| Abstract: |
The fieldwork continues an investigation into the Roman history of Coquetdale which
commenced with excavations on the course of the Roman Link Road in 2018. While those excavations established the character and course of the road over Holystone Common, questions remained over the route of the road past Holystone village, as well as over the Coquet and to the east where, although marked on historic and modern editions of the Ordnance Survey series, its course had never been proven by geophysical prospection or excavation.
Excavations on the site of a suspected enclosure commenced with the use of a mechanical excavator to open three trenches, of which Trenches 2 & 3 were placed over geophysical anomalies interpreted as the likely courses of ditches, while Trench 4 was sited within the enclosure over an anomaly suggestive of a small enclosed area, perhaps a round-house or part of an open, bounded yard. The excavations carried out in May, 2022 largely achieved their objectives in confirming the presence of the Roman road north-east of Sharperton Edge and an iron age enclosure to the south-west. North-east of Sharperton Edge the course of the Roman Link Road has been confirmed along the north side of a modern trackway, the course projected on the current Ordnance Survey plan. Here it was found to survive reasonably well, though has clearly been disturbed and reduced in width by later use, landscaping and other earthworks. Sufficient remains, however, to indicate that it was built, at least in part, with a central spine, as on Holystone Common to the south-west, while the fragmentary presence of an upper, surface layer of small pebbles, notably in Tr1a, the eastern of three trenches excavated, suggests that this form of surface may also have been present throughout its course. The possibility that the current ditch separating the modern track from the Roman agger may have originated as an upslope ditch to the Roman road now seems unlikely, but may yet be tested by searching for it
south of Trench 1a, beyond the eastward extent of the bank running along the north side of a modern farm track.
Geophysical survey did, however, appear to confirm the suspected presence of an enclosure around The Ladyship, Smart’s ‘Chester-hill’, which subsequent fieldwork has shown to have been a defensible, enclosed settlement with deep, in places rock-cut and almost sheer-sided ditches containing homogeneous fills. Geophysical survey plot actually appears to show a defensive arrangement in the south part of the enclosure comprising two linear features, which could indicate a strengthened double-line of defensive earthworks here, perhaps in association with a causewayed entrance, or, perhaps more likely, two phases of a single-line of earthworks implying an expansion or contraction of the original enclosure. |
