Chapter 2

Before the Romans

As the ice cleared, man came north and found an unattractive land of moorland, forest and bog. Only on the coast was movement easy.

Cumbria never knew the Old Stone Age (Palaeolithic), for remains of this period have been found only as far north as Derby, our area being still ice-covered at this time. There is evidence, however, that man settled on the coast in the Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic). Here he could fish, hunt in the fringes of the unbroken forest, catch wildfowl and gather food from trees and the shore. He has left evidence in tiny flint tools, [1] found in the boulder clay along the coast, where they had been deposited from a chalk reef under the Irish Sea. [2] These people may have penetrated up the rivers, including the Derwent. They were probably short in stature, long-headed (dolichocephalic) and pleasant looking. [3] It is unlikely that we shall ever know whether they reached our area.

The succeeding culture of the New Stone Age (Neolithic), of about 4000BC onwards, did exist in the Cockermouth area. There is evidence these men who were not only hunters and fishers, introduced the revolutionary ideas of herding cattle and, on a very small scale, of growing crops, using polished stone hoes. They also brought the crafts of pottery and weaving and used wood and leather for domestic utensils. Their stone axes were ground and polished, an advance on those of Mesolithic man. The limestone, hills and boulder clays were suitable for stock, while the lighter and better drained soils of the moraines could be more easily worked to grow small areas of grain.

Pollen analysis suggests that with improved axes came the first attacks on the forests, providing timber for housing and equipment and leafy branches as supplementary fodder. [4]

At Moss Garth, in Portinscale, the discovery of chippings and five unfinished tools suggests that here was a finishing place for tool manufacture [5] and proves that man had penetrated that far from the coast. We know that he went into the fells for volcanic rocks to make axes and adzes and also barbs and tips on fish-spears and arrow-heads. [6] The axe manufacture carried on at a number of sites in the central fells was a well-organised trade, with finishing sites on lower and more hospitable ground and distribution over most of Britain. [7] The Buttermere valley is one route from the central area to the Cumbrian plain and ‘Cockermouth’ probably saw something of this trade.

The most spectacular finds of this period were those at Ehenside Tarn when it was drained about 1870, but a number of discoveries have been made in the Cockermouth area. A canoe, burned out from a tree trunk, was found in the Stanger stretch of the Cocker. The owner probably fished from it using a flint-tipped or bone-tipped spear. In 1931 a perforated axe-hammer, rather crudely tapered to a point at both ends and 5.3 inches [135mm] long, was found in the same area at Stanger Farm. Early this century a later Neolithic stone hammer-axe was unearthed in the garden of Moorland Close, 9 inches [225mm] long, weighing 7Y2 pounds, and two lighter unpolished axes of similar size were discovered in Eaglesfield last century. A stone hammerhead 5.5 inches cobble, was unearthed at Waterloo Farm and in 1861 a coarse crystalline perforated axe-hammer of over 11 inches turned up in Bewaldeth. The following year a similar find was made at Whinfell and in 1879 a 10 inch [250 mm] polished blue whinstone axe was found at Isel.

In January 1949 Mr. W. Cook of Anfield Farm found an axe head lying on the surface of a ploughed field. One end is square-butted, the other tapers to an axe edge. The hole is central, hour glass shape and 2 inches across at the surface. The whole head measures 8 by 4 by 2.75 inches and weighs 4% pounds; it appears to be made of a coarse-grained igneous rock. [8] This axe was found within the Cockermouth boundary-how many more lie buried?

Stones which have been used for sharpening prehistoric cutting tools (celts) have been found in Cumbria, one from Lazonby having 70 grooves worn in it. [9]

Ehenside and other finds show that our predecessors of that time lived well. Great quantities of bones and shells occur amongst broken pottery, proving that they ate oxen, sheep, pigs, goats, deer, porpoise, fish and shell-fish.

Added to these products of their hunting, fishing and stock-farming would be the wild fruits they gathered and the grain they grew. They also had the benefits of weaving and leather crafts. Then came the first metal workers into our region, with the ability to use bronze. Concentrated in the south of the country, some had worked their way north to Cumbria by about 1800 BC. The new arrivals were very different from the stone-age dwellers already here. They were taller, averaging about 5 feet 8 inches muscular. Supported on cylindrical necks they had round heads (brachy-cephalic) instead of long, with broad jaws and wide mouths, up-turned noses and high cheek-bones, and eyes sunk beneath beetling brows. By our standards they were ugly! They may have enslaved the long-heads, they may have taken the women as wives, but they did not exterminate the people they found here. The evidence lies in burial barrows where long and round skulls have been found side by side and in later barrows where skulls of intermediate shape occur, proving intermarriage. [11]

The Early Bronze Age culture overlapped with the Neolithic. These Beaker Folk, so named from the drinking vessels which they made and which they buried with their dead, were nomadic stock-raisers, living in temporary wooden huts or bivouacs. The rare finds show that the earliest use of metal was to make flattish axe-heads in imitation of the stone axes. They still used stone, chipping the hour-glass hole from both sides, and the Anfield axe may be from this period. They still used flint for arrow-heads. The Neolithic folk had contacts with Ireland, for their stone axes have been found there. The Early Bronze people developed these contacts, for Ireland was one of the main centres of bronze manufacture in Europe, as copper, gold and tin could be obtained in the Wicklow Mountains. It is probable that a trading community, of which West Cumbria was a part, developed around the Irish Sea.

