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Daytrip: The fabulous prehistoric copper mines at the Great Orme’s Head

Whether the visitor is an adult or a child, the prehistoric copper mine on the Great Orme’s Head next to Llandudno in northwest Wales is one of the best days out in Wales, and not only for those with a love of prehistory. A visit carries with it a real sense of adventure and discovery, and it is an almost unique experience.

The Great Orme mines, which became one of the most successful mining operations in Bronze Age Britain, were worked at the mine-face by both adults and children. Metallurgy revolutionized many aspects of industry and society in later prehistory before the arrival of the Romans. As the use of bronze (a mixture of copper and tin) spread throughout Britain and Europe the Great Orme became part of a European network of metal distribution. Objects made with raw materials from the site were found not merely in Britain but as far away as the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and France, indicating how important this supply of copper became be when combined with tin from southwest England to make bronze.

Some prehistoric copper mines in Britain have only been recognized in the last few decades, partly because they were worked in more recent times, disguising earlier mining operations, and partly because they do not stand out as obviously as other archaeological sites. By contrast, the most familiar Bronze Age sites in north Wales are those that stand out clearly in the landscape, including round barrows (earth mounds) and cairns (stone mounds) in their 100s. Stone circles, stone rows and menhirs (standing stones) are also found, and occasionally a lucky find will produce a settlement site. Thanks to a number of research projects, four major concentrations of copper mines have now been identified, one of which is in Ireland, two of which are in Wales, and one in northwest England. These are now adding to the body of data not merely about copper mining but about the Bronze Age as a whole. Many are still the subject of ongoing investigation.

The Great Orme. Llandudno is clearly visible where the Great Orme begins, forming a crescent, the end of which is marked by the Little Orme to the east. On the right, heading west, is the opening of the river Conwy. By Jay-Jerry. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC_2.0_Generic.

The Great Orme mining enterprise, which operated from around 1700-900BC (Early Bronze Age to Early Iron Age), was at its busiest for a period of over 200 years between 1600 and 1400 BC (c.3600 to 3400 years ago). In order to sustain itself for that long, the mines required, as an absolute minimum: a) a food-producing economy that could sustain a large group of miners on a permanent or semi-permanent basis, b) the knowledge, technical ability, and labour to tunnel through limestone, c) the technical ability and skills to process the ore, d) a long-term supply of wood for fire-setting and furnaces, e) a market for its products, and f) the development of long-distance connections to acquire the tin that was needed to make bronze and to distribute the finished product to its purchasers. There was also certainly a requirement amongst the miners and smelters, just as there were amongst other members of society, to address their religious needs and their sense of identity. These issues will all be touched on briefly below.

Location of the Great Orme’s Head. Courtesy Google Maps

This post will cover the following topics, all very briefly

Vital Statistics
The earliest British copper mining
Discovery and excavation at the Great Orme
Why copper and bronze?
The geological source of the Great Orme copper
Mining the ore
Processing the ore
Manufacture of copper and bronze tools
The development of the Great Orme Copper mines over time
The miners of the Great Orme
The copper and bronze trade in Britain
The end of Bronze Age copper mining in Britain
Final comments
Visiting
Sources

Some of the vital statistics

Part of the opencast mines and, at the base of the steps, access into the tunnels of the underground mines

The vital statistics for the Great Orme copper mines are sufficiently eye-popping to give a sense of how remarkable the mines were during the 500 years in which they were operational. Bearing in mind that they are still under investigation, and will be for years to come, the following figures, summarized by Steve Burrow of the National Museum of Wales in 2011, are merely guidelines, as they will have shifted upwards since then. Burrow refers to the development of the bronze industry out of the beginnings of the copper industry “the first Industrial revolution,” and when you consider the figures for the Great Orme alone you can see why this claim can be made, as they represent a considerable demand for a new product.

The opencast mines were dug from above, top-down, rather than horizontally through tunnels. This left great upright remnants of hard rock behind, now rather eerily resembling some devastated dystopian city. The soft rock could be removed with simple bone picks and hand-held hammers and it is estimated that using this tools the mine eventually covered an area 55m long, 23m wide and 8m deep. It has been estimated that 28,000 tonnes of rock had been removed from it, in order to gather the copper ore it contained, before it was exhausted.

A simplified plan of the mines in 1992, before further investigations took place. Source: Burrow 2011, p.86

In the underground mines where miners tunnelled through the rock horizontally following seams of ore, 6.5km of tunnels had been investigated by 2011, with 8-10km more anticipated, and it had been discovered that the mines reached a depth of 70m over 9 separate levels. An estimated 12,600 tonnes of ore-bearing rock were removed from them (on top of that removed from the opencast mines). The illustration on the right provides an impression of how the mines were understood in 1992 and although this picture has been considerably expanded in the last 32 years, it demonstrates very nicely how the vertical shafts and horizontal tunnels were connected and how ambitious the tunneling was.

Of the tools found, over 33,00 either whole or fragmentary bone objects were found, used as picks and shovels, and over 2400 stone hand-hammers and mauls were discovered, some of which can be seen on display at the site in the Archaeology Store. The smallest of these could be hand-held, but the largest at over 20kg would have to have been incorporated into some sort of swinging device in order to smack it into the rock. See below for details of these and other tools.

The magnificence of these numbers becomes entirely plausible on a visit to the mine when something of the extent of both opencast and underground mining operations can be experienced in person.

The earliest British copper mining

Neal Johnson’s useful visual timeline of the Early Metal Age, showing how bringing together excavated data can help archaeologists to understand when and how technological, economic and social changes occurred. Source: Neal Johnson 2017, p.7, fig.2 (in Sources at the end of Part 1). Click to enlarge and read clearly.

In the 19th century Three Age system, the Stone Age is followed by the Bronze Age, which is followed in turn by the Iron Age. The Three-Age System was devised in 1836 by Christian Thomsen, Danish archaeologist and curator of the National Museum of Denmark who developed the scheme for his guidebook to the museum’s archaeology collection. The scheme was very influential, and Thomsen can be commended for attempting to make chronological sense of an archaeological record that had was poorly understood at this time. Although these are now recognized as very crude categorizations, which exclude certain vital components of material data, they continue to be used and do represent the basic chronological truth that for hundreds of thousands of years utilitarian tools were made of stone and only then, in quick succession, by copper, bronze and iron.

Richard Bradley’s dating of the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age

In more recent systems, a Copper Age, or Chalcolithic, is inserted between the Neolithic (New Stone Age) and the Early Bronze Age and as Neal Johnson’s helpful timeline above shows, a far more nuanced understanding of this period of prehistory is now possible, incorporating pottery and the soft metals gold and silver. There has also been a shift away from materials and objects towards understanding the people and the behaviours that they they help to represent. The Bronze Age itself has been subdivided into three main phases, which reflects social and economic differences as well as changes in raw material usage and tool types. Richard Bradley assigns the dates shown in the table to the right, above, to the various sub-periods of the Bronze Age, and in regional schemes these can be modified to suit local findings.

The Moel Arthur axehead hoard. Source: Frances Lynch, The Later Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age in Prehistoric Wales, p. 101, figure 3.7

Copper mining was introduced from Europe. Two possible sources are viable for its arrival in Ireland and England. One is central Europe which was a major early producer, and the other is the Atlantic coast, with Iberia a plausible source of copper working to Killarney in southwest Ireland, where the earliest Irish and Britsh mines are found. The early Ross Island copper mine was in use from around 2400BC, and is the earliest of the Irish and British copper mines, whilst Mount Gabriel was in use from around 1700BC.

Copper halberd from Tonfanau near Aberdyfi, mid-west Wales. Source: National Museum of Wales

In Wales the earliest copper objects to be found in Britain are axes, but they were not made in Wales. A broken copper axe thought to be from south Gwynedd, and a collection of three copper axes from Moel Arthur are well known examples. On the basis of metallurgical analysis they are thought to have been imported from southwest Ireland. Copper axes were modelled on stone tools but were soon followed by an entirely new form, for which no precedent in stone is known, called a halberd. It is thought that it may have been designed as a weapon, either actual or symbolic, but what is of primary interest here is that the value of copper for inventing new and special designs was being recognized at this time.

Chronology for Bronze Age mines in Britain. Source: Williams and de Veslud, 2019. Click image to enlarge to read more clearly

Dates for the Great Orme extend from c.1900 to 400 BC (Early Bronze age to Early Iron Age) but the main activity took place towards from the middle of the Early Bronze Age until towards the end of the Middle Bronze Age. The phases described by R.Alan Williams in 2019 identify a main period of activity between c.1600 and 1400BC. This “mining boom” peak coincides with the well-known Acton Park phase of metal production, first identified at Acton Park in Wrexham, which will be discussed on a future post. The decline of metal working at Great Orme began to take place between 1400 and 1300 BC. A “twilight period” lasted into the Early Iron Age. Note that that Ross Island had already gone out of use by the time the Great Orme was opened, and that many of the other Early Bronze Age mines in mid-Wales and northwest England were also coming to an end by this time. Some of the Irish mines survived into the Middle Bronze Age, but the Great Orme was he only site to continue into the Late Bronze Age.

Discovery and excavation of the Great Orme mines

Today it is recognized that Welsh copper mines are to be found concentrated in mid- and north Wales, the biggest of which were the Great Orme and Parys (Anglesey) mines, just 20 km apart. Both were exploited for copper during the 18th and 19th centuries, and it is at this time, both in Wales and at Alderley Edge in Cheshire, that the earlier mines were first recognized and recorded when the miners found that their new shafts were colliding with pre-existing ones. Antiquarian interest in some of these much earlier mine shafts resulted in some speculative reports about how old they might be.

In the case of the Great Orme, the first modern excavations took place in 1938-1939 when Oliver Davies, an expert on Roman mining in Europe, headed up a committee for The British Association for the Advancement of Science. The remit of the committee was to investigate early metal mining. In mid and north Wales it investigated mines on Parys (Anglesey), Cwmystwyth (Ceredigion), Nantyreira (Gwynedd) and the Great Orme’s Head. Although their attempts to date the mines assumed that they were probably “Celtic” (i.e. more recent than they actually are) the project successfully raised an awareness of prehistoric copper mining in Wales.

Archaeological excavations on the Great Orme in around 1900. Source: Peoples Collection Wales

Building on this initial research, the amateur archaeologist Duncan James carried out some excavations in the Great Orme area in the 1970s, and was able to obtain an radiocarbon date that indicated a Bronze Age date. In the 1980s Andrew Lewis for the Great Orme Exploration Society and Andrew Dutton for the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust both undertook survey and excavation work that made considerable advances in knowledge about the copper mines. Work by Simon Timberlake and the Early Mines Research Group greatly expanded knowledge of copper mining in the north- and mid-Wales area as a whole. Since the 1980s work has continued to be carried out at the Great Orme and elsewhere, and a number of post-graduate research projects, some of which are available for download on the Research page of the Great Orme official website, have focused on particular aspects of the mines and related topics. Most recently, the important PhD research undertaken by R. Alan Williams at the Great Orme was published by Archaeopress in 2023, and contains the most up to date information.

Why copper and bronze?

Simple stone reduction process from core to tool. Source: Grace 1997

Before the introduction of copper, the main materials for making tools were stone, wood and bone. Whereas these were worked by reduction (knapping pieces of stone off a core or carving wood and bone to make shaped tools), copper was created by melting well-ground malachite using a pestle and mortar until it underwent a process of change, becoming molten. This was poured into a mould to cool and create an object. This is discussed further below. It was not an entirely alien production process, having something in common with kiln-fired pottery, which had been made since the Neolithic, but it was a new approach to tools-making.

Copper was not as strong or resilient as stone, and its primary value was the production of a particularly thin and very sharp blade. Although stone tools could be very sharp, it was impossible to achieve the thin edge of a cast metal. This edge was particularly useful for tree felling and branch cutting, as well as the shaping of wood. Although it would blunt quickly, because the metal was so soft, the blade could be easily sharpened after use. When damaged, it could be recast with other broken objects and used to create new tools. However, because of its softens its uses continued to be limited. In some cases, its value as a prestige item may have exceeded its value as a functional tool.

Group of damaged bronze objects probably originally destined for recycling.

Copper came into its own when blended with 10% tin to make bronze, which represented a new world of possibility and innovation. By lowering the melting point of copper, the addition of tin made copper easier to handle and the resulting bronze was harder and stronger than copper, just as sharp, and less prone to damage. Although the earliest bronze forms copied copper objects, designs soon emerged that represented significant departures from stone and copper antecedents, including adzes, halberds, knives, pins, ornaments and in the later Bronze Age swords and shields. Like copper it could be recast and moulded into new shapes, providing them with a very long-term life cycle that outlived the lives of individual tools, conferring a particular and unique value on metal tools. Where a stone tool would be reworked so many times that it had to be discarded, and a pot once broken could not be safely mended, metal could achieve a form of eternal life. Many of the hoards of broken tools that have been found in Britain were clearly grouped together and retained in order to be recycled in this way, although others were clearly deposited in special locations for more spiritual purposes, perhaps partly because of this unique quality.

Bronze Age stone arrowheads from Merthyr Mawr Warren, Bridgend, Wales. Source: National Museum of Wales

Stone, wood and bone continued to be important in the Bronze Age. Stone tools in particular, became the heavy-duty implements that complemented the new metal equipment. Pestles and mortars continued to have an important role in the processing of cereals, pigments and ores, and small arrowheads continued to have a value in hunting during the Early Bronze Age. Bone was still used for small, thin needles and pins, and wood was still vital for hafting tools of bone and stone. In the longer term, although stone retained a role in many parts of life, copper and bronze took over many of the roles that many organic materials had previous had for the manufacture of tools.

The source of the Great Orme copper

The Great Orme is a grey limestone promontory surrounded on three sides by the sea. It emerges from the main coastline of north Wales at Llandudno, and is the same rock system that sits so dramatically along the western edge of the Clwydian Range above Llangollen. In a paper on the Great Orme research page, Cathy Hollis and Alanna Juerges explain some of the processes that took place to produce the mines on the Great Orme, of which the following summary is a much-simplified version. Go to the above link to see the detailed overview.

The Great Orme limestone is a sedimentary rock formed of the accumulated remains of billions of calcium carbonate-secreting organic sea creatures that died and were laid down with rock salts in warm, shallow tropical seas during the Lower Carboniferous (c.335-330 million years ago). These include shellfish, foraminifera and corals, some of which can be seen as fossils in sections of the limestone on the Great Orme. There are multiple layers of the limestone on the Great Orme, often clearly visible, and each represents different phases of sediments as they were laid down. Around 330 million years ago this deposition of carbonates stopped, and the landmass of which the Great Orme was a part was eventually buried beneath a kilometer of other materials. In the late Carboniferous and early Permian periods, a collision between two shifting tectonic plates lead to folding and uplift of the landscape in north Wales, with faults torn across the Great Orme.

The faults allowed molten rocks, minerals and gases to escape. Amongst these escapees was dolostone, which in some places on the Great Orme altered the character of the limestone, becoming dolomite,or dolomitic limestone. The copper ores for which the miners were searching were found in veins that cross-cut the dolostone, meaning that they formed after it. This formation probably occurred during a new period of tectonic activity that was responsible for the uplift of The Alps and other European landmasses, including the Great Orme. The ores found their way into these new faults, and as this period of tectonic activity ended, and the atmosphere began to cool the molten materials, they slowly solidified where they lay. On the Great Orme, chalcopyrite was the copper ore that had inserted itself into seams of the limestone, and this was oxidized and became malachite. It was the malachite that was used for the manufacture of copper objects. Because much, but by no means all, of the limestone on the Great Orme was dolomitized, this created conditions that were favourable for mining. This new rock was much softer than the parent rock and some of it was highly friable and quite easily removed by bone tools.

The extent of the Devensian ice sheets. Source: Nicholas Flemming 2002

A further relevant process was the geomorphological activity that took place during the last Ice Age, the Devensian. The Irish Sea ice sheet that covered North Wales during the Devensian dragged down the surface of the Great Orme’s Head, scouring it of its upper surfaces as the ice sheet made its relentless way south. When the ice sheets finally retreated at around 11,000 years ago, Wales had been reshaped and re-profiled, and the the copper-bearing seams of the Great Orme had been exposed. The horizontal and vertical cracks in and fissures the limestone were further expanded by the subsequent action of rainwater erosion, groundwater and ice as the rock was subject to continual weathering.

For anyone interested in a full understanding of the geology, there are references at the end of this post in Sources.

Mining the ore

The copper mining process on Mount Gabriel at a similar date, by William O’Brien 1996, p.32 (see Sources at end).

As an industrial process, malachite had to be extracted first and then processed. Malachite is not the only ore that can be used to make copper metalwork and bronze, but is one of the simpler ones to process. As William O’Brien discusses, following his excavations at the Mount Gabriel copper mine in southwest Ireland, this requires prospecting, organizing mining teams, collecting raw materials and applying existing skills for the manufacture of tools to enable the extraction of ore and the specialized conversion of that ore to metal. O’Brien has put some elements of these workstreams into a diagram shown right, which gives a good sense of some of the processes involved (click image to enlarge). Although there are differences at the Great Orme, what this demonstrates very effectively is that there are three connected flows involved. The first, on the left of the diagram, is the collection of raw materials and the preparation and manufacture of tools and equipment. The second is the extraction cycle, and the third, in two stages, is the processing of ore.

Mining tools

The tools left behind in the Great Orme mines were mainly made of bone and stone, but there is evidence in the form of markings in the stone of bronze picks and chisels. Metals were almost certainly recycled rather than abandoned. Pottery was probably used for some tasks, although not much evidence of it is found at the mines, which suggests that other, more lightweight, less fragile and larger forms of carrier were preferred, made of basketry, leather or textile (such as sacking). All organic materials that are vulnerable to decay over time and are only very rarely found on archaeological sites and usually only in exceptional environmental conditions.

By far the greatest number of tools, over 33,000 of whole and fragmentary pieces, were made of bone. Over half of these were cattle bone, and the rest were a mix of sheep, goat, deer and wild boar or pig, mainly ribs, limbs and shoulder blades. The long thin bones were used as picks, whilst the wide-based shoulder blades were used as shovels. Many of them were bright green when they were found, stained by the malachite.

Some of the stone hammers and mauls used in the mines, held today in the archaeological store on the site.

The majority of the stone tool collection is represented by over 2400 vast stone hammers with have been battered into their present shape by usage. At least some of them were thought to have fallen from nearby harder outcrops that were more durable than the softer local sedimentary rocks. Many of these were found on the local beaches, where they had been rolled and rounded. They varied in size from pieces that could be held by hand to enormous “mauls” that could be up to 20lbs in weight and would have been employed using some form of sling so that the stone could be swung into the rock face.

Possible reconstruction of the hafting of a Copa Hill maul from mid Wales showing how it may have been used in a sling. Source: Burrow 2011, p.90

Opencast shaft mining

Helpful artist’s impression from the Great Orme mines of what the opencast mine would have looked like.

