some reproduction Roman Glass and this idea was taken on and for a while researched as a possibility for a new line.

 

            Some four weeks later the manager told me that there was no way Hartley Wood could make glass as bad as Roman glass!  It seemed quite clear that the managers of Hartley Wood had never taken a proper look at Roman Glass, and this item is my personal defence of Roman Glassmakers.

We have very little by way of illustration of Roman Glass workshops; we do know that in Britain a small number of Studio Glassmakers plied their trade from at least the second century. The main and very exiting Roman Trading Estate site at Wilderspool, found by the brewer Mr Greenall back in the seventeen hundreds. Cheshire has certainly provided clues to the craftsmanship exhibited here; glass faience beads from this site have turned up across the Empire. Of the smaller Glass workshops known the most extensively researched is located at Caister by Norwich and was one of those Roman workshops where the family lived upstairs above the shop. Other glassmaking sites are known at Silchester, St. Albans, Gloucester and Wroxeter.  It is quite evident that the quality of the glass at Caister was of very fine quality, but since this is an article upon the quality of Roman Glass, perhaps we should look more closely at this luxury end of the market.

 

            First the technology, there is only one almost complete Roman glass kiln known and this was found at Nora in Sardinia.  The only illustration of a Roman glass workshop known is an illustration on a small oil lamp found in the Roman province of Asseria in modern Yugoslavia.  This illustration clearly shows a double chamber, one for the melting of the metal, as molten glass is called, the other a heat chamber known for centuries as a glory hole to reheat the glass during shaping and modelling.  The second chamber may also have served as an annealing chamber, since glass that has not undergone this process can be very dangerous.

 

            The ingredients of glass are quite simple, the main item being Sand.  The Romans sought the Empire for the purest supplies and by chance or incredibly good planning the best sand of all was found close to The Colonia Claudia Ara Agripinensis or Koln on the Rhine. Cast and moulded Roman glass from The Colonia can easily be identified by the neat impression from the mould of the letters CCAA.

 

Previously the merchants of Alexandria had catalogued the best sources of supply of most raw materials used throughout the Empire and it becomes quite an interesting read to find out that the Romans were using Cobalt in their glassmaking together with Manganese, Iron and Copper.  Antimony was used as a clearing agent.

 

            Somewhere around the beginning of our calendar Roman artisans produced the incredible “Portland Vase”.  This I might add is one of those pieces I maintain proves Hartley Wood wrong.  Consider, this remarkable vessel has been blown in Cobalt glass, then it has been dipped and spun in molten white glass, annealed and cooled.  The annealing must have been difficult, the glass has to be reheated to the point at which it becomes “plastic” to allow the stress built up in the structure to ease, rather like a wave rippling through water.  If this is not done the glass can actually explode with a great deal of force sending slivers of glass at the speed of a bullet through anything in its way.  The Portland Vase however is a double layer of glass of different characteristics, so the annealing process must have presented a few problems.

 

            The blue white layered blank vase was then cameo cut by the glasscutters using skills that must have taken years to learn, cutting the design into the white and removing the remainder back to the blue ground.  The technology and skill required to both make and form the glass and then cut it so perfectly surely illustrates an exceptionally high standard.

 

            Later from perhaps three sources we see the zenith of Roman Glass appearing, though since the main finds of Diatrata come from Cologne this would seem to be the home of this remarkable drinking vessel.

 

            The Vasa Diatreta or Cage Cups illustrate the zenith of the craft of both glassmaking and the Roman glass cutters “Diatretari”.  First a blank has to be created by the glassmaker, but not simply a clear glass blank but a blank incorporating glass in various colours at different levels throughout the structure.

 Drawing 1 shows the prepared blank.

 

 

 

Drawing 2 Illustrates something that was argued about for centuries, how were the Diatreta actually created with “primitive tools”.  Answer, they were not primitive, this drawing shows that craftsmen using a lathe did the primary cutting of the glass!  Later drawings indicate the cutting of glass with copper abrasive wheels but also the existence of a flexible drive akin to the modern dental drill.  Certainly the skills needed to produce these Cups requires the intricate skill of the Lapidary and the tools of the lapidary, there can be no doubt that these needed to be not only of very high quality, but that the time to acquire such skills would have taken many years.  The simple “fixed to the bench” revolving copper disk idea, held for centuries to be the main Roman glass cutting tool seems in the light of modern research to be simply nonsense.

 

Drawing 3.