Finds are rare, possibly because metal was scarce and old tools were melted down to use again, and scarcity would also account for the continued use of stone. In both stone and metal the workmanship was good, and good pottery of this period has been found in Cumbria.

The 17 megalithic (large-stone) circles found in the Lake District date from this time, their location in the Eden and Eamont region, in the Derwent valley and in West Cumbria showing that these were the areas of settlement. The nearest to Cockermouth is on Elva Plain, 470 feet level on the slopes of Elva Hill (OS 177 317).

This circle consists of 15 stones and an outlier, but by estimating what were once in the present gaps there may have been about thirty originally. The stones do not now stand high, one reaching 3 feet 6 inches, one 2 feet, the rest less, four of them being flush with the ground. Nor are they large, the biggest being about 4 feet square. tlo One proves to consist of three on close inspection, not unknown in such circles. Megalithic circles are usually near a spring and the proximity of an isolated farmhouse to Elva Circle is proof of a water supply. The circle is about 100 feet [30.5m] across, hence its inclusion in the ‘large’ category. Askew states that a Mr. Fletcher Grave of Cockermouth reported that in about 1820, before enclosure of the common lands in this area, it consisted of many large stones and contained an inner circle of ‘similar stones, sixty and twenty paces respectively in circumference. [13] There is no trace of an inner circle nor has one been mentioned by recent investigators.

The name ‘Elva’ has been variously given as derived from the Old Norse personal noun Elfr or from Wlva, whence Elfhow or elf-house, indicating that the site was believed to be haunted.

The purpose of the large circles is not clear. They were for a long time thought to be for religious purposes, their proximity to reliable springs or wells which might have been regarded as sacred supporting this idea. Investigations have now shown that in the case of Castlerigg and Long Meg a line drawn from the outlier through the centre of the circle goes to the summit of a hill over which the sun rises on May 1 st or 2nd, when Beltane fires were lit on summits in honour of the Earth God, Beal or Bile. [14] Examination of the pattern and dimensions of some 250 circles suggests definite alignment. The large circles were then possibly for astronomical observations to determine solstices, etc., and, as the religion of the time was linked to the sun and moon and changing seasons, as for example in the Beltane fires, their purpose was also religious. They would serve as tribal meeting places on these special occasions and also when an extraordinary gathering had to be called. One thing is certain -. they were not built as burial places and there are no hearths suggesting sacrifices.

The circles support the theory that Neolithic man made his way northwards from Africa, for similar ones are found in Algeria and Tunisia.

About 1400 BC the Early Bronze Age merged into the Middle Bronze, marked by a decreased use of stone, by a greater variety of types of axe and by developments in the making of spear-heads, daggers and rapiers. Barley as a cereal crop was another new feature. Trading with Ireland was continued and developed, before it fell off in the Late Bronze Age about 750 BC, perhaps because a stormier period followed a time of warm, calm summers. [15] The Irish trade used Morecambe Bay and the Derwent, Ellen and Eden Rivers. ‘Cockermouth’ was no doubt involved. Tools and ornaments are found over a wider area than in the Early Bronze Age and there is some evidence that manufacture and trading were thoroughly reorganised about 1000 BC, shortly before the end of the Middle Bronze Age.

Further developments occurred about 800 BC or a little later, distinguished now as the Late Bronze Age, which was to last until the introduction of iron in this part of the country probably only shortly before the Romans arrived. During fig. 7. A fiddle Bronze Age looped spear·head, 5 inches long. Found at Blindbothel (after Miss C. I. Fell, from a photograph NS 40, Tullie House Museum). this period there were two waves of new arrivals, both Celtic speaking. The first, in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, were the Goidels (Hiberno-Celts), ancestors of the present Gaels of Ireland, the Isle of Man and Scotland, who spoke Gadhelic or Gaelic. They were followed in the fourth century by the Brythons (Cambro-Celts) from Wales, Cornwall and Brittany, speaking Cymric or Welsh. [16] Some historians put these arrivals as early as 900 BC and some maintain that they were long-heads again, physically attractive and intellectually vigorous -and Askew said the inhabitants of Cockermouth and district are distinguished by their long-headedness!