The earliest phase of Great Orme mining was opencast mining that took place in the Pyllau valley, as shown in the artist’s reconstruction left, on one of the information boards. The scoured landscape that the retreating ice-sheets had revealed permitted the prospectors to recognize the malachite-rich seams in the limestone, and to access it with relative ease by open cast mining. The techniques was to mine from the top down, removing the soft dolomitic limestone from in between the pieces of harder original limestone, creating the bizarre-looking landscape that remains today. This could be done using picks and shovels manufactured from bone, aided with hand-held hammerstones. A series of ladders, lifts and pulleys were probably required as the mines shafts became deeper, ready for copper processing on the surface. Eventually these stone shafts were exhausted and if the mines were to continue to provide copper, underground mining was the only solution.

Underground tunnel mining

“Deads” in one of the galleries on the tour

Underground mining would have been very hard. Over the centuries eventually nine levels were excavated out of the limestone (of which two are included on the visit).

Some of the tunnels, like most of those shown in this post were tall and thin, allowing people to move down them upright in single-file. Some were significantly smaller, long and thin that could only be mined lying down by the smallest members of society – perhaps women and certainly, given how tiny the passages were, children. Others were opened out into large galleries like caverns, one of which is thought to be the largest surviving prehistoric man-made underground excavation in the world. One of the hollowed out galleries on the visit is filled with what are known as “deads,” the large fragments of waste rock left behind after ore had been extracted. It made more sense to backfill exhausted tunnels and galleries with waste then to remove it laboriously to the surface, where disposal would still have been a problem.

There were three methods of excavating malachite in the underground mines. The first continued to be bone picks for softer rock, the dolomitic limestones, but harder rocks eventually had to be mined as well. Harder rocks were excavated by a combination of fire-setting and stone tools. Stone tools, described above, included hand-held hammers and large mauls that would have been fixed in a sling in order to swing it at the mine face, both requiring the the input of energy and strength in a very difficult environment filled with stone dust and sharp fragments.

Simulation of a fire in one of the narrow shafts that head off horizontally from the bigger tunnels, thankfully without the smoke

Fire-setting added to the discomfort and raised the risk of serious injury. It consists of gathering a large pile of dead wood, which was placed against rock faces to be mined in order to make them more brittle and easier to work. Sometimes water could be added to the hot rock to help with the fragmentation process. The smoke created by the fire in such small spaces with no ventilation carried the risk of suffocating anyone in the vicinity, as well as the possibility of lung disease. Presumably the mines were vacated during this process, but the risk must still have been high for those who set the fires. In the long term, lung damage both from the smoke and the dust and fragments of stone must have been an ongoing problem.

Processing the ore

Cleaning the ore

The site of the ore cleaning site at Ffynnon Rhufeinig. Source: Wager and Ottaway 2018

In order to ensure that few impurities entered the smelting process, and that a good quality copper was obtained, the ore mined from the Great Orme had to be separated from the general waste material around it, called gangue. This stage in copper manufacturing is called beneficiation. When an ore was mined it was still attached to bits of rock and dust, and this had to be removed. This involved grinding, cleaning and sorting. Pestles and mortars were used to grind down the ore, and examples have been found at the Great Orme. Once it had been reduced, the mixture of rock and ore had to be sorted both by hand and eye, and usually by straining through running water. Once the cleaning process had been completed, it might be re-ground into a powder that could then be smelted. On the Great Orme a cleaning site was discovered and excavated at Ffynnon Rhufeinig, a natural spring that was run into a series of channels and ponds. the site was a kilometer away from the mines themselves, and it is suggested that the wider landscape was used during the Early Bronze Age phase of the site for processes connected with the mines, other than mining itself.

Copper smelting

Location of copper smelting site at Pentrwyn, Great Orme. Source: Williams 2014

Once the ore was sorted and cleaned, it underwent a process called smelting. Smelting is a term that refers to an ore being converted to a metal by the application of heat up to and beyond melting point. This took place above ground, and required specialized skills and equipment. So far only one smelting site has been identified at the Great Orme, dating to around 900BC, well after the copper mine’s main period of maximum exploitation, at a location some distance from the mine itself at Pentrwyn on the coast. Copper can be found in a number of different forms, some more difficult to process than others, but the malachite (copper carbonate) at the Great Orme required a relatively simple production methodology.

Display of prehistoric smelting equipment in a shelter on the pathway at the top of the opencast mine at the Great Orme.

After the ore had been cleaned, a furnace had to be built and prepared. The furnace was often formed by a pit with short walls. To this a clay tuyère was fitted, which was a tube that interfaced between the furnace and a pair of bellows. The bellows helped to raise the heat by blowing oxygen to feed the flames. This was an important factor because malachite needs to be between heated to between 1100 and 1200ºC before it will become molten. It runs the risk of mixing with the copper ore to become copper oxide, which cannot be used for metal production, so charcoal was also added into the furnace. The charcoal burns much hotter than wood, so contributed additional aid to the heating process but at the same time releases carbon dioxide as it burns, which helps to neutralize the impact of the oxygen on the ore, enabling it to become copper. The ore was heated in the furnace within a crucible, which is a vessel that will handle the high temperatures required for melting metals. The melted metal was then poured into a mould made of stone, pottery or bronze.

Bronze smelting

Bronze was a transformation of copper and tin into something entirely stronger and more resilient than either. It usually consisted of 90% copper and 10% tin, although later cocktails produced slightly different results. Tin lowers the melting point of copper, making it easier to convert the copper ore to liquid form. There were two methods used at the Great Orme. The first was by combining both copper and tin ore in a single smelting process. The second was adding tin or or to copper that had already been melted. As with copper, the Bronze was then moulded to form different tools and weapons.

The excellent video below shows a copper palstave under construction from the crushing of the ore using a pestle and mortar, via the smelting of the ore, to the moulding of the molten metal to the trimming of the final tool.

The manufacture of metal tools

Copper axe and stone mould from Durham. British Museum WG.2267. Source: British Museum

The earliest casting moulds in which the tools were formed were made of stone, and were open, with no top half. An example of an open stone mould from north Wales was found at Betws y Coed. The making of moulds became in itself a skilled task, creating the exact shape in stone that was required in the finished metal object, and they could create much more complex forms. Later,moulds could be made of clay or bronze. Once the copper or bronze had been poured into the mold and allowed to cool slowly, the object hardened and could be removed from the mould, to be finished by breaking off any excess metal and sharpening the blade. Initially only solid items like flat axes and more complex palstaves (such as the one shown below) were made.

A palstave found at the Little Orme

Two parts of moulds for a palstave were found in three miles from the Great Orme in 2017 by a metal detectorist, shown below

Palstave moulds found near the Great Orme in 2017. Source: BBC News

Soon hollow or socketed objects were made as well, with the use of double-moulds and by inserting cores made of clay or other materials, which created a new way of hafting tools. and as these and the the socketed axe below shows, additional features like functional loops and decorative components could be added if required.

Bronze socketed axe head from Pydew, in the hills above Llandudno Junction, to the southeast of the Great Orme north Wales.

Socketed axe head on a haft, found at Must Farm, Cambridge. Source: Cambridge Archaeological Unit

The copper miners

An opening into one of the tiny shafts that only children would have been small enough to work

The early opencast miners would have been fit enough to undertake physical labour, and the first open cast mining required both knowledge and some basic skills, but once the knowledge was acquired, the rest would have been well within the capability of a farming or herding community. The veins of malachite sandwiched within soft limestone had to be recognized, and a strategy for extracting it and processing it had to be learned, but the ores could be excavated from soft dolomitized limestone using bone picks. The use of bone for tools rather than stone means that although it would have been a laborious task, it was not as back-breaking as tunnelling through solid rock.

This clearly changed. As the mining activities plunged underground and tunnels had to be excavated in the limestone to give access to the malachite, the miners must have been selected for more than merely strength and fitness. As stated above, it is entirely likely that women were employed in the task, being smaller than most men, and it is unquestionable that children were employed to excavate the slender warrens that only such small bodies could excavate and navigate. The community must have been in a position to replace its miners, because this was not merely back-breaking work, but dangerous too.

Damaged vertebra from the skeleton of an 18-year old found in a cave burial on the Little Orme. Source: John Blore 2012.

The risk to lungs and life from smoke, dust and rock particles has already been mentioned. Other dangers potentially included the collapse of walls and roofs, poor ventilation and the difficulties of lighting. No evidence has been found so far to show how the mines were illuminated, although there are a number of alternatives possible. As the mine went deeper, nearing the groundwater level, there may also have been danger of flooding. Wet stone from constant dripping in rainy and weather and falling rock must have been responsible for their fair share of bruises, cuts, head injuries and bone breaks, a potential problem where minimal medical knowledge was available and when infections could result in serious difficulty.

Long-term repetitive strain and stress injuries must have been common as well, leading to defects, as well as certain debilities and disabilities. A burial of four skeletons in the North Face Cave on the Little Orme, contemporary with the mines, shows that one of the individuals had sustained serious compression damage to his vertebrae, perhaps a result of extensive mining activity over a long period.

Visitor centre reconstruction of one of the Great Orme settlements.

Although a number of settlement sites have been recognized on the Great Orme, not all of them were necessarily associated with the mines, although the characteristic round houses would have been the type of settlement familiar to the miners. It has been suggested that the mines may only have been worked on a seasonal basis, at least in the first decades, and that the miners belonged to farming communities whose main settlement sites were elsewhere, or that they were nomadic pastoralist who were either fully mobile or transhumant. Later on, when the mines were more intensively worked, more permanent lodgings may have been required. It is also possible that over the entire span of time during which the mines were used, settlements shifted positions.

Visual representation of domesticate bone elements found in the mine. Source: James 2011.

The miners were not ill-fed, if the available evidence represents ongoing dietary possibilities, and there is nothing to suggest that there is any reason why they would not have been well sustained for the hard work undertaken, although conditions were certainly unpleasant. Sîan James has carried out post-graduate analysis of the bones found at the mines, which give some insight into what types of meat were consumed there. Sîan James’s research carried out at the Great Orme on the animal bones indicates that over cattle, which represent over 50% of the faunal remains, were butchered elsewhere and were brought to the site in manageable joints or portions. Sheep/goat (difficult to distinguish from one another in the archaeological record) and pig are also represented, making up the other half of the domestic species. No fish bones were found and only a handful of shellfish remains were discovered. Coastal resources were obviously not much used, if at all, at least at the mine itself. The picture that emerges is that the miners, at least whilst they were at the mines, relied on animal husbandry. They either maintained their own herds, were provided meat by their communities or acquired it by exchange with other groups.

Mining is an extreme form of landscape modification and management that impacted not only the immediate area of the mines themselves, but the surrounding landscape. Fire-setting and smelting would have required trees for burning on a much larger scale than previously known, and the miners would have required livestock in the vicinity for both food and raw materials. There can be little doubt that just as humans modified the Great Orme, the miners and their surroundings became entangled with the identity of the mining community and those connected with it. Although settlement and associated community activities may have been mobile, the mines were a fixed point on the Great Orme and an anchor that remained the same over multiple generations. The transmission of specialized craft knowledge from one generation to another may have differentiated the miners and smelters as a group apart, in either a good way, as valued contributors to the local wealth, or in a negative way, as an isolated minority alienated from normal community living. There is no way of knowing.

Drilled amber bead from the North Face Cave burial on the Little Orme (from one of the visitor information signs).

Although it is beyond the scope of this post, understanding who the miners were is a matter of looking not only at the mines and the resources that supported them but at the burial sites and other monuments in the surrounding landscape that incorporated their ideas and beliefs. Their own burial monuments inhabited this space. On the Great Orme there are Bronze Age round cairns as well as a stone row and a possible stone circle. On the Little Orme the North Face Cave revealed the remains of four individuals buried at the time that the mines were worked, aged from 4 to 18 years old. A drilled amber bead was found with one of the burials. The Great Orme is dotted with the sites of those who came before. Neolithic sites and earlier Bronze Age sites are common here and throughout the uplands of north Wales, and the miners would have been aware of them. The landscape was inhabited not merely by the miners and by pastoralist herders but by their distant and recent ancestors, making this a spiritual as well as an economic landscape.

The Little Orme to the east of the Great Orme, seen from the Great Orme just above the copper mines. Llandudno follows the crescent of the bay between the two promontories.

From left to right. The Mold Cape superimposed on a digital sketch, which could be man or woman (Source: British Museum Partnership Programme); Photograph of the Wrexham County Borough Museum hologram of the reconstructed head of Brymbo Man (my photo); The recreated grave and capstone with original skeleton and grave goods of Brymbo Man in the Wrexham County Borough Museum (my photo).

There is a potential link between the Little Orme North Face Cave with the Bryn yr Ellyllon cairn. As well as the gold cape and other fine objects, numerous amber beads were found. One of the Little Orme burials was also accompanied by an amber bead, shown above. Amber beads are in themselves evidence of communications over long distances as amber was not available locally. It was sometimes washed up on beaches of northeast England, but otherwise had to be sourced from the Balkans and central Europe.My earlier series about two burial monuments in northeast Wales at Bryn yr Ffynnon (containing the remains of “Brymbo man” and a very fine Beaker) and Bryn yr Ellyllon (containing the Mold gold cape and other luxury objects) touches on some of these ideas.

The copper trade – selling and travelling

Trade and/or exchange

From a visitor centre sign showing the Voorhout hoard of bronze metalwork found in the Netherlands. 13 out of 17 of the objects were made with materials from the Great Orme

At the Great Orme the movement of goods falls into two parts. The first concerns the acquisition of tin for the manufacture of bronze from southwest England. The second concerns the distribution of metal or metalwork overseas.

The distribution of raw materials and tools in Britain was not unprecedented, and was a well known aspect of the Late Neolithic, where good quality flint from southern England (the uber-workable material for making small stone tools), and completed stone axe heads from Cumbria and north Wales, for example, had been conveyed from their geological sources to areas where they were unavailable. However, the linkages formed during the copper trade were new.

The copper trade probably started in response to local need, but by 1600BC it had upped its game to meet both a national and international need for bronze, which is made by the addition of tin. Tin is only available in a very small number of locations in southwest England, and the two, copper and tin, had to be brought together. Because the proportions of bronze were usually 90% copper to 10% tin, it made sense for the tin to be brought to the copper mining operation to be worked, and as a base for bronze mining the Great Orme became particularly successful. Given the relative locations of southwest England and the Great Orme, is is probable that the trade in tin was sea-based.

River routes showing how Group I shield-patterned palstaves made of Great Orme ores may have been distributed throughout Britain. Source: Williams and de Veslud 2019. Enlarge to see more detail

There is a question about why, at 1600BC the Great Orme was suddenly more productive than it had been before. One possibility is that other mines were exhausted at this time, some having been worked since the Chalcolithic and throughout most of the Early Bronze Age, but more data is required on this subject. Another is that It also needed a market for its products, and the development of the Acton Park industry (dating to around 1500-1400BC) created sufficient demand to sustain a well-placed mine with good connections to other areas.

As an economic enterprise, the Great Orme needed to ensure that its product arrived in the areas where there was demand. Using two types of data, a 2019 study investigated how Great Orme metals reached other parts of Britain and the continent. First, the researchers, Williams and Le Carlier de Veslud identified that a metalwork tradition known as Acton Park (named for its type site in Wrexham), made of Great Orme metals, was found in particular concentration in both the Fenlands of southeast England and in northeast Wales as far as its borders with England. The Fenlands help to demonstrate the reach of Great Orme metalwork to the east coast, whist the industry in northeast Wales presumably benefited from its relative proximity to the mine. A second object type, the Group I shield-pattern palstave, has also been used to help determine other locations where Great Orme metals were found, together with the routes that distributed them. The palstaves were found throughout most of Wales and southern Britain, as well as overseas, and the main concentrations seem to align with river systems, suggesting that the palstaves were distributed either by boat or by pack animals along river valleys.

Map at the visitor centre showing some of the European areas to which the Great Orme copper was sent

The presence of Great Orme copper and bronze overseas is particularly good evidence of sea-borne trade or exchange. Items such as the Voorhaut hoard from the Netherlands have been found as far away as Denmark and Sweden in the northeast, Poland in the east and in France, perhaps taken along the rivers Seine and the Loire in France.

In archaeology it is often unclear how both sides of an exchange may have operated. It is clear that metals were being manufactured and traded, but it is not quite as clear what the Great Orme miners were receiving in return. One possibility is that they were receiving livestock and cereals, but although this is certainly viable as one income stream, it seems to understate the value of the products being sold. Another option, which does not rule out the first, is that jet and amber, both of which are found in graves in north Wales were being sent west into Wales from the east coast, where these raw materials can be found, as prestige goods in return for Great Orme metals.

The only remaining bead, out of around 300, of a necklace of amber beads from the Mold Cape burial Bryn yr Ellyllon. British Museum 1852,0615.1. Source: British Museum

People are also often a little difficult to see clearly in archaeological data, but the metalwork industry of the Great Orme must have had more than miners and metallurgists to sustain it. It seems likely that when the processed metal and the finished artefacts were sent overseas, this must have involved middle-men who were not responsible for digging out the mines and smelting the ores, but were concerned with securing the tin from the southwest and sending the required products to wherever there was demand and payment. It has been suggested that the owner of the Mold Cape at Bryn yr Ellyllon near Mold, which included amber as well as gold, may have benefited from the wealth of the copper trade in order to be in a position to be buried with such luxurious objects, removing them from circulation in the living world.

As well as miners and middle-men there must have been additional people involved in the network who carried the metalwork from the Great Orme to where they were needed, perhaps returning with scrap metal for recasting. Although these people are usually, if not always impossible to identify with any confidence, they certainly existed. Some of them may have carried goods by pack animal, others by inland boats and coast-huggers, still others by vessels that were capable of crossing between England and the continent.

The end of copper mining in Britain

After the Early Bronze Age most of the copper mines went out of use in Britain and Ireland at around 1500-1600BC. The Great Orme was the exception, lasting until c.1300BC. As Richard Bradley says, it is not well understood why this and other changes in British mining occurred, “but they form part of a more general development in the distribution of metalwork which saw quite rapid oscillations between the use of insular copper and a greater dependence on Continental sources of supply.” A possibility suggested by Timberlake and Marshall in 2013 is that the decline in production, if not associated with the exhaustion of British mines, may have been the arrival of plenty of recycled metal from the continent, and particularly from The Alps at around 1400BC.

Final Comments

The above account is a description of the Bronze Age mines, and it was marvelous to read up about them. The copper mines at the Great Orme are one of the most vibrant places in Britain for getting a sense of people and their activities in our prehistoric past. Assuming that you are not claustrophobic and don’t mind being underground (about which more in “Visiting” below), this is a superb and revelatory experience. There is a strong sense of the lengths to which people in the Middle Bronze Age would go to supply the demand for copper. The sheer scale of the enterprise, as you literally rub shoulders with the past, is astounding. There is real feel of intimacy about the experience that is difficult to replicate at most other prehistoric sites in the UK. A visit is a powerful way of connecting with the miners, and a nearly unique insight into at least one aspect of Bronze Age living. Fabulous. Don’t miss it.

Visting

The beginning of Marine Drive, seen from the Llandudno pleasure pier

The Great Orme is one of a great many places of substantial interest in the area, and is easily fitted into a visit to the Llandudno and Conwy areas. Don’t miss Marine Drive, the road that runs around the Great Orme and allows you to get up close and personal with both the geology and the coastal scenery. If you like walking, the Great Orme has many footpaths, some of which take in other prehistoric sites as well as the nice little church of St Tudno, and if you like Medieval history the nearby Conwy Castle and the city walls along which you can walk, are simply brilliant. Conwy’s Elizabethan town-house Plas Mawr is one of Britain’s most remarkable Elizabethan survivors and is absolutely superb.

