XVI.—An Account of Researches in Ancient Circular Dwellings near Birtley, Northumberland

Abstract

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.