As in the change from Early to Middle Bronze, so again there was now a great increase in the number and variety of bronze objects, as well as improvements in spinning and weaving. In Sweden the ox-plough had been introduced, but there is no evidence that it was known in Cumbria. Sledges and pack-animals would be the form of transport; evidence of horses or wheeled-vehicles did not appear until nearer Roman times. [17]

The Early Bronze Age people both buried and cremated their dead, ashes being placed in urns, usually collared, from about 1600 BC. Sometimes the body, or its ashes, was placed in a stone chest covered with slabs (a cist) and a cairn of stones built over. it. Hundreds of cairns and tumuli or barrows are known in the West Cumbrian foothills and those examined have been of the Bronze Age, containing urns with human ashes and bone fragments. Cup and ring markings, such as those on the stone in Butts field at Dean (OS 073 250), are usually associated with Bronze Age burials.

Within Cockermouth itself is the small Toot or Tute Hill opposite the castle, unexcavated but traditionally considered to be a tumulus. The name derives from the ME ‘tote’, a look-out hill. Nearby Charley Hill is a natural mound, used on more than one occasion as a base for bombarding the castle.

Solitary standing stones, of which there were once a number near Cockermouth, may have been a method of marking the burial place of an important king, priest or warrior. Denwood refers to a huge monolith near the Derwent below Papcastle, demolished in 1946. Askew refers to one across the Derwent from what is now the A66 junction west of the town, possibly the same as Denwood’s, and to three in a field between Papcastle and Broughton, all of blue-stone probably from the river bed.

In the middle and later bronze periods small stone circles were erected on burial sites in the foothills, some 500 years later than the large circles. By this time cremation was nearly always used. One such small circle stands near Studfold Gate (OS 040 224), once 1] 0 feet by 87 feet. A modem wall passes through the centre and only eight stones remain in position.

In 1876, when digging a cutting half a mile south of Branthwaite for the Ullock to Distington railway, Bronze Age burial urns were unearthed. One of them, now in Carlisle, is 13.5 inches high and 12 inches maximum diameter, the upper half decorated with encrusted work- a band of zigzag pattern between two bands of vertical lines.

Finds of this period include a bronze javelin head, 4 inches [100 mm] long, which was four feet deep in moss at High Dyke, Blindbothel. It is of the type used by the Romans when they invaded Britain and in 1874, shortly after its discovery, was on view in the window of the Old Curiosity Shop in Station Street, Cockermouth, later going to Tullie House Museum. There is a record of a 5.1 inches bronze socketed spear head being found in Blindbothel in 1872. A bronze flanged axe, nearly 5 inches long, turned up at Waterloo Farm, and one slightly larger in Branthwaite. [18] In 1883 a stone mould for casting spear heads was found, far from our area, at Croglin near Penrith. [19] A rather different find was of grains of barley, discovered in a Middle Bronze collared urn in Papcastle.

Large and small stone circles and other remains show that man penetrated into the hills in the Bronze Age, not only to seek stone for axes but to clear forest and settle. On Banniside Moor near Coniston charred remains of well-woven cloth were found in a collared urn, showing that there were sheep on the fells in the 2nd millennium BC, the sheep no doubt guarded from wolves, etc., and not allowed to roam freely as today. It has been suggested that they were kept on higher ground to avoid flatworm, a sheep parasite requiring water for its development. [20] What held in the Coniston area most probably occurred in the hills to the south and east of Cockermouth.

Slightly later than the time the Goidels and Brythons came to Cumbria, Belgic tribes entered south-east Britain bringing with them the ability to work in iron: This would be about the fifth century onwards, but probably this knowledge reached our area only shortly before the Romans. Its spread would be delayed by the unsettled state of the north of the country, peopled by warlike and backward Brigantes (‘free men’). The Brigantes were divided into a large number of clans, and while the iron age culture had been established in eastern Yorkshire by the fourth century BC and may have helped the establishment of one Brigantian kingdom extending over the north of the country, it took a long time for the culture to cross the Pennines and Lakeland mountains to West Cumbria. The arrival of the Iron Age in the south of Britain had meanwhile increased the isolation of Cumbria as the remaining demand for stone axes fell off and the related trade contacts declined, an isolation not broken until the Romans came. [21]

The Iron Age inhabitants left ample evidence of their presence. They developed a system of settlement in which a number of dwellings were surrounded by a rampart and ditch, probably to keep out animals rather than men. Usually sites outside the mountains were chosen, with the exception in Cumbria of the large Iron Age fort on Carrock Fell, one of the largest in Britain is approx 800 x 370 feet [240 x 110 m] and possibly a Brigantian capital or a control fort to supervise conquered tribes in the surrounding area (OS 342 337). On the other sites the hut circles of stone, turf and brushwood and the surrounding embankment of stones and rubble have collapsed and been overgrown, but the general layout may be seen and faint trackways and field outlines often discerned, especially from the air. The fallen remains of huts suggest that their walls were some four or five feet in height, capped by a pointed roof.