One of the Great Orme trams, also showing one of the cable car towers too. Photo taken just above the copper mine.

There is plenty of parking at the mines, but if you fancy taking the tram from Llandudno, which is a great option, the half way station is a five minute walk away. The mines are closed off-season so check the website for when they re-open. This year, 2024,they opened for the season on 16th March.

I visited at the end of March, not a peak time of year for visitors, and at 9.30am, which was opening time. I was literally there alone. By the time I returned to my car at 11.30am, having gone after my visit for a short walk to find a Neolithic burial site, it was beginning to get quite busy. There was what was a long stream of children being herded by adults headed for the visitor centre as I was driving away, and although I am sure that they had a splendid time, I’m very glad that I had made it out before they had made it in! If you don’t like crowds, I would suggest that avoiding school holidays and weekends would probably be a good idea.

Initially you go in via the visitor centre. The Visitor Centre is small but provides a very good introduction to the mines. There are information boards that do not go into great detail but still do an excellent job of introducing a complex subject, and there is a small cinema with a video running on a loop, which is a very helpful introduction to the mines. There are also relevant objects on display that provide a good insight into the job of the copper mines.

The visit to the mines is a circular route that includes both the inner mines and a walk above the open cast mines. In total, inside and out, it takes about 40 minutes. Initially the visit takes you underground, along the narrow horizontal shafts that were dug during the Bronze Age, with even smaller and narrower tunnels visible along the route, which would have been too small for adults to work.

A note on claustrophobia and people with uncertain footing. If you are not good in confined spaces, read on. When they give you a non-optional adjustable hard hat to take in this is not a silly precaution to make you feel like an explorer – the head shield is very necessary. I bumped my hard-hatted head several times against the tunnel tops, and was very glad of the protection. The photo on the left is Mum in 2005, (not the most flattering view) and you can see that her red hard hat was necessary in one of the shorter stretches of tunnel. Underfoot you can be confident of a good, even surface, but it can be wet because limestone drips continually after rain. Sensible footwear is required. There are help buttons positioned around the walk, so there is the ability to call for help in an emergency, but this is not a place for someone who dislikes confined spaces or is worried about underfoot conditions. There is a flight of around 35 steps at both start and finish.

When you emerge from the tunnels, you follow the wide path that takes you above the opencast mines where there are more information boards and videos to see about both the Bronze Age mines and the 19th century mining works that first discovered the evidence of the prehistoric mining works, and this gives you an insight into a completely different type of mining.

The route takes you back to the car park via the archaeological stores and the small gift shop. There was no information booklet for sale when I was there, and there were no general background books for sale either (unless my truffle-hound ability to sniff out books failed me). For anyone wanting to read up in advance, see my “Quick Wins” recommendations at the top of my list of Sources, just under the video below.

Sources

Quick wins

The list of books, papers and websites below shows the references that were used for this post, but that was a matter of cobbling together the story from many different sources. The official website for the Great Orme mines is a great resource for some very specific research papers but there is not a lot of background information.

If you want to read up about Bronze Age mining and the Great Orme’s Head in advance and don’t have the time or inclination to your own cobbling, here are a couple of recommendations. Shire always does a good job of finding authors who can present a lot of information succinctly and informatively, and William O’Brien’s Bronze Age Copper Mining in Britain and Ireland is no exception, being both short and stuffed full of very digestible information about the Great Orme and several other mines, although just a little out of date having been published in 1996. There is a very good summary of the Great Orme mines in Steve Burrow’s well-illustrated and informative 2011 book Shadowlands, an introduction to Wales for the period 3000-1500BC (don’t be put off by the silly title – it is a National Museum of Wales publication, excellently researched, well written and well worth reading from beginning to end). Another good summary of the Great Orme can be found in Frances Lynch’s chapter in Prehistoric Wales published in 2000. The best detailed single reference for anyone who has academic leanings is the really excellent but seriously expensive Boom and Bust in Bronze Age Britain: The Great Orme Copper Mine and European Trade by R. Alan Williams (Archaeopress 2023), based on his PhD research at the Great Orme, but you can get the gist of some of his ideas in the 2019 Antiquity paper, Boom and bust in Bronze Age Britain by R. Alan Williams and Cécile Le Carlier de Veslud, which is currently available to read online free of charge: https://tinyurl.com/2d54yhax. Full details of all the above are shown below, in alphabetical order by author’s surname.

Books and papers

Where publications are available to read free of charge online I have provided the URL but do bear in mind the web address can change and that sometimes papers are taken down, so if you want to keep a copy of any paper, I recommend that you download and save it.

Blore, J. Updated 2012, Archaeological Excavation at North Face Cave, Little Ormes Head, Gwynedd 1962-1976. Unpublished excavation report
https://www.academia.edu/11888529/Archaeological_Excavation_North_Face_Cave_Little_Ormes_Head_Gwynedd

Blore, J. 2017. Radiocarbon Date for the Human Remains from North Face Cave, Little Orme’s Head, Gwynedd. Unpublished report
https://www.academia.edu/33487432/Radiocarbon_Date_for_the_Human_Remains_from_North_Face_Cave_Little_Ormes_Head_Gwynedd

Bradley, R. 2019 (2nd edition). The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland. Cambridge University Press

Burrow, Steve. 2011. Shadowland. Wales 3000-1500BC. Oxbow Books / National Museum of Wales

Burrow, Steve. 2012. A Date with the Chalcolithic in Wales: a review of radiocarbon measurements for 2450–2100 cal BC. In (eds.) Allen, M J and Gardiner, J and Sheridan. Is there a British chalcolithic? People, place and polity in the late 3rd millennium. Oxbow Books, p.172-192
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314177072_A_Date_with_the_Chalcolithic_in_Wales_a_review_of_radiocarbon_measurements_for_2450-2100_cal_BC

Clarke, D.V., Cowie, T.G. and Foxon, A. 1985. Symbols of Power at the Age of Stonehenge. National Museum of Antiquities, Scotland.

Davies, Oliver. 1948. The Copper Mines on Great Orme’s Head, Caernarvonshire. Archaeologia Cambrensis The Journal of the Cambrian Archaeological Association. Vol. 100, p.61-66
https://journals.library.wales/view/4718179/4740893/106#?xywh=-2279%2C240%2C7491%2C3707

Farndon, John. 2007. The Illustrated Encylopedia of Rocks of the World. Southwater

Flemming, Nicholas. 2002. The scope of Strategic Environmental Assessment of North Sea areas SEA3 and SEA2 in regard to prehistoric archaeological remains The scope of Strategic Environmental Assessment of North Sea areas SEA3 and SEA2 in regard to prehistoric archaeological remains. Department of Trade and Industry
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265420489_The_scope_of_Strategic_Environmental_Assessment_of_North_Sea_areas_SEA3_and_SEA2_in_regard_to_prehistoric_archaeological_remains_The_scope_of_Strategic_Environmental_Assessment_of_North_Sea_areas_SEA3/citation/download

Gale, David. 1995. Stone tools employed in British metal mining. Unppublished PhD Thesis. University of Bradford 1995
https://bradscholars.brad.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10454/17157/PhD%20Thesis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Grace, Roger. 1997 The `chaîne opératoire approach to lithic analysis, Internet Archaeology 2
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue2/grace_index.html

Griffiths, Christopher J. 2023). Axes to axes: the chronology, distribution and composition of recent bronze age hoards from Britain and Northern Ireland. Proceedings of the Prehistoric
Society. Open Source.
https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/114422/1/axes-to-axes-the-chronology-distribution-and-composition-of-recent-bronze-age-hoards-from-britain-and-northern-ireland.pdf

Hollis, Cathy and Juerges, Alanna, Geology of the Great Orme, Llandudno. Great Orme Mines research page.
https://www.greatormemines.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Geology-of-the-Great-Orme-University-of-Manchester.pdf

James, Sîan E. 2011. The economic, social and environmental implications of faunal remains from the Bronze Age Copper Mines at Great Orme, North Wales. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Liverpool, March 2011. Great Orme research page
https://www.greatormemines.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Sian-James.pdf

Johnson, Neal. 2017. Early Bronze Age Barrows of the Anglo-Welsh Border. BAR British Series 632

Johnston, Robert. 2008. Later Prehistoric Landscapes and Inhabitation. In (ed.) Pollard, Joshua. Prehistoric Britain. Blackwell, p.268-287

Jowett, Nick. 2017. Evidence for the use of bronze mining tools in the Bronze Age copper mines on the Great Orme, Llandudno. May 2017, Great Orme Mines research page
https://www.greatormemines.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/article.pdf

Lynch, F. 2000. The Later Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age. In. Lynch, F., Aldhouse-Green, S., and Davies, J.L. (eds.) Prehistoric Wales. Sutton Publishing, p.79-138

O’Brien, William. 1996. Bronze Age Copper Mining in Britain and Ireland. Shire Archaeology. [Concentrates mainly on the site of Mount Gabriel, southwest Ireland]

Sheridan, A. 2008. Towards a fuller, more nuanced narrative of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain 2500-1500 BC. Bronze Age Review. vol.1, British Museum
https://britishmuseum.iro.bl.uk/concern/articles/28723733-e7b7-4726-aa04-1d89ad647048

Talbot, Jim and Cosgrove, John. 2011. The Roadside Geology of Wales. Geologists’ Association Guide No.69. The Geologists’ Association.

Timberlake, S. and Marshall, P. 2014. The beginnings of metal production in Britain: a new light on the exploitation of ores and the dates of Bronze Age mines. Historical Metallurgy 47(1), p.75-92
https://hmsjournal.org/index.php/home/article/download/112/109/109

Wager, Emma and Ottaway, Barbara 2019. Optimal versus minimal preservation: two
case studies of Bronze Age ore processing sites. Historical Metallurgy 52(1) for 2018 (published 2019) p.22–32
https://hmsjournal.org/index.php/home/article/download/31/29/29

Williams, Alan R. 2014. Linking Bronze Age copper smelting slags from Pentrwyn on the Great Orme to ore and metal. Historical Metallurgy 47(1) for 2013 (published 2014), p.93–110
https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3004718/1/Pentrwyn%20paper%20(R)%20Dec2014.pdf

Williams, Alan R. and Le Carlier de Veslud, C. 2019. Boom and bust in Bronze Age Britain: major copper production from the Great Orme mine and European trade, c. 1600–1400 BC. Antiquity, Volume 93 , Issue 371 , October 2019 , pp. 1178 – 1196
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/boom-and-bust-in-bronze-age-britain-major-copper-production-from-the-great-orme-mine-and-european-trade-c-16001400-bc/356E30145B1F6597D8AAA0DDBE69BD51/share/65e8e55c2c0c56fcf44096e0be28f1ff6f781f12

Williams, Alan R. 2023. Boom and Bust in Bronze Age Britain. The Great Orme Copper Mine and the European Trade. Archaeopress

Williams, C.J. 1995, A History of the Great Orme Mines from the Bronze Age to the Victorian Age. A Monograph of British Mining no.52. Northern Mine Research Society

Websites

Great Orme Copper Mines (official website)
Home page
https://www.greatormemines.info/
Research Page:
https://www.greatormemines.info/research/

BBC News
Great Orme: Rare Bronze Age axe mould declared treasure, June 1st 2022
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-61663012

Coflein
North Face Cave, Little Orme’s Head
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/307851/archives/

Conwy County Borough Council
Discovering the Great Orme
https://www.conwy.gov.uk/en/Resident/Leisure-sport-and-health/Coast-and-Countryside/Assets/documents/Discover-the-Great-Orme.pdf

Great Orme’s Marine Drive Audio Trail and Nature Information Sheet
https://www.visitconwy.org.uk/things-to-do/marine-drive-audio-trail-p316681

Environment Agency Wales
Metal Mine: Strategy for Wales
https://naturalresources.wales/media/680181/metal-mines-strategy-for-wales-2.pdf

Based in Churton
Who was Brymbo Man, what was the Mold Cape and why do they matter?
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2023/03/18/part-1-who-was-brymbo-man-what-was-the-mold-cape-and-why-do-they-matter/

The Cheshire log boats in context

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On a recent visit to the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port on the Wirral, I noticed a long, dusty glass cabinet with what looked like a big length of seriously traumatized tree trunk inside. Having seen pictures of logboats that looked just like this, but never having seen one on display, I went to have a closer look. Sure enough, it was the Baddiley Mere logboat. In its presumably temporary display position it was hemmed in by other objects and difficult to reach and the cabinet was seriously dusty making it difficult to view properly. Happily an information poster was clearly displayed explaining that this is a nationally important piece of English heritage.

Baddiley Mere Log Boat at the National Waterways Museum, Ellesemere Port, not really living up to its full potential as an exhibit and an artefact of national importance.

Finds of logboats or dugout canoes (properly known as monoxylous crafts) are comparatively rare, and their survival is always due to environmental conditions that favour their unexpected preservation. The Baddiley Mere log boat is one of a short list of survivors to have been found in the boggy conditions of Cheshire, all of which are discussed below. In western Europe, log boats have been found in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France and Scandinavia as well as Britain and Ireland. In Britain, many were found at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, often due to land drainage and water cleaning activities, including all of the Cheshire examples. This post lists the Cheshire logboats, and puts them into the context of British logboats in general.

The environments that preserved the logboat

Artist’s reconstruction of the Poole Harbour logboat, which dates to the Iron Age. Source: Wessex Museums

The relatively small number of logboats discovered relates partly to accidents of survival and partly to accidents of discovery. If you were to look at a distribution map of logboat locations (had I been able to find one), you will be looking at where logboats were found, not the full geographical range over which they were used. Organic remains like bone, wood, leather and reed are so much less commonly preserved than the durable tools made from stone, ceramic and metal that Linda Hurcombe refers to organic objects that must have dominated the human toolkit throughout prehistory as “the missing majority.” Differential conditions of preservation for organic remains means that logboats are only found in very specific environmental conditions.

It is almost certain that logboats were a standard part of the riparian kit during later prehistory, if not before. The waterways were an important communication network over considerable distances, but even when used for purely local activities, boats would have been useful for getting around, crossing rivers and for fishing and capturing wildfowl. The remarkable example of eight logboats found at Must Farm in Cambridgeshire near contemporary eel-traps and hurdle weirs creates a picture of experiments with slightly different forms of boat, in use for everyday activities in the fenland area.

The Carpow logboat in Perth, Scotland, as it was found.

The distribution of logboat finds is confined in Britain to waterlogged environments where oxygen, which enables decay, has been eliminated, and where these waterlogged environments have been preserved for 100s, sometimes 1000s of years. These anaerobic conditions only exist under certain conditions but may be found in meres, swamps, marshes, fens, carrs, riverbanks and deeply silted river and lake beds. Peat deposits, especially waterlogged ones, may be acidic, which hinders bacterial decay and helps to preserve organic remains. Waterlogged acidic conditions are ideal for preservation of wood and plant remains. As organic remains decay rapidly, even something as large as a log boat would have to be buried with anaerobic sediments very quickly, making preservation even more of a challenge.

Discovery is always by accident, at times when activities are taking place to drain or clean waterlogged environments, to dredge silt, to dig up peat, or where hot summers or longer-term climate change desiccates waterlogged areas, exposing wooden items. Other organic items that are found preserved include trackways, platforms for buildings, tools and objects made of bone, wood, leather and reed, and even fabrics.

Cheshire Logboats

The short list below shows the Cheshire logboats, prehistoric and early medieval that I have been able to find information about.

Table of logboats from Cheshire. Click to expand to read more clearly

The Baddiley Mere logboat, now in the National Waterways Museum in Ellesmere Port (and formerly in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester), can be visited. The Ciss Green example has been in the Congleton Museum from the museum’s opening in 2002. I have been unable to find if the others are still preserved.

Baddiley Mere

The log boat was found in Baddiley Mere (about 15 miles south west of Nantwich) in 1911, when the water quality in the mere, a glacial lake, was being improved for supply to Nantwich. Baddiley Mere is part of a group of wetlands in the south-west of Cheshire, that lies between between Cholmondeley and the Shropshire border, and they can be associated with areas of peat and other waterlogged deposits.

The Baddiley Mere boat at the time of its extraction in 1911. Source: The The North West England Regional Research Framework: Prehistoric Resource Assessment 2007

It was found in peat deposits at around 6ft c.1.83m) beneath the surface, embedded in the anaerobic conditions that ensured its preservation. It is formed of a single piece of oak and is nearly 18ft (5.5m) long by just under 3.3ft (c.1m) wide. It weighs 458kg. Its slightly distorted shape is due to shrinkage after it was removed from the waterlogged conditions. In 1929 a preserved paddle, about 4ft long (1.21m) was found near the findspot and may (or may not) have been associated with the boat. Rust was found in a hole in the boat, thought to be from a nail. A vertical hole at one end is thought to have been for a mooring rope or for fastening a pole into position.

The Iron Age date suggested by a piece of rust in a nail hole may be indicate that the boat does not predate the Iron Age. There was not a lot to rule out a later date in terms of the features of the logboat itself, but a radiocarbon date suggested a late prehistoric date.

The Baddiley Mere logboat was apparently on display in the Grosvenor Museum until at least 1974, so must have been moved to the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port sometime after that date. See the end of this post, just before Sources, for a link to a TikTok video of Professor Howard Williams talking about the Baddiley Mere logboat.

Warrington 1 and 2, Arpley Meadows

Arpley Meadow Logboat March 1884 by Charles Madeley. Source: Madeley 1894

In 1894, just a year after the discovery, Charles Madeley wrote about the discovery of two logboats during the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal:

The construction of the Manchester Ship Canal has been, in one respect, a great disappointment to those who dwell upon its banks. It was only natural to expect that the excavation of so great a cutting for thirty-six miles, through the soil of the Mersey valley, could not fail to result in large discoveries of relics of the former inhabitants of the district, and numerous additions to the contents of our museums. But these anticipations were speedily relinquished on the advent of the steam navvy, whose rapid evolutions and wholesale manner of procedure obviously offered little prospect of the preservation of any but the largest objects which might be in its way. Of such large objects, however, two very interesting examples were the two canoes which were found, not in the course of the canal itself, but on the banks of the Mersey, during certain subsidiary operations at Arpley, in the township of Warrington. . . .

Early in September, 1893, during the completion of the new course for the Mersey which was cut across the Arpley meadows, the dredger came upon an obstruction, which proved to be a dug-out canoe, over ten feet in length. Later, on the 28th March, 1894, another and larger canoe was discovered, at a point 600 yards further east and close to the west end of the present Walton Lock. Each canoe lay 20 to 25 yards north of the former bank of the River Mersey, and at a depth of about eighteen feet below the surface of the ground. On their discovery both canoes were carefully removed and preserved, under the direction of Mr. William Burch, C.E., the Ship Canal Co.’s engineer for this section, and Mr. H. Davenport, who was in charge of the dredging operations when the first discovery was made. The canoes were eventually presented by the Canal Company to the Warrington Museum.