 

Drawing 3.  Moves to the cutting of the primary pattern.  The blocks which will become an inscription around the top are prepared, while half deep holes are cut so that the carving of the “basketwork” may begin.

 

 

Drawing 4.  The blocks at the top are being shaped while the decorative rail below this has been drilled and is itself taking shape.  The basketwork is being shaped and undercut in the manner of those Chinese Ivory puzzle balls, to allow the basket to stand proud of the main vessel.

 

 

Drawing 5.  Finally the Cage Cup is complete; the basket stands proud of the main body of the cup and is of a different colour!  The inscription usually extolling the virtues of drink and the enjoyment of life is also finely finished; it too is often of a different colour to its background.  The rail below the inscription highlights both inscription and adds a needed balance between the two major components of the work of the Diaetratari.

 

These beautiful cups were not only made in geometric designs, the Lycurgus Cup, also in the British Museum illustrates Lycurgus the God of the Vine, having imbibed rather too much, becoming entangled in the vine itself and of course in accordance with Roman tragedies being strangled by it.  Cut in a similar way to the above Cage Cup this cup also illustrates a further remarkable piece of Roman technology and knowledge.  Viewed by reflected light, just your normal every day light, the Lycurgus Cup is Jade Green.  If however you view the Cup by transmitted light, for example, if you shone a light through it, the Cup is RED!  The process involved here is known as Colloidal Dispersion in glass, a technique whereby the object appears to have two distinct body colours.

 

            In general the composition of the glass is similar to modern soda lime silica glasses, though there is a minute gold and silver content. (Gold 50 parts per million) which is responsible for the Dichroic effect of the glass though Manganese may partly contribute to the reddish colour.  Heat treatment is important in the development of dichroic colours requiring exceptional temperature control for long periods.  It is thought that there is only one glassmaker in the World at this time producing such glass, Dominick Labino in Ohio U.S.A.

 

            The Cups carrying an inscription are thought to be from the glass foundries of Trier while the craft of creating the Cage Cup is thought to have either originated in Cologne or in Northern Italy.  Wherever the skill and design originated I seriously believe that when these skills were lost in Western Europe as Rome withdrew its Legions and it was to take another thousand years before the Venetian Glassmakers were to recover the skills, knowledge, the quality and sheer beauty of the glass of a bygone age.

 

            That the Romans “made glass so badly that it could not be reproduced”, has I think been disposed of!  We cannot make glass like the Diatrata today, since the skills are lost, but for our metal detector friends, here to close is a little story of a Diatrata and a German metal detector.

 

            On the banks of the Rhine a metal detector was looking for Roman coins and after a while got a very good signal.  He dug frantically and heard a crunch like toffee smashing; he found fragments of glass and a few very well preserved Roman coins.  The coins were worth some four hundred German Marks, but he took some of the glass fragments to the museum also.  The museum staffs were appalled, the coins had been hidden in a Cage Cup and this had been smashed as the detector dug into the Earth.  The coins were worth Four Hundred German Marks.  The beautiful, totally destroyed Cage Cup would have been worth in excess of Three and One Half MILLION German Marks at 1987 prices.  When digging for artefacts remember the detector signal does not tell you if metal is encased in anything, think then, that just maybe the “case” might be worth a lot more.  There is a story that a similar incident happened at Caister when evidence of nighthawking was found, littered all around were fragments of a large glass Roman dish, it would have been complete the archaeologists thought, but of course we shall never know shall we?

 

Stephen L. Marchant.

Please note.  The illustrations used in this item include research drawings from the Romano German Museum at Cologne Germany and a picture kindly supplied by the British Museum.  The club magazine has been allowed to use these, but further use of these illustrations has not been permitted, to do so would certainly upset our German friends doing research into this field at Cologne and have had the courtesy of allowing us these drawings.  The British Museum would certainly like the courtesy of being asked first before any of the other illustrations were reproduced.

 

 

       

 

 

Digging for History

Established in the mid-1970s, The Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit was set up following a wave of public interest in excavations of local Roman sites led by archaeologists from the University.

 

Today, the University of Manchester Archaeological Unit, (UMAU), part of the original unit, undertakes commercially commissioned projects which have shed new light on Manchester from Roman times to the present day.

 

Much of the UMAU's work is funded by developers, who are obliged to commission surveys or excavations of sensitive sites before any building work is carried out.  Ironically, the damage wrought by the 1996 IRA bombing, which damaged 47% of listed buildings in central Manchester, has also given unexpected opportunities to excavate areas of the city centre.  Their findings have led to a dramatic re-evaluation of Manchester's early history.