Outstanding Romano-British settlements, so called because of the overlap of the Iron Age with Roman occupation, have been excavated at Urswick in Fumess and Ewe Close near Crosby Ravensworth, but we have good examples within a short distance of Cockermouth. At Lanthwaite Green, at the foot of the fells and near the beck flowing out from Gasgale Gill (OS 161 210), the outer circle may be clearly seen and within it a large number of small overgrown heaps of stone. On the other side of the lake some of the considerable remains along Scale Beck where it flows into Crummock are probably of this period, although many features date from later times. There is an enclosure on the fell north of Moota (OS 141 380) and in the coastal area a round hut at Wolsty Hall, Silloth, and a cattle enclosure at Risehow both date from the pre-Roman Iron Age.

On Aughtertree Fell (OS 262 381), near Sandale, 900 feet above sea-level, is a ‘village’ of three large circular enclosures with hollows inside and a complex of tracks and fields outside, probably occupied during the Roman period.

There is a site within Cockermouth at the Fitz (,riverside meadows’). In Fitz Wood, between the house and the A66, are a well-preserved rampart and ditch, 750 feet [230 m] round with a straight ditch cutting across (OS 108 304). This possibly dates from the Iron Age and may have been re-used in later times.

The Iron Age dwellers in the area also developed hilltop fortifications, probably for short-term refuge, a similar purpose to that of the peel towers of a later date. The top of Castle How at Piel (or Peel) Wyke, between the Pheasant Inn and the A66, has been adapted as such a refuge (OS 202 308). The hill is a short natural ridge. No work had to be done on the steep sides to improve its defence, but on the gentler slope of the western end four trenches were dug, while on the steeper eastern end two were sufficient. The first of these is a very slight hollow, but the inner one is appreciable, having been six feet deep and ten across. The summit, a plateau 42 yards by 20 yards, has been hollowed out and levelled, leaving the natural rock as a defensive embankment. It may have been strengthened by an oak palisade. There is no evidence of masonry and no remains, hones, pottery, etc ..have been found. Obviously it was intended as a temporary refuge for a day or two until danger had passed. Before the making of the A66 there was a place on the lake shore below where dug-out canoes could land. [23] The name ‘Fairy Glen’ sometimes heard recalls the legend that this is where a fairy was last seen in Cumberland.

It is impossible to decide whether some sites were settlements and equally difficult to date them. Such are the remains at Park Hill, Dean; the two sets of parallel trenches in the butts field at Dean (flax retting ?) (OS 073 251) and the mounds and cup and ring stone in the same field; groundworks at Moorland Close; and fragments of straight ramparts near Loweswater. What was the ‘White Causeway’ north of Pardshaw Crags (OS 103 264)? Were the raised platform of compact gravel and small boulders and the moss ring enclosing an acre of swampy ground man-made? Were other small earthworks and terraces said to have been noticeable before enclosure between here and Cockermouth constructed defences? [24]

Turning from sites to implements, the most spectacular find from this period is the Embleton sword, now in the British Museum. Probably of a rather later date, the end of the first century AD or the beginning of the second, it is the type of Celtic work which the Romans found in use when they came to Cumbria. It is of iron, with bronze and enamelled hilt and scabbard, and was found near Wythop Mill (OS 178 295).[25] In 1985 a replica of the sword was made by the apprentices at Workington British Steel and presented to the Embleton parish on the occasion of a flower festival in the church.

It would appear that the Iron Age folk did not cremate their dead. The discovery of bronze sword and horse bones with one burial suggests that they may have buried ready for the next life.

From what has been written it will have become obvious that sites were often occupied for a considerable time. The Iron Age dwellings by Scale Beck were added to by the Norse. Boat How, on the southern side of Ennerdale near its upper end, may have been occupied from Neolithic times about the end of the tenth century BC to the Viking period, over two thousand years. The extensive remains on Stockdale, east of the road over Cold Fell, may have been left by Bronze Age farmers, Britons in Roman times, Viking shepherds of the tenth century AD or sheep farmers moving from the lowlands to higher summer pastures as late as the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries [26] -possibly by more than one, even all, of these groups. The Ehenside Tarn site produced a rotary quern suggesting that it was in use in the Roman period, a long time after the Neolithic settlers. The site at Wolsty was extended during Roman times.

The Cockermouth Fitz circle may have been occupied in mediaeval times. If a site was a good one it was natural that it should remain occupied or be reoccupied after an interval. This increases the difficulty of finding evidence of the overlaid earlier cultures, as clues are easily destroyed, but in spite of this and in spite of the considerable destruction, quite unwittingly, by agriculture, we can piece together some picture of what life in and around Cockermouth was like before the Romans came to Papcastle.