Arpley Meadow logboat September 1893. Source: Charles Madeley 1894

The 1893 logboat (Warrington 1) was the bigger of the two (shown above right), and shows a number of interesting features, described in detail by Madeley. Its length was unbroken and measured 12 feet 4 inches (c.3.8m) long. The width was irregular, 2ft10ins (c.87cm) at the stern and ; the greatest width, near the stern, was about 2ft3 1/2 ins (69cm) from midsection to bow. The depth was also slightly irregular, at around 15ins (38cm) at the stern and 12ins (31cm) at the bow. The timber of the base is around 2ins (c.6cm). Two internal ribs remain on the floor of the boat, as shown in the above diagram. The ends of the boat are rounded, inside and out, both in plan and section, but it not known whether there was what Madeley refers to as “a projecting nose,” like that on the smaller canoe. At each end there is a section of gunwale and at the stern end some timber waling fastened down with four trenails an inch (c.2.5cm) in diameter. Indentations in the stern suggests the presence of a plank perhaps serving as a seat or a standing platform at the stern end, clearly visible in the top of the sketches.

The 1894 Walton Lock logboat (Warrington 2) was discovered (shown above left) and this was smaller and of a slightly different form. It measures 10 feet 8 1/2 ins (c.3.30m) in length and was probably about 2ft 9ins (c.84cm). Its depth was about 14 inches (c.36cm) and the rounded bottom was in places as much as 4 inches (c.11cm) thick. It features “an overhanging nose or prow, the remains of which project some three inches beyond the stem.” The bow has a vertical auger-hole on the starboard side, which may suggest a waling-piece similar to that other logboat. The timber was oak and “very free from knots.”

Radiocarbon dates listed by Switsur suggest that they are Anglo-Saxon, placing them in the second half of the first millennium A.D.

Warrington Logboat 3 (Corporation Electrical Works)

One of the Warrington logboats found at Arpley, although I don’t know which one. Source: Festival of Archaeology 2022

The Heritage Gateway entry record is as follows:

Logboat found in dredging the Mersey opposite the Corporation Electric Works in 1908. It is 10 ft 3 inches long (3.14m) x 2 ft 8 ins (0.80 metres) wide and 1 ft 7 inches (0.48 metres) deep ). One side and some of the bottom have been lost. Made from oak it has a radiocarbon date of around 875 AD.

Warrington Logboat 4 (Corporation Electrical Works)

The Heritage Gateway entry record is as follows:

Logboat found in 1922 in works on the north bank of the Mersey at the Corporation Electric Works. Boat is 11 ft 6 ins (3.5 metres) long with part of the bow broken off. 2 ft 11 ins (89 cm) wide and 20 ins (50 cm) deep. It was covered by 20 ft (6 metres) of river sand, mud and earth. Found in association were two rows of alder stakes forming a fore-runner of the later ‘fish-yards’ or traps It has a radiocarbon date of around 1072 AD.

Warrington Logboat 5, Arpley

The Heritage Gateway entry record is as follows:

Logboat dredged from the old river channel near its junction with the diversion at Arpley in 1929.It is 11 ft long (3.35metres) x 2 ft 4 ins wide (71 cm) and 22 ins deep (56 cm).It is damaged and may have been longer.The find spot is only a few yards to the east of the find spot of Warrington logboat 2. It is made of oak and has a radiocarbon date of 958AD.

Warrington Logboat 7, Walton Arches

The Heritage Gateway entry record is as follows:

Logboat dredged from the Mersey, west of the central pier of Walton Arches in 1931 though it probably came from the vicinity of the junction of the river diversion where other logboats have been found. It is 13ft 6ins long (4.11 m) x 2ft wide (61 cm). Made of oak it dates to 1090 AD.

Warrington Logboat 11, Gateworth

Piece of the Gateworth logboat. Source: Festival of Archaeology 2022

The Heritage Gateway entry records this piece of a logboat as follows:

Logboat found in 1971 at Gateworth sewerage works, near Sankey Bridges. The boat is made from elm and was found at a depth of 3.3 metres in coarse sand. The end is rounded and has a protruding ‘beak’ through which there is a horizontal hole. A radio carbon date of 1000AD has been given.

Cholmondeley 1 and 2

The discovery of the logboat found in a peat bog below Cholmondeley Castle was found in 1819 and published in the Chester Chronicle in the same year. It was reported to be 11ft c.3.35cm) long and 30 inches (c.76.2cm) wide, but very little additional information is available on the subject other than that it was hollowed out of the trunk of a single tree. Although initially believed to be Iron Age in date, it is more likely to be of a similar date to other Cheshire logboats that lie in the date range from the eighth to thirteenth centuries AD. A second Cholmondeley logboat is mentioned on the Heritage Gateway website, but the link to it is broken (SMR/HER 525/2).

Ciss Green Farm, Astbury, near Congleton

The Ciss Green Farm, Astbury logboat on display at the Congleton Museum. Source: Wikipedia. Photograph by Ian Dougherty ex oficio Chairman of the Board of Trustees Congleton Museum

Found in 1923 by farmer Charles Ball during gravel digging near the source of Dairy Brook, the Ciss Green logboat was found near Asbtury, and was stored in the basement of the Manchester Museum until it was eventually moved to the new Congleton Museum in time for the museum opening in June 2002, where it was one of the star attractions. The Museum website does not appear to mention it, so I do not know if it is still there.

Its original measurements are unknown because one end was broken off, but it was made of oak and was nearly 12ft long (c.3.66cm) when found It had a square cross-section with vertical sides. Two holes in the boat have have held oars. Although it was assumed to be prehistoric when it was found, Switsur’s radiocarbon dating puts it in the Anglo-Saxon period at around 1000BC.

Oakmere, near Delamere

In September 1935 an oak logboat was discovered by during extraction of water from Oakmere in September 1935, which lowered the level of the mere. Frank Latham’s local history book on Delamere happily contains a first hand account of the discovery by the gamekeeper George Rock, who had lived there since 1910. Rock noticed what was the prow sticking up out of the shallow water and recognized that it was something man-made. He reported it to his employer, and in due course Professor Robert Newstead of Liverpool University was brought in to supervise excavations.

The Oakmere logboat at the time of its discovery. Source: Cheshire Archaeology News, Issue 4, Spring 1997, p.2

The logboat was found to be lying on a bed of glacial gravel and silt. At that time it survived to its full length of c.3.6m (dsfdsfds) with a width of 0.79m (sdfsdf) but following removal from its waterlogged habitat, which had preserved it, it became fragmentary. Newstead published a paper about it stating his opinion that it was at least 2,000 years old, probably associated with the nearby Oakmere Iron Age hillfort. Eventually radiocarbon dating carried out by Professor Sean McGrail provided a date range between 1395 and 1470 AD.

A site visit described on the Heritage Gateway website found that both the vegetation and the shoreline had altered considerably since discovery and it was therefore impossible to identify the exact find site. Apparently the landowner Captain Ferguson, who had photographs of the boat as it was found, “waded into the lake and endeavoured to identify the site by means of photographs of the boat in situ. He used detail which was between 250 and 600 metres distant, and was identifiable on the ground and on the photograph. He estimated that the find site was at SJ 5731 6768.”

The canoe was sent on loan to the Grosvenor Museum and then in 1979 or 1980 it was sent on loan to the Maritime Museum at Greenwich. The National Museums Greenwich Collection Search website confesses to owning a piece of logboat from Llyn Llydaw, but makes no mention of one from Cheshire, so its current location remains unknown.

Other submerged wooden constructions

Other significant constructions made of wood have been found in Cheshire in waterlogged environments such as at Lindow Moss in Wilmslow and Marbury Meres near Great Budworth, both of which produced evidence of prehistoric trackways, another important means of communication and local resource exploitation. At Warrington, during the works for the Manchester Ship Canal, pilings were found that suggested the presence of a wharf, although it is unclear if these were contemporary with the logboats found.

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Dates

List of radiocarbon dates from the north of England. I have highlighted those from Cheshire in pink. Source: Switsur 1989, p.1014. N.B. Switsur also gives dates for the rest of England, Wales and Scotland on subsequent pages.

Although their simple design and overall similarity of appearance often lead to the assumption that the logboats are prehistoric, it has been demonstrated by radiocarbon dating that log boats were far more common during the Anglo-Saxon and later Medieval periods, whilst in Scotland they may have been in use as late as the 18th century.

In his 1989 paper on the dating of British logboats, from which a table of the logboats from the north of England is shown right, Roy Switsur comments:

The general condition of the vessels together with lack of bark or sapwood seems to make dendrochronology [tree ring dating] of less practical use for these objects than at first imagined, so that, thus far, the chronology for the boats has depended on radiocarbon measurements. 14C determinations of several early craft from England and other regions of Europe have been published and reviewed . . . and these have shown that some of the boats originate as late as the Medieval period.

Graph showing the distribution of radiocarbon dates for British logboats of all periods. Source: Lanting 1998, p.631

An additional difficulty with logboat dating is that early attempts to preserve boats that were taken out of bogs and meres in the late 19th century and early 20th century used substances that changed the composition of the wood and made radiocarbon dating difficult if not impossible.

The earliest example is not a boat but a paddle made of Betula (birch) that would have accompanied a boat, found in 8th millennium BC contexts in the Mesolithic environs of Star Carr. In his 1998 survey of logboat dates in Europe Lanting estimates between 350 and 400 recorded logboats in Britain and Ireland, but of these the prehistoric examples are a very small minority, with the majority of the earliest dating to no earlier than the Neolithic, most appearing in the Middle Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age (dates in the 4th millennium BC).

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The manufacture of a logboat

A reconstruction of how the Poole logboat may have been built. Source: Berry et al 2019 e-book

Most surviving logboats were constructed from the trunks of the oak, probably because of the hardness and enduring properties of the wood. However, it is probable that many other types of tree were also used for boat construction, as suggested by the elm example from Warrington. Even though softer woods would have been less durable and more prone to damage, they would have been easier to hollow out and carve into shape. Unfortunately softwoods are much less likely than hardwoods to survive as well after deposition.

The skills required for the hollowing out of tree trunks would have represented a fairly mundane activity, although the cutting down of a live tree for use of a whole trunk would have meant different things at different times. A paddle dating to the 8th millennium BC at Star Carr in the Mesolithic was made at a time when wood was plentiful and had not yet been cleared for agricultural activities. By the later Bronze Age and Iron Age the use of a whole live tree for a single boat would have represented more of a pause for thought. Cut marks are preserved on some boats, suggesting how they were carved and what sort of tools might have been used.

A logboat from Must Farm Cambridgeshire, showing features within the hollowed out section. Source: Must Farm Flickr page

All of the boats described as log boats are carved from a single piece of wood, which in Britain is usually oak. Some may have been burned to assist the shaping processes. Although many were not elaborated any further, some were carefully shaped to improve their movement through the water, and some were provided with additional features to improve the usability of the logboats. Even those of a similar date may have very different features in terms of bow and stern shape, holes and fittings. Most have been found in association with inland waterways, lakes, meres, marshes and estuaries, where the shallow and calm waters were suitable for such vessels, and were almost certainly fabricated as near to the shoreline as possible to prevent the very heavy boat having to be dragged too far.

The means for propulsion would have been made at the same time. Logboats could have been either rowed, punted with a pole, or paddled, and a small number of paddles have indeed been found, but not in unambiguous association with logboats. The annual lighter (unpowered barge) races on the Thames show the power of using a combination of oars to row with a paddle at the rear to steer.

It would be surprising if an enterprising person or group had not made the attempt to manufacture a copy of one of these boats, and sure enough The Promethsud Project at Butser Experimental Farm made a logboat using a tree that had come down in the 1987 storms. More recently, the BBC in October 2023 reported that an experimental build was underway in Northamptonshire, part of a £250,000 Heritage Lottery project. Replicas of traditional Bronze Age tools and techniques are being used, including fire, and it is hoped that the two logboats will launched later in 2024.

Experimental reconstruction of a Bronze Age logboat. Source: BBC News

In his book Making, Tim Ingold draws attention to the creation of objects and built environments as a process in which people become involved with materials,during which objects become part of a seamless relationship with their makers. As cultural items, fully integrated both into ways of thinking as well as ways of doing during manufacture, lifetime and at the point of disposal, logboats would have been tied in to perceptions about materials, landscapes, waterscapes and the ability to travel.

Potential uses of logboats in daily life

The uses to which the logboats were put were central to livelihood management, such as fishing, traversing rivers, and travelling over short distances. As mentioned above, the Must Farm Bronze Age logboats were associated with eel traps and river captures, demonstrating how the management of waterways was incorporated into resource management techniques.

The truly remarkable state of preservation of fish traps found in association with logboats in Must Farm, Cambridgeshire. Source: Excavator Francis Pryor’s “In The Long Run” blog.

It has been calculated that the well known Carpow logboat could have carried up to fourteen people, or with a crew of two, around one tonne of cargo. The Brigg logboat was found in an estuary inlet in the river Humber (Hull) where it has been suggested that it could have been employed in carrying heavy cargoes such as grain, wood and perhaps iron ore, as well as having a capacity for up to twenty-eight people. These figures give a good indication that log boats really could make a difference for communities that, as well as fishing, wanted to move resources around including, for example, foodstuffs, ceramics, construction materials and people.

Major riparian connections showing how the river network links from Wessex, the Thames valley and the Humber estuary. These are just as valid for prehistoric, Saxon and Medieval periods. Source: Bradley 2019, p.20

More ambitiously, logboats could have been used for longer distance travel, forging and maintaining links between communities in different areas, exchanging gifts or commodities like salt, heavy objects like stone querns, or exotics (items not available locally), or helping to reach valley-based livestock herds, or move communities to new habitats as part of a mobile livelihood system.

There are independent measures of the value of log boats to communities. Even in some prehistoric periods, sacrificing an entire tree for one vessel would have represented something of a commitment, if not a sacrifice. Most communities would prefer to use branches from slow-growing live trees like sturdy wide-beamed oaks for construction work, only killing off the whole tree if it was necessary for particularly large buildings and other important structures. This suggests that the logboat was deemed to be of sufficient value for the sacrifice of a mature live tree to be worthwhile.

That logboats were valued on an ongoing basis has been demonstrated by the extensive repairs that were made to them. Prior to conservation the Carpow logboat was carefully recorded, including taking an inventory of all its features, including the repairs that had been carried out on it.

Repairs that had been made to the Carpow logboat were carefully recorded during conservation. Source: Woolmer-White and Strachan (ScARF)

Bob Holtzman’s tabulation of all the known repairs of logboats, published in 2021, and his analysis of these findings, has recently highlighted that repairs are another lens through which logboats can be understood. He identifies 73 repaired logboats incorporating 128 repairs, dating from the Middle Bronze Age to the post-medieval period. His typology of repairs clearly indicates that every form of damage that could be imposed on a logboat had a corresponding solution, and that considerable trouble was taken to ensure the longevity of these vessels, some repairs being rather ad hoc, whilst others were far more skilled and permanent. You can read his paper online for his full analysis (see Sources below).

Preserving and conserving logboats

Removing sugar crystals from the logboat following preservation. Source: Wessex Museums

Not only do waterlogged conditions make the discovery of logboat and other large wooden items difficult, but ongoing preservation becomes tricky once the item is removed from the waterlogged conditions that preserved it. Many early logboat finds were removed from their waterlogged contexts and put proudly on display, but began to dry out. Cracks formed and fragmentation began to occur, as well as decay. Attempts at preservation were often unsuccessful, and where successful changed the chemical makeup of the vessel, and made radiocarbon dating difficult if not impossible.

Items have to receive special treatment in order to remain above ground. Decisions have to be made about whether it is best to treat the item in order to retain it in for display in a museum, which can be costly, or to return it to the waterlogged conditions in which it was found. Various techniques have been tried. The Carpow boat from Scotland was kept wet as it was recorded but another solution was needed for long-term display It was decided to use a waxy polymer called polyethylene glycol (PEG) which would replace the water in the wood. The boat was submerged in the solution, in three pieces, in a specially made tank, after which it was freeze-dried, which converted the water turning into ice enabling its removal as a vapour. Prior to these measures, the logboat and its contemporary repairs had been recorded in detail using high-resolution digital photography and 3D scanning. The Poole Harbour logboat was also initially kept in water to prevent it drying out and disintegrating, but in the 1990s conservators from York Archaeological Trust came up with the idea of preserving it in over six tons of sugar solution before being dried out in a sealed chamber. The excess white sugar crystals that covered the boat had to be removed manually.

The Medieval Giggleswick Tarn logboat. Source: Leeds.gov.uk

A rather different problem was presented by the Medieval Giggleswick Tarn logboat (North Yorkshire), originally discovered during drainage works in 1863, “which was blown to pieces during a Second World War air raid” in 1941. It was not until 1974 that the fragments of the ash-built vessel were sent to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich where they were examined and partially re-assembled, and dated to c.1335AD. The Giggleswick Tarn boat was luckier than the Brigg (Hull) logboat which was destroyed in the bombing of the museum where it was on display, suspended from the ceiling, in 1943. In the latter case, all that survives of the boat is the information that was recorded before it went on display.

Prehistoric logboats as special objects

One of eight Bronze Age boats found at Must Farm in Cambridgeshire was decorated, suggesting that particular care was given to the appearance of the boat. Logboats that were used for longer distance journeys and the forging of new connections with other communities have had a special status. Some boats may have been specially created for this purpose, giving them additional prestige and kudos.

Decorated Bronze Age logboat from Must Farm in Cambridgeshire. Source: Must Farm Flickr page

Normally objects that are found isolated and abandoned were discarded at their place of use when no longer needed. They might be deliberately disposed of in middens, broken and swept to the edges of settlements, could be lost to flood or fire or simply dropped by accident and never recovered by their owners. However the deposition of hoards of Late Bronze Age and Iron Age metalwork, like that in Llyn Cerig Bach (Anglesey), and the discovery of an Iron Age preserved body in Lindow Marsh, are associated with the idea of ritual deposition (i.e. deposition of bodies and items connected with specific rites of passage and religious ceremonies). In later prehistory there is often a connection with lakes, rivers and bogs.

The idea that some of the prehistoric logboats might belong to this latter category has been explored by a number of writers, including Joanna Brück, who describes them as objects that had crossed boundaries, and entered liminal spaces, becoming associated with ideas of transformation in the process. In this they might have required a special “ritual decommissioning” process to ensure that any embedded danger or risk associated with the places through which it had past was neutralized, transforming it from active to inert. Logboats may therefore have equally have been lost by accident, or deposited deliberately when, for whatever reason, they went out of use. It is not always easy to tell which was which, but Panagiota Markoulaki makes the attempt in her 2014 PhD thesis (see Sources below), which is available online for anyone wishing to pursue this subject further.

There is a possibility that a small number of prehistoric the logboats discovered were used mainly or exclusively for ceremonial purposes. A logboat from Lurgan in Co. Galway which is over 46ft (c.14m) in length was far too long for practical purposes, being almost impossible to navigate, and may have been used in ceremonial contexts.

Other logboats may have been used as models for burials, or even incorporated into such burials. Boat-shaped burial mounds are known in Britain, and some burials appear to emulate the shape of logboats, with one from Oban (Scotland) apparently having a re-used logboat at its centre. These date to between 2200 and 1700 BC.

Final Comments

Artist’s impression of the Carpow logboat transporting people across the river Tay. Source: Woolmer-White and Strachan (ScARF)

I started this piece after seeing the Baddiley Mere boat knowing almost nothing about logboats, and certainly nothing helpful. It was fairly slow going without access to an academic library, but thanks to some good some excellent papers shared online, some very useful online articles and the occasional references in books hanging around the house, I have finished up with a real appreciation for what is still a developing field of research.