 

As part of the current rebuilding of the city centre, what will be the largest Marks and Spencer in Europe is being constructed.  This construction work has required the moving of two half-timbered pubs, the Old Wellington Inn, which dates from the medieval period, and Sinclair's Oyster Bar, dating from around 1720.

 

John Walker, the UMAU's director, provided an archaeological survey of the area that the pubs were to be moved to, 200 metres from their original site.  This included a report based on 18th century observations that the area contained the Hanging Ditch - a defensive ditch of unknown origins running around the city.  'We followed up this information with an excavation, overseen by Graham Eyre-Morgan, and found the ditch under two layers of bomb damage: one courtesy of the Luftwaffe; one courtesy of the IRA," says John.

 

The Hanging Ditch appears to have been about 700 metres long, about 20 metres wide and nearly nine metres deep.  It was not filled until the 15th century and the team thinks it could have been constructed as early as Anglo-Saxon times.  The Hanging Ditch find, along with other digs in the city centre, has shed new light on Manchester's origins, "The received archaeological wisdom was that in medieval times Manchester was just a marginal settlement," said John Walker.

 

 

"We have provided compelling archaeological evidence that this is simply not true and that Manchester was a thriving town that had its own market, the medieval equivalent of Marks and Spencer, as early as 1220."

 

 

 

Manchester was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, so it is not surprising that a major theme of the Archaeological Unit's research should be "The transition to an industrial society".  A three-year grant from Tameside Borough Council has enabled the unit to investigate the question posed by John Walker: "Why was it that the relatively low­-value agricultural area around Manchester took the lead in the Industrial Revolution?"

 

The Unit has just published its report on the first year of its research project.  Entitled "Lords and Lordships in Tameside"; the report provides some clues.  John Walker explains: "Our research covers the period between the Black Death in 1348 to the English Civil War in 1642.  It shows that activity in the area was far from typical, reflecting the relationship between the different grades of land users in the area.  Tension between these three groups - lords, freeholders and tenants - may have created the right conditions for industry to develop quickly.

 

"The situation in Tameside, and by extension around Manchester, was almost unique.  This was an area of poor quality agricultural land that generated little money for the lords, most of whom were absentees.  This led to landlords doing their best to exploit the land for anything it had, such as coal or stone, and exploiting their tenant farmers as well.

 

"At the same time, there was little incentive for tenants to improve their farming methods, as any increase in production would lead to an increase in taxation.  However, custom and practice in the area meant that craft products were not directly taxed, so craft production became a way for tenants to make more money, which they could keep.

 

"The combination of landlords exploiting natural resources and tenants maximising their craft production, in the same area, may have created the basic conditions for the beginnings of industrial activity."

 

John Walker argues that although archaeology deals with the past, finding answers to patterns in material culture, it has great relevance to the modern world.  "The big question we are trying to answer is what conditions are necessary to produce the right environment for industry to flourish.  This is particularly relevant for today when we are supposedly living in a post-industrial society.  Can the lessons of the past tell us what we need to do to kick start our industry again?"

 

The Unit's Cultural Heritage Services division undertakes projects involving a high level of public or local authority participation.  It is currently undertaking its most exciting project to date - a survey of the secret Royal Ordnance Factory at Chorley - which challenges the common view of British government policy in the years leading up to World War II.

 

Most people have generally accepted that, throughout the 1930s, the British government followed a policy of appeasement - allowing Germany to follow her expansionist policy in order to avoid any conflict.  The existence of the Royal Ordnance Factory at Chorley challenges that view.

 

In 1933, the International Peace Conference collapsed when the Germans withdrew.  In 1934, at a time when the British government was publicly continuing with appeasement, the decision was taken to build the new Royal Ordnance Factory at Chorley.  At the time this was the biggest building site in Europe, and was part of a massive reorganisation of munitions production aimed at rearming against Germany.

 

The new factory was at the forefront of factory design, with a repeating multicellular structure.  So secret that, to this day, it is not marked on any Ordnance Survey map, its 1000-acre site

The Hanging Ditch site was the biggest building site in Europe at the time.  The factory played a crucial role in World War II with a workforce of 20,000 people filling shells and other munitions.

 

"Its physical existence begs the question: was appeasement a political gambit, to play for time for rearmament before taking on Germany, or was there another powerful political group in the government which disagreed with Prime Minister Chamberlain's policy and was readying Britain for war?" said John Walker.

