Cheviot Hillforts

 Even today, more than 2000 years after they were first built, Iron Age hillforts throughout the British Isles are highly visible monuments, which impose themselves upon our consciousness. None are better preserved than those in the remote uplands of the Cheviot Hills, in the Northumberland National Park. Very few have ever been excavated at all, but because they are so well preserved, there is still an enormous amount that can be learned from detailed investigation of the remains visible on the surface.

In 1998, the Northumberland National Park Authority initiated a 5-year programme of research called 'Discovering our hillfort heritage', with support from the European Union and the Heritage Lottery Fund. English Heritage is another key partner in this project: the Archaeological Survey & Investigation Team has carried out field surveys of a selection of hillforts in the Cheviots, together with the historic landscapes surrounding them. We have also worked closely with others: with Tim Gates, an aerial photographer with invaluable experience of the region; with the Northumberland Archaeology Group, which is carrying out excavations of the hillfort on Wether Hill, Ingram; with the Archaeology Departments of the Universities of Durham and Newcastle.

These investigations have served several purposes. Firstly, they have enabled the  National Park to deal with specific managment questions: What are the precise extents of the monuments? Which would be most interesting places for walkers to visit? Where are burrowing rabbits doing severe damage? Underpinning all these questions is the need to improve the understanding of the monuments, both individually and as a class. A broad - and yet at the same time detailed - knowledge of how hillforts in general functioned, how they related to the historic landscapes around them, how they were affected by earlier and later land-use, will provide the best possible assistance for the National Park in its job of looking after the historic environment for future generations.

The English Heritage Archaeological Survey & Investigation team has investigated a diverse range of sites. We began with the well-known hillfort on Yeavering Bell, which at 5.6 ha is by far the largest in the region and therefore often called the 'only true hillfort in the region'. New discoveries at this relatively well understood site suggested - correctly, as it turned out - that research into the region's more obscure and less studied monuments would yield lots more important new insights. An enclosure on Fawcett Shank, hidden in forests less than 8km to the west of Yeavering Bell, for example, had never previously been planned or analysed in any detail and its interpretation as a hillfort was in doubt. Our investigation demonstrated beyond doubt that while the enclosure was rebuilt as a large sheep pen (or 'stell', in local dialect), probably in the post-medieval period, it was indeed originally a typical hillfort. At Ilderton we have examined a square monument which is not even on a hilltop: research by Tim Gates suggests that this may be the last surviving example of a related kind of monument, also of Iron Age date, which was once common in lowland locations, prior to the damage done by medieval and later ploughing. Returning to more typical hillforts, we have been struck by the care and skill with which their defences were planned and built. The circular houses within them, although usually few in number, were not 'huts' as they have often been dismissively called in the past, but spacious buildings constructed by experts. In some cases, we have been able to find out a good deal about the territories that the occupants of the hillforts controlled and exploited.

A common discovery has been the realisation that many hillforts were completely altered by settlement in the Romano-  British period. Although Romano-British settlements and houses have been recognised before, both within hillforts and elsewhere, the fact that many of the Iron Age defences were completely rebuilt in the Roman period has been almost entirely overlooked. In some cases, what have previously been interpreted as Iron Age 'corrals', built at the same time as the hillfort defences to hold livestock, can now be seen to be parts of the Roman settlements. And these tiny Romano-British 'villages' do not seem to represent continuity of settlement, but a return to monuments that were already long-deserted and in ruins. Why was this? Was it that in this land north of Hadrian's Wall, people turned back to these symbols of their ancient and glorious past? Were they, in fact, showing an early interest in ancient monuments?

Our investigations of the landscapes around the hillforts have produced all sorts of surprises and advances in understanding. We have found everything from a unique example of Neolithic 'rock art', dating to around 2,500 BC, to large mounds of stone, looking remarkably like Bronze Age burial mounds, which proved to have been cleared from the fields by Italian prisoners of War during the Second World War.

For more information contact Stewart Ainsworth, Al Oswald or Trevor Pearson in English Heritage's York office on 01904 601901 or e-mail stewart.ainsworth@english-heritage.org.uk; al.oswald@english-heritage.org.uk; trevor.pearson@english-heritage.org.uk

The investigation reports produced on individual hillforts since 1998 are available to order online and will soon be available to download from these pages. In several cases, the National Park Authority has used these detailed accounts to produce leaflets for walkers. A popular book presenting the results of the project as a whole was published in 2006 and can be purchased online from the English Heritage bookshop.