The 19th and early 20th century discoveries, although marked by enthusiasm and good intentions, were often problematic. Many did not think to consider the context within which objects were found, meaning that logboats were often divorced from any associated objects or structures. A failure to understand the likely outcome of removing logboats from their waterlogged environments led to fragmentation of the wood, and sometimes complete disintegration. Attempts at preservation were variable in their success rate, and some altered the wood so profoundly that later scientific techniques like radiocarbon dating could not be employed. Still, they are to be commended for their appreciation of what they found, and their attempts to preserve both the objects and, in various publications, the knowledge that they had of the objects.

The Carprow (Perth, Scotland) logboat, which dates to around 1000BC, showing the well-sculpted interior. Source: Perth Museum and Gallery

It is a common misconception that most logboats are prehistoric. The same basic manufacturing method, using a hollowed out tree trunk, gives the illusion of contemporaneity, but the similarities are misleading. Although many of the 19th and 20th century discoveries of logboats were simply assumed to be prehistoric, radiocarbon dating, and some dendrochronological determinations have indicated that most of them are more recent and prehistoric logboats are in fact rare. The small number of Cheshire examples were early and later Medieval, with only one lying in the realms of later prehistory. In other areas the date range can extend as late as the early 18th century, although these very recent examples are also uncommon. As a whole, the small number of prehistoric logboats do not provide a sufficient sample to lend themselves conveniently to statistical sampling, and this applies even to the somewhat larger of Anglo-Saxon and Medieval examples.

Possible catamaran-style arrangement of two logboats, suggested by researchers working on the Medieval River Conon logboat. Source: AOC Archaeology Group

Although they look the superficially same, the tools with which they were made and with which they were associated will have differed considerably over time, and no two boats were the same. Even during the Bronze Age at Must Farm, the designs changed and new features were added whilst others were discarded, demonstrating that over time there was no generic logboat, and each had its own shape, features and fittings. Whilst some of the underlying considerations will have remained the same from one century to the next, the skills and tools available will have moved on, and in some cases the underlying needs for logboats and how they were thought about will have been very different. Landscapes and population densities, economic opportunities, social hierarchies and belief systems will have born little resemblance from one period to the next, and it as well to remember that similarities in appearance of logboats disguise huge discrepancies of lived experience. This pull and push between similarities and differences over very long periods is part of what makes the logboat so interesting.

Types of repairs to logboats, by Bob Holtzman 2021

It is good to see a number of publications tackling some of the complexities head on, both for academic and public consumption. The excellent book and e-book The Poole Iron Age Logboat edited by Jessica Berry, David Parham and Catriona Appleby is, for example, a fine example of a publication dedicated to a single example, using all the data available to follow, where possible, the life history of the object from tree to discard.

Technological advances are helping studies. For example, improvements in lighting, laser scanning and new photographic techniques have enabled more accurate capture of surface details, which in turn is helping researchers to understand how different types of tools and techniques were employed in the making and maintenance of logboats, enabling past methodologies to be recreated.

Artist’s impression of the Carpow logbook under construction. Source: PerthshireCrieffStrathearn Local History..

New academic studies are beginning to move beyond the vital building blocks of logboats as typologies and tables of dates to build on this work and consider logboats as integral to both economic and social activity, involved in different levels of livelihood and experience. Looking at how logboats are built has emphasised the role of communities in securing the wood and forming it into the correct shape, creating a communal resource and a shared experience in the process. Some researchers have considered how log boats may be involved not only in everyday activities but as components of mobile livelihood patterns and cross-community contacts. Some researchers have considered logboats in terms of their role in ceremonial and funerary activities, demonstrating that the same themes involved in the humdrum of everyday life are woven into the more esoteric aspects of self-identity and awareness. Others are looking at the significance and social context of repairs or the types of decision and activity required in the final discard of a logboat. Each new thread of research contributes not only to what is known about logboats, but to what is known about the societies and communities that produced them.

Although many of these studies focus on prehistoric examples, there is no reason why the same questions and approaches should not be applied to early and later medieval examples. Instead of being isolated from their contemporary economic and social contexts as something exceptional that requires special explanation, logboats are being repositioned at the heart of our understanding of different periods of the past and the reasons why such boats may have continued to be so attractive. Although the Cheshire logboats represent only a small part of the jigsaw, each one is unique. Both as a group and as individual activists, they too have much to contribute to the overall picture.

TikTok video about the Baddiley logboat by Professor Howard Williams from the University of Chester.

@archaeodeath

The Baddiley Mere longboat carved with metal tools from a single oak trunk in the Iron Age, the Roman period or Anglo-Saxon period #archaeologytiktok #archaeology #logboat #boat #IronAge #prehistoric #Roman #earlymedieval

♬ original sound – Archaeodeath

Sources:

Books and papers

Berry, Jessica; Parham, David; and Appleby, Catrina 2019. The Poole Iron Age Logboat. Archaeopress Publishing
https://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/33553/1/untitled.pdf

Bradley, Richard 2019 (2nd edition). The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland. Cambridge University Press

Dincause, Dena F. 2000. Environmental Archaeology. Principles and Practice. Cambridge University Press.

Gregory, Niall 1997. Comparative study of Irish and Scottish logboats. Unpublished PhD Thesis. University of Edinburgh
https://www.academia.edu/66850719/Comparative_study_of_Irish_and_Scottish_logboats

Holtzman, Bob 2021. Logboat Repairs in Britain and Ireland: A New Typology. Journal of Maritime Archaeology, Vol.16, p.187–209
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/447234/1/Logboat_Repairs_.pdf

Hurcombe, L.M. 2014. Perishable Material Culture in Prehistory. Investigating the Missing Majority. Routledge

Ingold, Tim 2013. Making. Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Routledge

Kröger, Lars 2018. Within the network of Fluvial ports. In: L. Werther / H. Müller / M. Foucher (ed.), European Harbour Data Repository, vol. 01 (Jena 2018)

Lanting, J.N. 1998. Dates for Origin and Diffusion of the European Logboat. Palaeohistoria 39/40 (1997/1998)

Lanting, J.N. and Brindley, Anna L. 1996. Irish Logboats and their European Context. Journal of Irish Archaeology 7, p.85 – 95
https://www.academia.edu/39510428/IRISH_LOGBOATS_AND_THEIR_EUROPEAN_CONTEXT

Latham, Frank A. 1991. Delamere. The History of a Cheshire Parish. Local History Group
https://www.themeister.co.uk/hindley/delamere_history_latham.pdf

Madeley, Charles 1894. On Two Ancient Boats, Found Near Warrington. The Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol.46
https://www.hslc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/46-6-Madeley.pdf?fbclid=IwAR10_dKMr1to5_ctb-L9j9p2ah363YfsBnuwWRo4crO00hbwTssg8Tr_WSA

Matthews, K. J. 2001. I: The Iron Age of north-west England: a socio-economic model. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, Vol.76, p.1-51
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_076/JCAS_ns_076_001-052.pdf

McGrail, S. 1978. Logboats of England and Wales. National Maritime Museum Archaeological Series 2, British Archaeological Reports, British Series 51 (volumes I and ii), National Maritime Museum Archaeological Series 2. Archaeopress

McGrail, S. 2010. An introduction to logboats. In D. Strachan (ed) Carpow in Context. Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, p.1-8.

Markoulaki Panagiota 2014. Depositional Practices in the Wetlands: The case of Prehistoric Logboats in England. Unpublished PhD Thesis, volume 1 (text). The University of Nottingham
https://www.academia.edu/34367806/Depositional_Practices_in_the_Wetlands_The_case_of_Prehistoric_Logboats_in_England

Morgan, Victoria and Paul 2004. Prehistoric Cheshire. Landmark Publishing

Mowat, Robert J.C. 1998. The Logboat in Scotland. Archaeonautica 14, 29-39
https://www.persee.fr/doc/nauti_0154-1854_1998_act_14_1_1183

Mowat, Robert J. C., Cowie; Trevor; Crone Anne and Cavers, Graeme 2015. A medieval logboat from the River Conon: towards an understanding of riverine transport in Highland Scotland
Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot. 145 (2015), p.307–340

Robinson, Gary. 2013. ‘A Sea of Small Boats’: places and practices on the prehistoric seascape of western Britain, Internet Archaeology 34
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue34/robinson_index.html

Sinclair Knight Merz 2004. Site Adjacent to Chester Road, Warrington, Cheshire. Archaeological Desk-Based Assessment. Oxford Archaeology North, August 2004.
https://eprints.oxfordarchaeology.com/4868/1/completereport.pdf

Switsur, Roy. Early English Boats. Radiocarbon, Vol.31, No. 3, 1989, p.1010-1018
https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/download/1233/1238

Thompson, Anne, 2011. Arpley Landfill Site – Extension of Operational Life, Warrington, Cheshire. Archaeological Desk Based Assessment. February 2011
https://www.fccenvironment.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Appendix14.1_ArchaeologyDeskBasedAssessment.pdf

Watts, Ryan 2014. The Prometheus Project. EXARC Journal 2014/4
https://exarc.net/issue-2014-4/ea/prometheus-project

Websites

Heritage Gateway
Baddiley Mere oak logboat (Cheshire)
https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=e780c761-f6c8-49fd-ae06-639d3f8ea7b0&resourceID=19191
Cholmondeley
https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MCH5322&resourceID=1004
Delamere and Oakmere log boat
https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=71202&resourceID=19191
Newbold Astbury
https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=4bc4a8f2-2c5a-4934-baaa-754082364803&resourceID=19191
Warrington Logboat 1
https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MCH8659&resourceID=1004
Warrington Logboat 2
https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MCH8661&resourceID=1004
Warrington Logboat 4
https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MCH8485&resourceID=1004

BBC News
Stanwick Lakes: Bronze Age log boat build reaches halfway point. 22nd October 2023, by Katy Prickett
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-67055114
Stanwick Lakes: Volunteers replicate Bronze Age tools to build log boat
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-65561744

Cheshire Archaeology News, Chester County Council
Issue 4, Spring 1997, p.2
http://www.cheshirearchaeology.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Spring_1997.pdf

Historic England
Ships and Boats: Prehistory to 1840. Introductions to Heritage Assets.
https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-ships-boats/heag132-ships-and-boats-prehistory-1840-iha/
Ships and Boats: Prehistory to Present. Selection Guide
https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/dsg-ships-boats/heag143-ships-and-boats-prehistory-to-present-sg/

Festival of Archaeology 2022
Warrington’s Spoon Shaped Dinghies
https://wmag.culturewarrington.org/2022/07/16/festival-of-archaeology-2022-warringtons-spoon-shaped-dinghies/

Academia
Beck, Lewis W. The Must Farm Logboats: Why Was Oak Used Primarily in the Construction of Logboats in Bronze Age Britain. Unpublished alumnus research, Cardiff University
https://www.academia.edu/32793784/The_Must_Farm_Logboats_Why_Was_Oak_Used_Primarily_in_the_Construction_of_Logboats_in_Bronze_Age_Britain

ScARF
The Carpow Logboat by Grace Woolmer-White and David Strachan
https://scarf.scot/regional/pkarf/perth-and-kinross-archaeological-research-framework-case-studies/the-carpow-log-boat/

Warrington Guardian
Your chance to see a piece of town’s history. 13th June 2002
https://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/news/5267292.your-chance-to-see-a-piece-of-towns-history/

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Online references for some other logboats in Britain
In alphabetical order by site/boat name

Brigg, Hull
The Brigg Logboat
http://museumcollections.hullcc.gov.uk/collections/storydetail.php?irn=403&master=449

Carpow, Perthshire, c.1000BC
3,000 year old boat one of the first objects to enter the new Perth Museum after unique conservation treatment. Thursday 12th October 2023
https://perthmuseum.co.uk/3000-year-old-boat-one-of-the-first-objects-to-enter-the-new-perth-museum-after-unique-conservation-treatment/
Recording, conservation and display: Episodes in the continuing life of a 3,000-year-old logboat from the River Tay
https://www.digitscotland.com/recording-conservation-and-display-episodes-in-the-continuing-life-of-a-3000-year-old-logboat-from-the-river-tay/
The Carpow Logboat
https://scarf.scot/regional/pkarf/perth-and-kinross-archaeological-research-framework-case-studies/the-carpow-log-boat/

Conon logboat
Lost & Found: the River Conon Logboat. A Medieval logboat from the River Conon near Dingwall, Highland
https://www.aocarchaeology.com/key-projects/river-conon-logboat

Ferriby Yorkshire log boats
http://www.ferribyboats.co.uk/discoveries.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferriby_Boats

Giggleswick Tarn, North Yorkshire
New voyage of discovery for museum’s medieval vessel
https://news.leeds.gov.uk/news/new-voyage-of-discovery-for-museums-medieval-vessel

Hanson, Derbyshire
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/hanson-log-boat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanson_Log_Boat

Hasholme logboat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasholme_Logboat

Lurgan canoe
The Lurgan Canoe, an Early Bronze Age boat from Galway. Irish Archaeology, 21st October 2014.
http://irisharchaeology.ie/2014/10/the-lurgan-canoe-an-early-bronze-age-boat-from-galway/

Murston Marshes log boat
https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=419871&resourceID=19191

Poole
The Poole Iron Age Long Boat (e-Book):
https://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/33553/1/untitled.pdf
Mystery boat carved from massive tree trunk
https://www.wessexmuseums.org.uk/collections-showcase/iron-age-logboat/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poole_Logboat

Shardlow, Derbyshire
https://www.derbymuseumsfromhome.com/dm-object-highlights/a-bronze-age-logboat

Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland
The Neolithic log boat at Strangford Lough
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/northern-ireland/strangford-lough/history-of-strangford-lough

A visit to The National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port

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Although quite literally freezing cold, the sun was stunning yesterday so on the spur of the moment, having just run an errand to Rossett, I plotted a route to the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port on the Wirral. It’s very easy to find, being just off the M53. I have been meaning to visit ever since I moved to this area. It is one of those places best done in dry weather, because there is as just as much, if not more, to see outside as indoors. Visitor information details are at the end.

Background History

The museum occupies the 19th century canal and port complex, re-using the lovely brick-built buildings for exhibits and displays and using sections of the docks and basins for a number of fascinating canal and waterway vessels. Ellesmere Port was the largest Inland Waterway dock complex in the United Kingdom. The name Ellesmere Port refers to the town of Ellesmere, where many of the decisions about the Shropshire Union canal network were made. There was no Ellesmere Port until the port was established in 1796 as a small base at the Mersey end of the Shropshire Union Canal.

The Shropshire Union Canal was one of a number of canals built at different times which, in 1846, were amalgamated into a single operational network. The earliest part of this network was the Nantwich to Canal section. The earliest part of the system was the Chester Canal which ran from Chester to Nantwich in 1772. It was not until 1793 that a section connecting Chester to the Mersey was built, with its terminus at Ellesmere Port. The section from Nantwich to Birmingham, the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal, was the main north-south artery of this network, and was not completed until 1835, joining the national canal network for which Birmingham was the central hub.

By 1802 as well as a series of locks with a lock keeper’s house, there was also three basins, wet and dry docks, a small wharf, a clerk’s house and a canal lighthouse. Over subsequent decades additional wharves were added and warehouses, workshops and sheds were built. A scheme by Thomas Telford for a dock and entrance for seagoing vessels was completed in 1843, significantly improving the port’s suitability for transhipping. During the 1850s the most important cargo was iron, followed by ceramics from the Potteries, and substantial facilities were provided for both.

The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, and the simultaneous improvement in facilities at Ellesmere Port significantly improved the prosperity of the port. Unfortunately this was something of a swansong for the canal port, and In 1921 the Shropshire Union Canal Company sold its fleet of barges and the commercial viability of the canal and the port for freight handling came to an end. The railways replaced the canals throughout Britain, with many of the former wharves and ports falling into disuse and dereliction. Ellesmere Port managed to survive until the 1950s and became a museum in the 1970s.

More details of the history of the port, (together with some of the business and industries it attracted, the development of the surrounding settlement and details of the drainage of Stanlow marshes by German prisoners of war in the First World War), are available in Vince Devine and Jo Clark’s excellent survey (see Sources at end).

The Museum

The derelict port buildings became a museum in the 1970s after a heroic effort by a group of volunteers, and is now a conservation area with nineteen Grade II listed buildings. It was originally known as the North West Museum of Inland Navigation and had various other names until it became The National Waterways Museum, with its emphasis on inland waterways, both rivers and canals, although coastal vessels are also included. As well as boats and exhibition and display spaces, the site is also home to the Waterways Archive, and education centre, conference facilities, a shop and café and other amenities, all located within the port buildings.

Map of the museum. Sorry it’s a bit crumpled, but there does not appear to be a clean version online. Click image to expand.

Entrance is via the ticket office that sits between the shop and the café. There is a 5 minute video to watch if required, and then access to the rest of the museum is on the other side of the shop, which sites on the side of the canal entrance to the port. There were obligingly two narrowboats moored further up the quayside, hemmed in with ice, and this is a very good place to orientate oneself with the help of the excellent map that comes with your entry ticket. It’s quite a complicated site, with several buildings containing exhibits, so the map is invaluable.

I started out by walking over the bridges towards the Exhibition Hall, former warehousing, taking in some of the historic boats moored up alongside the quays in the Upper Basin.

The big former warehouse, called the Island Warehouse, has displays on two floors. The ground floor is a vast collection of objects connected to the waterways, including bits of engine, windlasses, tillers, rudders, sack barrows, buckets and lamps and a zillion other objects, parts and bits. There’s very little information on display, although a QR code promised more details about some of the objects via your smartphone (I had left mine in the car by accident).

A really wonderful find on the ground floor was a long glass cabinet containing a prehistoric log boat found in Baddiley Mere in Cheshire, and made of a single, hollowed-out trunk of oak. This is a nationally important object and it was splendid to see it. I had no idea it was at Ellesmere Port. Sadly, the cabinet was hemmed in on all sides with other objects. It was also covered in dust and the glass sides reflected the surroundings, so it was difficult to get close or see it properly and impossible to photograph well. I do wish that it was on the first floor exhibition area, where it could be seen and appreciated properly. According to the Heritage Gateway website, it is on loan from the Grosvenor Museum.

The prehistoric log canoe, which could be rather more conspicuously and sympathetically displayed.

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The first floor is a more formal exhibition area. There is a cut-away narrowboat called Friendship with its painted bow and stern and a tiny little cabin, the unimaginably small living quarters of the narrowboat’s operator and his family. A delightful pleasure boat, the 1954 Amaryllis, glows with glossy mahogany and polished brass. My favourite was an example of a long, slender boat called a “starvationer,” designed to run on the 46 miles (74km) of subterranean canal tunnels in the Duke of Bridgewater’s Worsley coal mines. Other cabinets have model boats and ships showing a range of different types and sizes. A couple of cabinets have examples of canal art associated with narrowboats. Items commonly found in the dock and canal port are included. There’s even a working model of the Anderton Boat Lift. Information boards provide plenty of detail.

A “starvationer”

Sack chute

Out on the other side of this building, back outside, there are more boats. Some of the boats that are usually out in the summer are under cover for winter, still visible but not as accessible. This is particularly true of the valuable wooden narrowboats like Gifford and the ice-breaker Marbury. Being under cover, they are also easier to work on. The ongoing care and repair of wooden boats is a major part of the out of season work at the museum, and there information boards explaining what is being done to each.