 

John Walker

 

Whatever the answer, this massive complex continued to play a variety of crucial roles in the British armament industry after the Second World War.  It is now about to be demolished, but not before the Unit has completed its survey and historical study.

 

The discoveries mentioned above come from just three recent projects carried out by the UMAU, which carries out some 45 projects every year.  The cumulative effect of these activities is to increase the knowledge we have both about how individuals lived in the past and the wider picture of changes in the type of society that existed in the area.

 

In the future, the Unit plans to extend its activities to cover the whole of the North West and to provide a national consultancy.  It also hopes to increase further the integration between the Unit and the academic department.  Links are already strong, with staff from the Unit participating in undergraduate teaching and providing practical field experience to students.  The recent move of the Unit to the same building is indicative of the desire on both parts to work more closely together.

 

As John Walker says: "As a whole the University is one of the largest, and most active groups of archaeologists in the country.  The local work of the units together with the international studies of the academics is putting Manchester at the centre of new approaches to the past."

 

 

 

 

       

 

What’s in a Name?

By

Alan Richardson

 

Living in the North East of England, it is probably natural that I would take an interest in the local place names in this part of the world. More than that, those place names give us all kinds of clues to other matters of interest to us.

 

What of the two ancient names for this part of the country, before it was ever called Northumberland and Durham, even before it was called Northumbria? Amalgamating two older kingdoms, called Dere and Bernice created Northumbria. Bernice was, largely, the area of the modern Northumberland. Dere was a large area to the south of Bernice and stretched to the Humber. There is no trace of these kingdoms on the modern map and the exact line of the border between them is not known, though it is thought that what we now as County Durham may have been border country separating the two.

 

Kenneth Cameron, in his book English Place Names, examines the meaning of these two old Celtic tribal names. He expresses the opinion that Bernice may mean “people of the land of the mountain passes”, an appropriate name for those living in Pennine areas. Dere, says Cameron, may derive from a Primitive Welsh word meaning “waters”, this may suggest that the centre of the original kingdom was along the rivers flowing into the Humber.

 

The word Dere, of course, appears elsewhere in our areas of interest. I am thinking of Dere Street, the Roman Road. Is this the road to the area known as Dere? Or is it directly associated with water?

 

While thinking about water, which has been an area of some success for our group in recent months, there is another, more localised name of interest. Not far from the Group’s base in Washington is an area known as Biddick. I am not referring to the modern Biddick Village in Washington New Town, but to the old area of the same name. Cameron’s opinion is that Biddick is derived from Old English “bi” and “dic” and would mean the place or village by the ditch.  This has more meaning when searching for waterways and, in particular canals or canalised natural water channels.

 

Unfortunately, the whole of Washington and its surrounds have suffered significant changes to the landscape since the start of the industrial age. The result of this is that any remaining evidence of Roman canalised channels may be very hard to find. My experience of research with the group in the last couple of years has taught me not say the word “impossible”. The Biddick area is on the banks of the River Wear. The Wear has proved a fruitful river for us, when looking at navigation and Roman use and sites.

 

I have previously observed  similar potential in another place name, not too far from Washington. In Gateshead, just to the west of Team Valley, there is a suspicious looking feature in the landscape. We already know of the significance of the river Team. It is the navigation corridor connecting the rivers Tyne and wear. The Team runs roughly south to north at this point, there is a channel in the private estates to the West of Team Valley “Trench Hall” and Ravensworth Castle. The channel is known as The Trench. This is one of a list of locations for me to examine in the future, is it part of a system connecting the Team with the Roman site at Washing Wells, to the northwest.

 

A similar relevance appears to be associated with other waterways in the area. For example, when examining waterways in Sunderland, scrutiny of old maps of the part that includes the Barnes Park reveals a “Canal House” alongside a waterway. This is a burn that runs down from Grindon (meaning Green Hill), all of the way through Barnes Park, next to the now closed Royal Infirmary and into the edge of the City Centre. When passing the old Royal Infirmary, the burn is in a deep cutting called “Burn Park”. It arrives at the City Centre at the rear of the modern leisure centre and passes the west end of the site where we have substantial evidence of Roman presence, if not an entire Fort. The burn then continues into Galley’s Gill to join the Wear. I suspect that the burn was canalised in places by the Romans and formed part of a much more intricate inland waterway system in the larger Wearside area. There is more to come on the inland waterways in future issues.