The ice-breaker “Marbury”

Walking to the left, a splendid ship hull rests in a giant covered cradle, the remains of the Mersey flat barge Mossdale. According to the signage she is the only surviving all-timber Mersey flat. She was initially named Ruby, in which guise she carried cargoes of up to 70 tons, towed by steam tug on canal, river and along the coast. In spite of her flat base she was very stable. She was sold in 1920, after which she carried pottery, grain, flour and sugar along the Bridgewater canal.

Mossdale

Beyond this is the splendid Pump House with its 69ft (21m) chimney built in 1873. This was closed to the public on the day I visited.

Heading back, the next place to visit is Porters Row, four terraced houses, each one fitted out with furniture, accessories, wallpaper, technology and kitchen equipment that would have been found in dock workers’ homes of the 1830s, 1900s, 1920s and 1950s. This is such fun, a really evocative way of getting a sense of how past objects were deployed in ordinary homes, although some were clearly more prosperous than others, one with a piano, and more remarkably one with a organ!

Beyond and downhill (reached via a ramp, or by locks if you are in a boat) is the Lower Basin containing more boats, with the rather well disguised Holiday Inn hotel beyond.

Crossing to the other side of the port, there is another set of buildings that includes the old stables (for the horses that pulled the unpowered narrowboats), the blacksmith’s forge (still operational), and the Power Hall, which is a display of ship engines, one of which can be operated via a push-button.

FCB18 – a barge made of concrete

On the other side of the Power Hall are two more boats, one of which, the barge FCB18, is fascinatingly made of concrete, which is a crazily counter-intuitive concept. But there it is, happily afloat. The information signage says that she was built in 1944 during the war, which was a time of steel shortage. Concrete was readily available and cheap, and although steel was still required, only 18 tons was required, as opposed to the 56 for a steel barge with a carrying capacity of 200 tons. Unfortunately, the resulting barge was heavy, difficult to steer, and brittle.

The other boat is Basuto, looking like something built of rusty Meccano, but again, still afloat in a sea of green weed.

Back up towards the exit is a sign pointing you to the slipway with its blue-painted wooden winch house, and from here you can see over to the channel that connects the Manchester Ship Canal to the River Weaver and Ellesmere Port. When you leave the museum, you can turn left along the road that passes between the museum and the car park, and walk along the channel’s edge towards the Holiday Inn, where there are some great swing bridges and more canal-side buildings, including a unique port lighthouse.

The above is just a sample – there’s lots to see. A great visit.

Visiting Information

A dry day is preferable for a visit, because there is a lot to see outside, and the buildings themselves are part of the attraction. Opening times are on the Canal and River Trust website here. At the time of writing (January 2024) the entrance fee was £11.75 for an adult, which seems quite steep but the ticket lasts for a year, and I will certainly be making use of mine for another visit. Other entrance fees are on the museum’s website on the above link. There is a nicely presented shop with books, toys and canal-themed ornaments, and a bright, comfortable café. Outside there are plenty of picnic benches, and a play area. The museum was amazingly quiet. Given the bright sunshine I thought that it would be fairly busy, but the cold was obviously a deterrent, the docks being frozen solid.

I was warned at the ticket office about icy surfaces, which takes on a particular resonance when you are walking along the edges of frozen expanses of water with almost no-one around. But they had done such a good job with the salt and grit that even in the cold shadows there was no ice on which to slip.

For those with unwilling legs, there are ramps nearly everywhere. In the Island Warehouse there is an elevator to the first floor, but this was out of order when I visited so it might be a good idea to phone first if you need it. There is a lot to see on the first floor, so it would be best to go when the elevator is working. The Pump House was closed, but this appears to be accessible only via a short flight of steps (5 or 6 steps). Otherwise, as far as I could see, the whole site seemed to be fully accessible for wheelchair users and those with unwilling legs.

Boat trips are available in the summer.

Sources

Books and papers

Vince Devine and Jo Clark. 2003. Ellesmere Port Archaeological Assessment. Cheshire Historic Towns Survey
http://www.cheshirearchaeology.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/HTS_Arch_Assess_EllesmerePort.pdf

Websites

The Ellesmere Port Canal Port Trail
The Mersey Forest
https://www.merseyforest.org.uk/things-to-do/walks-bike-rides-and-more/walks/ellesmere-port-canal-port-trail/

The Shropshire Union Canal
The Canal and River Trust
https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/canals-and-rivers/shropshire-union-canal
Virtual Tour of the Museum
https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/things-to-do/museums-and-attractions/national-waterways-museum-ellesmere-port/virtual-tour-of-the-national-waterways-museum

History of the Shropshire Union Canals
The Shropshire Union Canal Society
https://shropshireunion.org.uk/shropshire-union/early-history-of-the-shropshire-union-canals/

Postcard of a photograph from the museum archives. Lovely to see all those Fellows, Morton and Clayton narrowboats lined up. A real canal legend.

The 1991 discovery of an important Roman inscription in Holt

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By Andie Byrnes and Helen Anderson, August 4th 2023

The discovery in 1991

The Holt inscribed fragment, now in the Grosvenor Museum. Photograph by Dr Roger Tomlin, University of Oxford, with many thanks for allowing Helen to use it.

In 1991 artist and archaeology enthusiast Helen Anderson was driving over the Farndon-Holt bridge, about 11 miles (c.18km) south of Chester, when she noticed some activity and bare soil surfaces in the normally grassy nearby field associated with the Roman tile-works and its ancillary buildings overlooking the Dee. She had recently started to focus on Roman archaeology and to visit Roman sites, and although she had spent her childhood locally in Churton, she had only recently been reading about the Holt tileworks site for the first time. She had been intending to go and look at the site but hadn’t yet done so, and thought this might be an interesting opportunity to go and see it. She received permission from the landowner to walk over the newly-stripped surface of the field.

On the recently exposed soil surface that day, as well as sundry fragments of imbrex and tegula (roofing tiles), two of which were marked with cat and dog paw-prints and one with a finger print, she found the wonderful piece of inscribed brick shown in the photograph above right. Here is Helen talking about discovering the piece:

As I was walking through the field, which had been stripped for turf that was still being rolled and loaded, I saw a large piece of orange tile lying on the muddy surface, picked it up, turned it over and found what appeared to be writing on the underside. I could hardly believe my eyes – it was an extraordinary and quite eerie moment! My immediate thought was who I should tell about it. Later, gently cleaning it in the kitchen sink, the excitement of the incised letters appearing clearly as the soil washed out of them was something I will never forget. It felt a bit like time travel.

Aerial view of the farmland at Holt next to the River Dee where the tile-works were located

The piece was clearly broken, with a bit of the inscription missing. Helen returned to Holt a few days later, to show it the to the farmer and to see if the rest of the fragment was lying about in the field, but by then it had all been rotovated – if she hadn’t picked up the brick it probably would have been further damaged. She reckons the gods must have been with her that day!

This was six years before the establishment of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, so after after showing the find to the landowner, who gave Helen permission to keep the object, Helen sent photographs to the British Museum. The resulting correspondence offers a terrific insight into how an understanding of the significance of the object was reached. It emerged that the fragment of Helen’s brick on which the inscription was made was re-used as a form of notepad to make a quick record. At first it was thought that the fragment was a tile, but it is more likely to be a piece of lydion or sesquipedalis; these look rather like tiles because they are very thin compared with modern brickwork. Some of the letters have been sliced off at the far right, but what we are looking at is part of a coherent piece of text, a list with signatures. It was a small-sized record, containing only a few details. It measures 32cms, by 30cms, and is around 6mm thick.

Helen hard at work at the Rossett Roman Villa excavation in 2021. Photograph courtesy of Dr Caroline Pudney, University of Chester

The inscription is now recorded in various books and papers contributing to knowledge about Roman activities and everyday life in the Chester area. Although Holt is just over the Welsh border, the tiles and bricks were created for the Roman occupation in Chester.

Following very fine lunches at Pant Yr Ochain near Gresford and the White Horse in Churton, where we pored over both the artefacts and documents that Helen has assembled, including her original correspondence with Catherine John and Roger Tomlin, we decided to write a post about the inscribed fragment. Helen has now been investigating the Romans in the Chester area for three decades, and as her knowledge has grown she has excavated as a volunteer at Chester amphitheatre, the Heronbridge Roman settlement, and most recently the Rossett villa. All the documentation cited here has been provided by Helen.

First, a quick look at the Holt tile-works, which produced the inscribed brick.

The early 20th century discovery of the Holt Tile-works

The Holt brick and tile works site was recognized in the early 1600s when landowner Thomas Crue of Holt Hill suffered repeated damage to his plough and was forced to investigate. He discovered that his plough was encountering a series of fifty 2ft-tall posts, and his finding found its way into the book Roman Cheshire by W. Thompson Watkins (1886). This was noted by retired chemist and keen amateur historian Alfred Neobard Palmer who, in 1905, decided to hunt for the remains that Crue had found, accompanied by local vicar Jenkyn Jones, having sought permission from the landowner. A series of field-walking expeditions followed, uncovering plentiful fragments of Roman brick, roof tile and pottery over an area of some 20 acres.

Fold-out plan of the kilns at Holt, published by Grimes in 1930. (Scanned from my copy of “Holt, Denbighshire”)

Palmer was not an archaeologist, and the task of excavating the site was taken on by Wrexham solicitor and amateur archaeologist Arthur Acton. Work began in 1907 and continued until 1915. Although he delivered numerous lectures about the site, Acton never published his work. Fortunately a portion of his records survived, and he sold the excavation finds to the National Museum of Wales, where William F. Grimes used the data to compile a comprehensive report, complete with site plans, photographs and object illustrations. Work did not stop there, and during the 1970s Geoffrey Bevan conducted both field walking activities and an excavation, finding Roman material that filled dozens of boxes, which were donated, this time, to the Grosvenor Museum in Chester. Helen’s field-walking in 1991 added the inscription to the list of important finds, and in 2018 Holt Local History Society commissioned Archaeological Survey West to carry out a geophysical survey of the site, to fix the positions of the known buildings and, with luck, to identify any unexcavated and previously unknown structures. This demonstrated that the Holt complex was even bigger and more complex than Grimes, via Acton, had been able to determine. There is, of course, the potential for future field research, and recent work in Farndon, summarized on local historian Mike Royden’s website is beginning to expand the story over to the other side of the Dee.

What was the Holt tile-works like?

Site plan of the Roman tile and pottery work displayed in the Hidden Holt exhibition. Also in the excellent booklet accompanying the exhibition, full details in Sources below. The features shown in blue are unrecorded / unexcavated. Those in dark brown are the building locations fixed in 2018, and those in paler brown those estimated by Grimes based on Acton’s work. Click to see a bigger version with fully legible text. Source: Wrexham Heritage Service, 2021

The 20th Legion, Valeria Victrix, of the Roman army, was stationed at Chester, Roman Deva, from AD87, and the Holt works appears to have been established shortly afterwards to supply the fort and settlement at the legionary fortress. Holt’s industrial activities reaching their peak output at around AD135, and began falling out of use in the mid 3rd Century. The site was clearly a fully integrated operation combining industrial, public and domestic components.

A senior manager had his own house, complete with hypocaust (under-floor central heating), there was a public bath house, a series of kilns for the manufacture of tiles, bricks and pottery, and a barracks that may have housed workers, or alternatively a detachment of the Roman army based at Chester at this time.

The hypocaust below the drying shed. Source: National Museum of Wales

The main kiln plant at Holt, published by William Grimes in 1930.

The kilns formed two main units, a larger (139ft / 52m long, consisting of a row of six kilns) and smaller twin-kiln built on the natural bed-rock. Each kiln was rectangular and tile-lined with an arched stoke-hole for access. A round pottery kiln was also located on the edge of the main kiln complex. The oven floor consisted of a raised floor of tiles plastered with clay that were pierced with holes that acted as vents. The drying shed was provided with a hypocaust, of the same sort used in villas and bath houses. These, like the kilns, were stoked and kept hot to ensure that the tiles, pottery and bricks were dried through after firing.

Map marked by Helen to show the approximate findspot of the inscribed fragment

All of the output manufactured at the works was sent by boat downriver to Chester on the river Dee. It provided direct access to Chester, 12 miles / 19km away, passing the civic settlement at Heronbridge. The generally flat environment meant that building of roads, where needed, was not exceptionally laborious.
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Corresponding about the tile in 1991

The imposing facade of the British Museum. Source: Wikimedia Commons by Paasikivi

Helen wrote to the British Museum in April 1991 describing how she had found the fragment, and enclosing a high resolution photo in which the inscription could be seen clearly. The first person to reply to Helen’s letter to the British Museum was Catherine Johns F.S.A., at the time Curator of Roman Britain in the Department of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities in the British Museum in London. In a letter dated 18th June 1991, Catherine Johns begins “Thank you for your letter and the excellent photographs and drawing of the inscribed tile from Holt in your possession. This is an interesting and important find.” She goes on to explain that the inscription is in cursive Latin, “that it is to say, it is handwriting rather than formal lettering.” She was unable to translate the text, which is a specialist task, and sent it to Dr Roger Tomlin of Wolfson College, University of Oxford. She warned Helen that the fragmentary nature of the text might impede translation. She finished by suggesting that Helen might consider presenting the piece to the National Museum of Wales, where most of the Holt material excavated in the early 20th century is held.

Dr Roger Tomlin. Source: Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents. University of Oxford

Helen then received a letter dated 25th June 1991, only a week after the letter written by Catherine Johns, from Dr Roger Tomlin. Dr Tomlin explained that it was by no means straightforward to decipher and transcribe the fragment, partly because of the several examples of handwriting inscribed, and the fact that it was clearly incomplete. He suggested that this was a record of expenses, with the star symbol indicating the unit of payment in denarii, and that several individuals were involved. He referred to the inscribed brick as “a welcome addition” to the corpus of Roman inscriptions in Britain. In a later letter, dated 1st July 1991, he thanked Helen for offering to take the the object to him in Oxford, for translation, whilst on a family break, and expressed the hope to meet up with Helen to discuss it. He suggested that the fragment was probably part of a lydion (or sesquipedalis), rather than a tile, a brick used for bonding-courses. When Helen met Dr Tomlin for coffee, he departed on his bicycle, in typical Oxford style, with the inscription propped up in the bicycle’s basket. ———

The inscription

The same photo of the inscribed tile found by Helen Anderson in Holt in 1996 as above, shown again so that you can review the cursive text Copyright Helen Anderson

The brick was inscribed in the still-soft surface of the wet clay before firing. The translation of the inscription by Dr Tomlin is a great example of the sort of scholarship and academic detective work that go into understanding a single object. The inscription was abbreviated, typical for this sort of note, where space was limited and standardized abbreviations were recognizable to all. As already noted, the slab was broken, possibly by ploughing, so parts of the inscription are missing, but this apparently presented few problems for Dr Roger Tomlin.

Just by looking at it, you can see that there is more than one person’s handwriting, and that’s because each person wrote his own signature. All three were men, named 1) Junius, 2) Maternus and 3) Bellettus. The final s is missing in each case due to the break. In the official transcription below, Tomlin has completed words where he knows them. The slab is a record of expenses they had incurred, but does not say how they were incurred. Junius was paid at least 4 denarii, probably more, but the break carried the other details away.

Notes about the inscription on the left, on the back of the photo above, followed ultimately by the publication of the inscription in Tomlin 2018, p.290

Front cover of Tomlin’s 2018 “Britannia Romana. Roman Inscriptions and Roman Britain.” Oxbow Books (see Sources below)

Dr Tomlin wrote about the inscription in the journal Britannia, vol.26, 1995, p.387, where it is numbered no.28 (and Helen’s role in the discovery is referenced in the footnotes). It was later included in Tomlin’s comprehensive Britannia Romana, published in 2018, which lists over 400 epigraphic inscriptions from Roman Britain. The inscription is listed on page 290 as number 11.14. Dr Tomlin observed that the three men listed were probably legionaries (although he does not rule out in the 1995 publication that they may have been auxiliaries). He says that two of the three names were commonplace Roman names, and the third, Bellettus, may have been a variant on the name Bellicus, which he describes as “popular in Celtic-speaking provinces.” All three signed their own names, meaning that they were literate.

Tomlin is particularly interested in the word sumtuaria, which is missing its p, and is the plural of the noun sumptuarium. The word is very rare, with the only example known by Tomlin appearing on a legionary pay-sheet in Masada, Israel, where it refers to food expenses. Tomlin speculates that this was a record of expenses that were to be reimbursed by headquarters at a later date, but he does question how this was supposed to work when the record took the form of a brick (which, after all, could not be divided between the three men!)

Roman soldier’s payslip from Masada, Israel. Source: Arkeonews.net

This find, recording something of the lives of three men who lived in Roman Holt, has something of the air of the Vindolanda tablets. The thin leaves of wood used at Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall recorded many aspects of everyday life, also written in cursive. A selection of them are on display in London’s British Museum. One of them had a similar content to the Holt example, showing a list of people who owe money. Although it is incomplete and undated, it was possible to identify Vitalis the balniator or bath house keeper and Tagomas, one of a number of cavalrymen from northern Spain who appear on the list (also mentioning the latter’s contubernalis, or unofficial wife).

Text from vindolanda showing a list of people who owe money. Source: Vindolanda.com

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Publications mentioning the brick

The inscription became something of an emblem of local Roman social history, being referred to not only in academic publication, but also heritage newsletters and leaflets in Chester. Dr Tomlin suggested that it be included on the Roman Inscriptions of Britain website, and it has very recently been added to the site here, where it has been given the identifier Brit.26.28.

Here are two examples of publications aimed at the general public, collected by Helen, that mention the find and give a good idea of how it was regarded:

Source: The Past Uncovered, Autumn 1996, Chester City Council (red outline added)

Source: Revealing Cheshire’s Past series: From Farms to Fortress leaflet, page 6 Industrial Activity. Cheshire County Council

Connecting with the past

The inscribed brick in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester. Copyright Helen Anderson

You can see the inscribed fragment today in the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, where it is on display in the ground floor Newstead Roman gallery, thanks to Helen requesting that it be displayed locally rather than in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. Not only would it have been difficult for local people to visit it easily in Cardiff, but the tile-works were directly connected with the legionary fortress in Chester, so this seemed like the perfect home for the inscription. Generations of local schoolchildren can have their imaginations fired by seeing the handwriting of several different Romans who lived here nearly 2000 years ago.

Helen explains that her own children were so excited and proud of her discovery of this piece of heritage that they somehow persuaded her that it should be on loan to the museum rather than donated, but she has since donated it outright, rightly deciding that it’s a piece of history that belongs to everyone.

If anyone wants to chat with Helen about the find, you can contact her via Twitter: @Helenus_. You can also contact Andie on the Contacts Page, via Twitter @BasedInChurton, or leave a comment (the Leave a Reply link is immediately under the title of the post).

Other posts on this blog about Roman Chester and Holt can be found here.
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Final Comments

The object that Helen found in a field in Holt, during a short window between when turf was removed and new grass sown, has multiple identities. Archaeologically and historically, it is one of a number of records of Roman Britain that together provide insights into Roman settlement and industry and particularly contribute to the narrative about the Holt tile-works. At another level it is both a clue about record keeping in Roman Holt, and an ephemeral glimpse into the everyday life of three literate Roman men who were working at the tile-works and were claiming expenses. Today, as well being a significant part of the Roman display in the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, it has made a claim for a position in Helen’s own family history. Not a bad set of achievements for one inscribed object found lost in a field. One wonders if the three soldiers ever did receive their expenses?———————

Sources:

Letters (in the private archive of Helen Anderson)

From Catherine Johns, Curator, Department of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities, British Museum. To Helen Anderson, dated 18th June 1991

From Dr Roger Tomlin, Wolfson College, University of Oxford. To Helen Anderson, dated 25th June 1991

From Dr Roger Tomlin, Wolfson College, University of Oxford. To Helen Anderson, dated 10th July 1991

Books and papers:

Grimes, W.F. 1930. Holt, Denbighshire: Twentieth Legion at Castle Lyons. Y Cymmrodor. Society of Cymmrodorion.

Tomlin, R.S.O. 1995. 11.14 Holt (? Bovium), in (eds.) B. C. Burnham, L. J. F. Keppie, A. S. Esmonde Cleary, M. W. C. Hassall, and R. S. O. Tomlin Roman Britain in 1994. Britannia, Vol. 26 (1995), p. 325-390

Tomlin, R.S.O. 2018. Britannia Romana. Roman Inscriptions and Roman Britain. Oxbow Books (Chapter 11, no.14, p.290-1)

Leaflets and newsletters:

The Past Uncovered, Autumn 1996
http://www.cheshirearchaeology.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/The-Past-Uncovered-Autumn-1996.pdf

Revealing Cheshire’s Past series: From Farms to Fortress leaflet, page 6 Industrial Activity. Cheshire County Council

Holt: Legacy of the Legions, available from the museum, or can be downloaded.
http://old.wrexham.gov.uk/assets/pdfs/heritage/holt_castle/holt_legacy.pdf

Websites:

Coflein
Holt Roman Site NPRN 307201
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/307201?term=holt&pg=2

National Museum of Wales
Request for Information – Freedom of Information Request Relating to Collections – Reference 17-002, 14th February 2017
amgueddfa.cymru/media/41203/response-web-17-002.pdf

Roman Inscriptions of Britain Online
https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/
The Holt inscribed brick now has its own page at:
https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/Brit.26.28

Vindolanda Charitable Trust
Writing Tablets
https://www.vindolanda.com/blog/fact-file-writing-tablets

Vindolanda Tablets Online
http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/

A visit to Stretton Water Mill

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The Grade 2 listed Stretton Water Mill is recorded from the 14th century, and was in almost continuous use until 1959. It was restored by Cheshire Council in 1975 and became a museum in 1977. It is located not far from Farndon and Holt, in Cheshire, very near to the villages of Stretton and Tilston. Today it is a museum, with working water wheel, gears and related machinery, looking like an enormous clockwork toy, but powered wholly by water. The mill still produces flour, but this cannot be purchased because the methods used, which are entirely authentic, contravene modern health and safety regulations. However, flour from Walk Mill, near Chester, is sold in the shop.

This tiny vernacular cottage-type building, part red sandstone, part weather-board, is approached down a single track road (lots of passing places) and sits in an attractive rural setting. It lies to the east of the well-manicured village of Stretton and its rural environs.

As well as the mill building, the two water wheels and the mill machinery, there is a big millpond, a picnic area, a car park (in a small field), and access via both external steps and disabled-friendly slopes between the two floors. There is more visitor information at the end of this post.

Stretton Mill is is a splendid remnant of rural architecture and at the same time tells a story about the industrial importance of water power in the lives of rural areas from the Middle Ages into the 20th Century, working around the clock during the Second World War.

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Getting your bearings: The waterworks

If you find that the tour is already in progress when you arrive (the tour is obligatory due to health and safety considerations) it would be a good use of the waiting time to get your bearings. If you go straight into the tour, don’t forget to have a look around afterwards. Simply walk up the short footpath from the car park towards the first storey of the mill, and look at the large, motionless expanse of water behind the building. This is the millpond, which is fed by the Carden brook. The brook is out of sight, but can be seen running under the road just a little further up the road towards Carden from the mill.

Sluice from the millpond into the by-wash

The job of the millpond is to feed the two water wheels. The mill pond’s level can be controlled by a sluice into a wide by-wash,which drains the water into a tail-race or escape channel that eventually meets up with the main stream. On the other side of the mill is a short flight of steps leading up to the other side of the mill, with some picnic tables. Sluice equipment also controls the volume of water reaching the wheels from the millpond by raising or lowering the paddles (rectangular pieces of wood that can be dropped to stop water flow or raised to allow it). When the wheels are out of use, for example when the mill is closed to visitors or to permit repairs to be carried out, the paddles can be dropped to stop the water entirely.

A typical watercourse layout. Source: Traditional Corn Milling Windmills by Nigel S. Harris, drawings by John Brandrick, fig. 12, p.9

A Short History of British Milling

Grinding grain

Roman water wheel replica in the grounds of the Museum of London (at its Barbican location). Source: Geograph, by Martin Addison CC BY-SA 2-0

Harvested grains of wheat and barley are rock solid on the outside, and there is very little that one could imagine doing with them for nutritional purposes, except perhaps soaking and fermenting them. The prehistoric solution, and one that was followed by subsequent millers, was to break them up and reduce them to powder by grinding them between stones, by hand. By the Roman period, water wheels had been invented, and in the Medieval period, when Stretton Mill was built, these had been turned into both an industry and an art form, using vast carved stone wheels driven by water and a series of gears in an end to end process that introduced grain at one end and produced flour at the other.

Medieval mills

The mill at Stretton dates at least to 1350. Water-powered mills were the dominant industrial mechanism during the Middle Ages, and were widespread, rescuing householders from the time-consuming, back-breaking and tedious task of grinding corn by hand.

A mill with an overshot wheel like the one at Stretton, and mill race. Further up the stream there are eel traps, shown in the 14th century Luttrell Psalter (Add MS 42130, British Library). Source: Wikipedia

The millstones in a watermill, one set over the top of the other, were coarse. They were carefully and skilfully carved with a set of precise grooves called furrows that helped not only to grind the grain but to move it from the centre of the millstone to the exterior. The coarse stone cracks open the seed grains to allow the release of the kernel, and the grooves allow it to escape down a chute to be collected in bags below.

Millstones were sourced both from within Britain and beyond, with imports of millstones made from particularly desirable stone areas overseas recorded at ports around the coast. The cost of the millstone itself could be considerable, and the additional expenses of transportation and fitting meant that these were high value items that were carefully maintained.

Millstones, laid in pairs, one over the top of the other, contain a complex series of grooves, called furrows, that grind the grain and move it towards the edge. This is one of a former pair on display at Stretton.

Some mills with twin wheels would operate different milling activities simultaneously, such as corn processing and wool processing (known as fulling). A mill was built by the lord of the manor (the term manor referring to the estate rather than just the house), who charged tolls called soke rights for its use. Initially this was in form of a share of the corn and later was on a cash basis. Corn mills were used for reducing grains into products suitable for human and livestock consumption. The term “corn,” which is generally used in conjunction with mills, refers not to the New World corn but was used as a generic term for wheat, barley, oats and rye. The soke rights paid for the initial capital outlay and maintenance costs, and provided an income for the manor. The use of the mill by manor tenants was not optional. Manual milling at home was banned and anyone owning private milling equipment could be fined. It is estimated that estates could extract as much as 5% of the estate’s total income from watermills.

Run-off channel (tail race) from the overshot wheel

In the mid 14th century after a period of severe famine, the Black Death arrived and obliterated around 25% of the population. Once recovery was underway with a much smaller population, there was competition for labour and a rise of wages. Instead of operating mills themselves, lords of manors often leased out their mills to private tenants such as the minor gentry, merchants and specialist millers and craftsmen who found themselves in a world of expanding opportunity. At the same time, the abrupt decline in population meant that many other mills were abandoned, and fell into disrepair before either being revived at a later date or being allowed to decay. In the case of Stretton it is not known precisely what happened, but subsequent records indicate that enough of the local population survived to either maintain or restore that the mill after the traumas of the 14th century. Indeed, the use of the mill to save on manual flour processing during a population crisis would probably have assisted economic recovery.
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Stretton Mill

The Medieval and Early Tudor Mill

Carden Brook, which supplies the water for the millpond and waterwheels

From 1281 the manor (estate) of Stretton was owned by the Warren family, who held it until the 15th century. The mill at Stretton dates at least to 1350, when it is first recorded in a transfer deed, meaning that it was built before this date. Given that the Black Death was sweeping through Britain in 1348, it was probably built before that date. It is not known exactly what the mill would have looked like before the 17th century. The mechanism in the mid 14th century would have been very much the same as the one still working today, with the waterwheel operating via gears to turn the millstones. There was only one waterwheel until the 18th century, positioned to the left as you face the mill, and this would have been on the outside, and was not incorporated into the interior of the building until the 19th century.

Stretton was dedicated to the processing of grain, mainly barley, oats and rye with some wheat. Wheat bread was the most expensive, and used only for bread for the better off. Barley could be used for an inferior bread, oats could be used to make porridge and oat cakes and rye was used bread and beer. Barley, oats and rye could all be used for animal fodder too.

In the 1500s, Stretton Mill was purchased by the Leche family of Carden Hall.

Stretton Mill 1600-1900

Stretton Mill as it would have looked in the 1600s. Source: Author Uncredited – West Cheshire Museums

The oldest part of the mill dates to 1630. In the 17th century the building is thought to have been made of a timber framework, filled with wattle and daub. Wattle and daub is a mixture of thin wooden strips woven like basketry to form into a lattice, which provides a base to which a material can be added to create panels that form the walls of the building between the timber frames. The mill was almost certainly thatched, the materials for which were easy to source in a rural agricultural location. The fixtures that attached the wattle and daub to the frame can still be seen at the mill, and an example was pointed out on the guided tour. The windows, vital not only for visibility but to allow the flour-filled air to clear, would have been provided with shutters. The water wheel was known as a breast-shot, and was located on the east end of the mill, to the left as you face it from the road.

The main types of waterwheel. Source: Guide to Ford End Watermill

There are four main categories of water wheel, the undershot, pitchback, overshot, and breast-shot. The main difference between them is how water is fed to the wheel, how the wheel uses this water to turn, and what sort of power this delivers to the machinery. Each has benefits depending on a number of factors. The overshot wheel is fed from an overhead channel, requiring a water source that is at least as high as the top of the wheel, runs counter clockwise and is the most efficient when plenty of water is available. It is also an expensive solution, requiring extensive installation work. The undershot is powered by a low level water source that works by capturing the water between the wheel and the wheel pit, and is the least efficient.

The breast-shot wheel when it was under repair

The breast-shot design sits between the overshot and undershot, receiving water from a higher level than the undershot but a lower level than an overshot. The main advantage of the breast-shot over the overshot is that it can use lower levels of water, allowing a mill to continue output even during periods of drought.

The breast-shot wheel at Stretton is unusual in that the sluice controlling access of water to the wheel has three paddles, each of which can be operated to let water into the waterwheel’s buckets at different levels. This makes it very flexible when the water level of the millpond changes.

The water for the breast-shot wheel vanishes under the east wall of the building’s extension, into the wheel-housing, shown to the right. Look out for this feature when you are outside at the level of the millpond’s surface.

The oldest local extant contemporary buildings in the area are Stretton Lower Hall, which was built in 1660 on a site that had been apparently been moated, and Stretton Old Hall, built in the 17th century and extended in the 19th century.

By the 18th century, Stretton was one of a great many watermills and several windmills dotted throughout Cheshire and the Wirral. As the map below shows, water power dominated in Cheshire whereas on the Wirral wind power was source of power for milling. As the Industrial Revolution began to gain momentum, mechanization, mainly dependent on a water source, spread rapidly.

Map of water mills and wind mills in the 1770s. Source: Phillips and Phillips 2002, p.67

At Stretton there is an inscription commemorating major structural changes to the mill in 1770. Improvements included a sandstone base, topped with weatherboard and finished off with a slate roof, still with a new overshot wheel added to the west end, together with a window overlooking it, on the right as you face the mill. The breast-shot wheel at the east end was still on the outside.

Stretton Mill in 1770. Source: Author Uncredited – West Cheshire Museums

The addition of the overshot wheel was an important one. The breast-shot wheel has been explained above. The overshot wheel, which delivered water directly to the top of the wheel via a trough, was far more efficient when the millpond was full. There is considerable drop from the millpond to the trough in which the overshot wheel sits. This drop is known as the head. The higher the head, the more powerful the potential of the waterwheel.

The water is taken away from the mill after passing through the wheels. Each has a tailrace that takes the spent water under the road, and if you cross the road you can see it leaving via small natural-looking channels that wend through the fields to re-join the Carden Brook.

The overshot wheel

The combination of the two wheels gave the mill the ability to function at maximum efficiency when rainfall provided a healthy supply of water, allowing both wheels to be operated, with the overshot wheel being particularly productive. At the same time, when drought lowered the level of the millpond, putting the overshot wheel out of action, the breast-shot would still be viable. The combination of two wheels was a very good risk-management strategy.

Contemporary with the mill at this period is Stretton Hall, brick-built in 1763 for John Leche (1704 – 1765) of Carden. There were actually nineteen men at the head of the Leche family named John, and this was the fourteenth of them.

In the early 19th century the building was extended to the east to incorporate the breast-shot wheel, which could be inspected from the small arched window shown in the illustration below, and which survives today.

Stretton Mill in 1819. Source: Author Uncredited – West Cheshire Museums

The extension was built of red sandstone, but the weather-board was retained on the older section of the mill. This is very like the mill building that survives today, albeit with less red sandstone and more weatherboard than today’s building. As well as the original wooden shutters, glass was probably fitted into the windows at this time.

The 1940s

The watermill was in 24 hour use during the Second World War, milling grains for both bread and animal feeds. It was in continuous use until 1959, when its last miller died, and it fell into disrepair.

The modern era

Millstone leaning against a wall in the stone room of Stretton Mill

The mill was acquired in 1975 by Cheshire County Council and was renovated in 1977 and given Grade 1 listing. Stretton Mill as it stands today is part red sandstone, part weatherboard, and has a brick-built extension. The fact that it incorporates earlier features of the mill building is a particularly attractive aspect of the mill that helps its history to be recreated, and apart from repairs it has changed very little since the 19th Century. It is still fully functional, and produces flour which, unfortunately, does not conform to modern health and safety standards so cannot be purchased from the shop.
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What you see today

The exterior

Much of what can be seen of the building’s exterior today has been described above, but there are two notable exceptions. One is the red sandstone-built chimney at far right, which connects to the hearth on the ground floor of the mill. The hearth is a particular mystery given the risk of fire in an environment in which dry goods were being milled and could fill the atmosphere with combustible material. The other is the brick-built extension in the middle of the three photographs above. The dates of both are unknown. The use of brick does indicate a date after the mid 1700s, but is likely to be much later.

The water wheels

You can see both the overshot wheel on the outside, at the west end, and the breastshot wheel on the inside at the opposite end. Of the two water wheels, only the overshot water wheel was working in late summer 2022, and was doing a great job. The other was under repair but in June 2023, when I drove past, was not operating although the mill was open at the time, although the overshot wheel was trundling away.

The machinery

Stretton’s purpose was to grind grain. The internal gearing translated the power of the big water wheel, via a series of interconnected wheels to turn the millstones.

The ground floor (meal floor)

If you look at the wall opposite the doorway, you will see that it is damp. This is because the millpond is on the other side, and in the ground floor room you are well below the surface of the pond, as you can see when you walk up to the first floor level.

Spurwheel drive for two pairs of millstones. The vertically mounted pitwheel is connected to the waterwheel outside, and translates the power of the waterwheel to the smaller horizontal wallower above, and the large horizontal spurwheel above that.

The ground floor contains the drive machinery for both wheels, and on the tour the machinery for the overshot wheel is clearly visible. When you enter the ground floor, you can see how the water wheels connect to the rest of the machinery that drives the mill via a series of toothed wheels, which interlock with one another to send power to the millstones above. The Stretton arrangement is known as an underdriven spurwheel arrangement, where the water wheel links to a much smaller vertical pitwheel wheel that is fitted on the same axis and turns at the same rate. This has teeth that interlock with a small horizontal wallower wheel, above which is the spur wheel, all of which can be seen in the above photograph.

This is also the room into which the processed grain falls from the stone room, so it both begins the process and ends it.

The top (bin room) and middle (stone room) floors

We were able to visit two floors, but originally three floors were in use, which is the usual arrangement for a watermill. The top floor, the bin floor, is inaccessible to visitors, located in the eaves of the roof, and reached by a stepladder. This is where grain was stored before being tipped into a grain bin that released the grain into a chute that entered the hoppers of the stone room below.

Source: Medieval Technology and American History

The stone floor, which is at the level of the mill pond surface houses the machinery and devices for funnelling grain. It feels rather like being inside an enormous clockwork toy, with interlocking cogs and gears controlling the turning of the millstones and the grinding of grain, as well as the lowering and raising of the top millstone (the runner) and the raising and lowering of sacks. With hindsight it seems extraordinary that so much equipment could be fitted into such a small space.

The meal floor gearing enters the stone floor and interlocks with two pinions called stone nuts, which turn the millstones. There are two pairs of millstones at Stretton, each pair driven by its own wheel. The stones are contained within wooden containers called tuns. There is a small gap between the upper millstone, the runner, millstone and the lower millstone, bedstone. This gap is called the nip. The nip was adjusted by the miller in response to the type of grain being processed and the fineness required. According to the West Cheshire Museums Booklet about the mill, the breas-tshot stones are currently French burr stone from the Paris Basin and the overshot stones are millstone grit from the Peak District.

The millstones are contained within the octagonal tun. Above it, the square-mouthed hopper sits on a frame and feeds grain into the millstones

The grain falls from the bin floor, into a large wooden funnel on the stone floor called a hopper, which sits on a horizontal wooden frame called a horse. It is funnelled down a chute called a meal ark into the millstones where it is ground before being forced down the to the edge of the millstones where it is funnelled down a meal spout into a meal bin or ark on the meal floor.

Visiting details

It is a short drive from Farndon and is shown on brown heritage signs from the main roads in the vicinity. If you are relying on the brown signs, look out for them carefully, as some of those closest to the mill are often partly concealed behind foliage. The postcode for satnav systems is SY14 7JA. The road to the mill, from either direction, is single track but has plenty of passing places.

Do check out the opening times on the Chester and Cheshire West web page for Stretton Mill before visiting because the mill is only open in afternoons and only on certain days of the week. There is a small entrance fee, £3.70 at the time of writing. Please note that it is cash-only. Here’s the web address:
https://strettonwatermill.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/visit-us/

The by-wash

The site is partially suitable for those with mobility issues. There is a footpath that winds very gently up the slope that leads to the upper level of the mill, avoiding stairs, but this would probably be a struggle for wheelchair users during or after wet weather. There are seats at all key points for those who are mobile but need to rest legs.

Because of very valid health and safety issues, you will need to be accompanied around the interior of the building on a guided tour (see below). You can walk around the exterior without a chaperon, and there is step-free access, as well as some nicely located picnic areas for those who wish to linger and enjoy the view over the mill pond. It is a really lovely location. There is a gift shop, selling postcards, books, posters, and flour (milled at Walk Mill, not far from Chester because Stretton Mill is not a commercial milling enterprise and falls below rigorous modern health and safety standards).

Walking further along the road in the opposite direction from Stretton village, approaching Carden, the rural scene gives way to golf, as you find yourself around the back of the Carden Park Hotel and its immense golf course, which spans both sides of the road.

The guided tour

Steplader leading to the top, bin floor

The guide on the day provided us with a creative version of the birth of agriculture in the Near East. If you want to prime yourself beforehand with the basics of the spread of agriculture from the Near East through Europe to and throughout Britain see the Britannica’s Origins of Agriculture web pages, if you can put up with the adverts.

At the end of this talk our guide gave us some hard wheat grains to hold and examine. The inner kernel is contained within a hard husk that protects it, and the husks demonstrate unambiguously why processing is so necessary. They are extremely tough. We were then taken on a fascinating tour of the building, starting with the water wheels. Only the overshot wheel was working when we visited, due to repairs on the breast-shot wheel. Next, we proceeded to the first floor “stone room” to look at where the milling happens. There is a long curving ramp that enables those who cannot manage steps to reach the top floor. We then returned downstairs to look at where the external overshot wheel meets the internal gears, and to see where the milled flour was collected.

The tour of the mill equipment was very informative and extremely useful. Unless you are familiar with how all the pieces fit together, it is helpful to have an explanation of the entire process as it would have happened in real time.

Final Comments

The video below was taken during our first visit in summer 2022. I drove past in June 2023 and had a look to see if the breast-shot wheel, which had been under repair in 2022, was running again, but it was not. The overshot wheel, however, is terrific, issuing a rhythmic rumbling noise that it is difficult to describe, but can be heard in the video.

It was an absolute treat to see a working watermill, and this one is a particularly engaging example in a lovely location.

Sources:

Books, booklets and papers

The by-wash, which can be used to lower the level of the millpond

Author uncredited. Historical Background to Stretton Watermill and the Milling Process. West Cheshire Museums.

Dyer, C. 2005. An Age of Transition? Economy and Society in England in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford University Press

Harris, N.S. Traditional Corn Milling Watermills, with drawings by John Brandrick. Written and published by Nigel Harris

Phillips, A.D.M. and Phillips, C.B. 2002. A New Historical Atlas of Cheshire. Cheshire County Council and Cheshire Community Council Publications Trust

Singleton, William, A. 1952. The Traditional House-Types in Rural Lancashire and Cheshire, off-print from The Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Volume 104, p. 75-91.

Watts, M. 2000. Water and Wind Power. Shire Publications

Watts, M. 2006. Watermills. Shire Library

Wenham, P. 1989. Watermills. Robert Hale

Websites

British Listed Buildings
Stretton Mill and Steps, Millrace and Sluice Adjoining
https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101279423-stretton-mill-and-steps-millrace-and-sluice-adjoining-stretton

Cheshire Live
The 700-year-old ‘idyllic’ Cheshire watermill that’s like stepping back in time by Angela Ferguson, 12th March 2023
https://www.cheshire-live.co.uk/whats-on/700-year-old-idyllic-cheshire-26422639

Geni
Carden Hall, Cheshire (for details of the Leche family)
https://www.geni.com/projects/Carden-Hall-Cheshire-England/27610

Mills Archive
https://catalogue.millsarchive.org

Stretton Mill at West Cheshire Museums
Stretton Mill – Visits
https://strettonwatermill.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/visit-us/

Wikipedia
Listed Buildings in Stretton, West Cheshire and Chester
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listed_buildings_in_Stretton,_Cheshire_West_and_Chester

Part 2: Who was Brymbo Man, what was the Mold Cape and why do they matter?

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What do we know about Bryn y Ffynon and Brymbo Man?

The skull of the Brymbo skeleton. Source: detail of a photo from the Wrexham County Borough Museum website.

In Part 1 of this four-part series, two Late Neolithic – Early Bronze Age burial sites were introduced: Bryn y Ffynon (the grave of the so-called Brymbo Man), and Bryn yr Ellyllon (the grave in which the Mold gold cape was found). A map of their locations was shown, the circumstances of their discovery was described, and the two graves were set in the context of similar sites in northeast Wales.

This post looks more closely at the Bryn y Ffynon, best known as the grave of Brymbo Man, one of the star exhibits in the Wrexham County Borough Museum. Part 3 looks at Bryn yr Ellyllon, the grave that produced the Mold Cape. I the fourth and final part, the various strands will be brought together in a conclusion, together with visiting notes. The bibliography for all four parts can be found at present at the end of part .

Contents of Part 2:

The grave
The grave goods
The skeleton
Funerary rituals
Dating
What did Brymbo Man look like?
Who was Brymbo Man? Was he important?
How did he make a living?
Final comments on Part 2
(Sources are listed at the end of Part 1)

The grave

Brymbo Man was buried in a stone-built grave called Bryn y Ffynon (Well on the Hill) on the north side of Ruabon Mountain, now the site of a housing estate in Brymbo to the northwest of Wrexham. No burial mound, either of earth or stone, has survived, and it is not known if there ever was one. In the northeast of England there were cemeteries of flat graves, so a burial mound might not have been essential everywhere, but in northeast Wales mounds of earth (barrows) or stone (cairns) were usual, even though not all of them remain. Some mounds were built in complex layers using different materials, and importantly could contain secondary burials, usually cremation burials, that were added to the mound, sometimes involving the extension of the mound. The loss of a burial mound often equates to the loss of valuable data. Stone cairns in particular were often robbed for their stone for much later building material, sometimes leaving a hidden cist unsuspected beneath the surface. Given the upland location of the site, if the grave was covered, it probably lay under a cairn.

The cist (burial chamber) itself was made of roughly hewn slabs of local stone lining the walls and floor of the grave, and measured 96 x 79cm (38 x 31 inches). The cist was aligned north-south. A very large and uneven slab of stone, called a capstone, was placed over the top of the cist, sealing the burial before any burial mound was built over the top, itself measuring 5ft 6ins (167cm) long, 3ft 3ins wide (c.1m) and 9ins (23cm) thick.

The Grave Goods

There were only two items found in the grave with Brymbo Man, which are on display with the skeleton. One is a ceramic vessel known as a Beaker and the other is a flint tool. This is fairly typical of Early Bronze Age graves. Without access to the excavation report (unpublished) one assumes that the relationship between the objects and the skeleton in the cist was recorded, and that this is what has been reproduced by the museum, with a flint knife placed not far behind the skull and the Beaker placed towards at the base of what remains of the skeleton.

The Beaker

On the left: The Bryn y Ffynnon Beaker. Source: Rebecca Van Der Putt (with congratulations, because I couldn’t get any sort of angle on it). Source: The Modern Antiquarian. On the right: Savory’s photograph of the Bryn y Ffynnon Beaker. Source: Savory, H. N. 1959.

Brymbo Man was accompanied in his grave by a very distinctive ceramic form known as a “Beaker,” more precisely a short-necked Beaker. The Beaker tradition was an import from Europe, marking one of the changes in the centuries at the end of the Neolithic and beginning of the Early Bronze Age. Where a Beaker is buried with the individual, it may be accompanied by a variety of other goods, but is often the only object found. This suggests that the beaker itself was pivotal in establishing the identity and purpose of the grave and its owner. Skeletons in Beaker graves were flexed / crouched, (with their knees bent and their legs pulled up to their chests).

The process by which Beaker burial traditions arrived in Britain is still poorly understood. Options are that the tradition was imported by visitors or immigrants; or that it was brought back from the continent by British (using the term loosely) travellers who found certain affinities with the funerary practises that they observed. The idea of foreign people being buried with the new Beaker style burial is given some credence by beaker burials from the Stonehenge region, and in particular the Amesbury Archer, who was buried with a range of goods traditionally associated with beakers, and was subjected to isotope analysis that indicated his origins were probably in the Alps. In addition, a multi-disciplinary DNA analysis research project in 2017 proposed that a significant percentage of the indigenous population of Britain was, by the Middle Bronze Age, replaced by those who brought the Beaker tradition with them at the end of the Neolithic: “the genetic evidence points to a substantial amount of migration into Britain from the European mainland beginning around 2400 BCE.” (Olalde et al). As is so often the case with this sort of DNA research, as highlighted in the study itself, there are questions remaining about the extent to which it is possible to extrapolate from the data used, including sampling issues (statistical, geographical and relating to the quality of the material).

The Beaker on the left is from Balblair in eastern Scotland, is not dissimilar from the Brymbo Beaker. althoug its neck is shorter, the carination less pronounced and the decorative incisions slightly different. Source: Inverness Museum and Art Gallery

The new burial tradition found favour, whatever it represented. The new funerary regime could not have spread so far and and wide throughout Britain and Ireland without people in all those regions being complicit. Whatever the mechanism of transmission, by the end of the Neolithic the continental Beaker and associated objects had become desirable, and were found extensively under round barrows, as well as occasionally in other contexts, in many parts of Britain.

Beakers were hand-made (i.e. not wheel-thrown), built up from a single ball of clay that was hollowed out and shaped before being fired. There is a video at the end that demonstrates how Beakers may have been assembled and decorated. A certain amount of skill went into the construction, which is a very specific shape, and the decoration must have taken considerable patience, but what is most remarkable about it is its faithful reproduction of an idea that had spread through Europe and was now perfectly at home in burials of northeast Wales. The Beaker may have had slightly different ideas associated with it different areas, but it clearly imparted a message either about the deceased, the role or status enacted by the deceased in life, the status conferred upon the deceased after death, the place where the burial was made, as well as ideas and ideologies inherited with the Beaker tradition.

The flint knife

On the left. The plano-convex stone tool found in Bryn y Ffynnon, illustrated in Savory 1959. On the right, a photograph of the same, although note that the photograph appears to have been accidentally inverted (i.e. it is the wrong way round, which sometimes happens when photos are digitized). Source: Wrexham County Borough Museum

A flint tool was found in the grave. It is plano-convex (flat on one side and curved on the other). Flint was the preferred stone for tool manufacture in Britain. In Cheshire, and less frequently in northeast Wales, it could be found locally in river beds and on beaches as pebbles, which are useful for making small tools, but for more ambitious pieces it would be imported from areas where flint was part of the geological fabric. The reason for its popularity is the way in which it responds when it is struck in order to shape it into a tool. The term for it is conchoidal fracturing, which means that the shock-wave of its fracture creates a slightly concave “bulb of percussion” from which concentric lines that ripple out from the point of impact. The waste products left over from tool manufactured, undifferentiated flakes, are usually referred to as “debitage.” Some of these could be further worked into other smaller tools, but others might be abandoned and are useful datasets about tool manufacture in their own right. Some tools are very distinctively shaped, like barbed and tanged arrowheads, but others are far more generic, like the one accompanying Brymbo Man. Stone tools were often hafted in wood to make, for example, arrows, spears and axes.

Terminology used to described features of worked prehistoric tools. Source: Martingell 2001, p.10

Small plano-convex tools were common in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, particularly from the northeast, and often towards the end of the period. When the edges are worked to form a sharp edge, they are usually termed knives, but many, including this one, were probably multi-purpose tools. A particular industry referred to as “plano-convex” tools, formerly “slug knives,” is characterized by tools made with specialized pressure-flaking over one face of the tool, which have a very distinctive appearance and are particularly associated with the northeast and food vessels. Nothing special went into the manufacture of this item, which is a very everyday piece, and although it is technically plano-convex, it is not characteristic of the more elaborate objects that are usually associated with the term. I cannot find an image of the reverse side of the flint, but it looks more like a flake (a piece struck from a core piece of flint without much additional work) than a properly manufactured and shaped tool.

The Skeleton

Skeleton of “Brymbo Man” in the Bryn y Ffynnon cist. Source: Wrexham County Borough Museum

The skeleton as it survives today is incomplete, as shown in the photograph on the left. Even with only a partial skeleton to study it could be determined that the deceased was a male who, at the time of his death, was 5ft 8ins/173cm tall, and was strong and powerful, indicated both by the shape of his skull and by the muscle attachments to both his skull and his leg bones.

Brymbo Man is thought to have been 35 years of age at the time of his death. There are different estimates of life expectancy for this period, but it is probable that 35-40 was a good age. His age was determined both by the degree to which the bones in his skull had fused and by the wear of his teeth. He had once suffered a wound above hairline on his forehead, thought to have been caused by an arrowhead, but this had healed and was not the cause of his death. No cause of death was identified. He could, for example, have died from an injury that left no traces on what remains of his skeleton, or from illness or disease.

Illustration to help explain strontium isotope analysis. Source, and helpful article: PBS Time Team America

Isotope analysis has not been carried out on the Brymbo skeleton. Isotopic ratio analysis has become very popular for an increasingly popular for the study of past human and livestock migrations. The technique was used, for example, on the tooth enamel of a skeleton found near Stonehenge, known as the Amesbury Archer, and indicates that this person spent his childhood in the Alps. It has also been used by the Beaker People Project, which has concluded that dsfsadfsd. It also be used on livestock remains, helping to show patterns of mobility such as transhumance. Like radiocarbon dating, isotopic analysis requires a sample of human material, which is destroyed in the process, and so far Wrexham County Borough Museum has decided not to subject the Brymbo remains to avoid harming the remaining bones. The choice between preservation and knowledge is a difficult one to make.

Funerary Rituals

Rituals for the dead can be important for ensuring that the living transition successfully into an afterlife, but they may also be important for the living, allowing communities to come to terms with the loss of a community member, to create ancestral links with a particular landscape, and to formalize any exchange of role from the dead person to a living replacement. These ideas are familiar from the rituals that we engage in today when we attend a funeral. In prehistory, it is likely that there were other reasons and meanings embedded into the ritual activities accompanying the deposition of the dead. There was certainly an internal logic to the burials contained within the stone chambers during this period, and the Brymbo burial shares many of these features.

The presence of the Beaker puts it within a burial tradition that is quite distinctive. The dead were buried by themselves, usually under a barrow or cairn, in a small chamber (cist) with a Beaker vessel and sometimes other objects. This European tradition was adopted slowly throughout Britain, and Beakers were adapted by local people to conform to their own traditions. There are numerous variants. Quite what this tradition meant to living communities is unknown. It may have indicated some sort of specific role in society for the deceased, and it may even indicate, in this case, that the the deceased was either involved in networks of communication and exchange with other areas, or was not native to the northeast Wales or border area.

Savory’s 1959 illustration of the cist and capstone in the excavation report, showing the objects and skeletal remains in situ.

The skull was laid on its side, with the head to the north, facing east and, if the museum display reflects how the skeleton was found, the rest of the bones were apparently laid to give the impression of a crouched burial. Although there are exceptions, males were usually laid with their heads facing east, females with their heads facing west.

Only 13% of the Bryn y Ffynnon skeleton was interred in the grave. This is not an accident of survival of decay, but a deliberate decision by those who buried the remains. This is not unusual. Analysis of the skeletal remains by osteology specialist Corinne Duhig found that some of the bones bore cut marks that had been made by a sharp tool, which may indicate de-fleshing the bones. The disarticulation of the skeleton, the missing bones, and and the signs of defleshing imply that between death and interment multiple activities took place. None of this was by any means unusual in the period, or indeed from the preceding Early Neolithic. One explanation for this type of activity is that the person died some distance from home and that the body was prepared somewhere else for travel prior to burial; another is that the practices were part of a set of rituals that marked the transition from life to death, possibly including a transition to an afterlife. It is also entirely possible that the body may have been laid to rest elsewhere and moved here at a later date.

Splitting of bodies between multiple places is not as strange as it sounds and has parallels, for example, in Medieval Britain. For example, when Earl Ranulf III of Chester (1170-1232) died away from home, his body was eviscerated (internal organs removed) so that it could buried in three locations. His entrails were buried where he died in Wallingford, his heart was buried at Dieulacrès Abbey in the Midlands and his embalmed body was then returned to Chester for burial in St Werburgh’s Abbey. This was completely consistent with the traditions of the period.

The pre-interment activity at Brymbo does beg the question of how close the association between the dead person and the objects in the grave actually was. If there was a considerable period between death and interment, it may be that the objects had more to do with the living than the dead, and that they were simply conventional contributions in which ideas were embodied in the artefacts about the site itself, rather than statements about the deceased.

Dating

Chronology of ceramics in Britain, Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. I have indicated the Beaker type most similar to the one in the Brymbo grave. Source: Parker-Pearson et al 2016

The skeleton has not been subjected to radiocarbon dating, but is thought to date to around 1900BC on the basis of artefacts that accompany the burial. Relative dating of this sort is achieved by comparing the objects in graves with similar graves that have been subjected to radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dating is a scientific method, known as absolute dating, that measures the amount of atmospheric carbon-14 remaining within organic materials such as bone or wood to obtain a date. A brief but useful explanation can be found Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit website. A sample of organic matter (such as skeletal or plant material) is required for the dating procedure, and this sample is destroyed in the process of obtaining a date. Recent improvements in the technique need much smaller samples, but some curators are reluctant for even small samples to be destroyed. Signage at the Wrexham County Borough Museum explains that the museum has decided, at the time of writing, not to have the Brymbo Man scientifically dated. Instead, the relative (inferred) date given above has been based mainly on the Beaker. Beakers have been studied extensively. They appear from 2500BC, and there are multiple different styles, some of which can be charted over time. The Brymbo Beaker, placed at around the 1900BC mark, is well into the Early Bronze Age and on the edge of the period when this style of pottery was going out of fashion.

What did Brymbo Man look like?

The Brymbo skull was used by facial reconstruction expert Dr Caroline Wilkinson at the Unit of Art in Medicine at Manchester University, to create an estimate of Brymbo Man’s appearance. Although the skull is incomplete, what remained was enough for Dr Wilkinson to use. The skull itself was fragile, but robust enough for a cast to be made. The position and size of the muscle attachments helped to build a sense of the musculature in the face which, along with bone structure and overall body weight, help to determine the shape of the face. The shape and size of all apertures in the face, such as eyes, mouth and nose, and the spatial relationship between them, also contribute to how a face would have looked. Once the underlying structure of the face had been determined, the skin, represented by clay, was added. There are some things that are not determined by the underlying structure, like lips and ears. Once the model head was completed, a make-up artist was responsible for hair and the colour of eyes, complexion and hair. This is not a definitive representation, but it is based on the available data, and it gives an excellent sense that the skeleton was once a living man.

Who was Brymbo Man? Was he important?

Given that 1000s of people during the Bronze Age were not buried (the landscape would have been stuffed full of mounds if they had), we know that a selection process had been implemented, and this selection process put Brymbo Man in this grave. Unfortunately we do not know the selection criteria for those who were deposited in graves.

One might wonder if he was the leader of his community, but he might equally be an elder respected for his experience and knowledge, a ritual specialist responsible for the religious well-being of the community, or a wealthy trader who conferred status on the group without necessarily having a position of hierarchical power. Perhaps it was not his place in society that marked him out, but an action or event in which he took part. Or was his death itself significant in some way? Perhaps he was the first person to die after the establishment of a claim over a new territory. Equally he might be a person or an idea regarded by the community for reasons that we might never imagine, because we can never know how people were categorized or how they related to the ideas of the community and the broader social conventions to which they were connected.

The capstone that sealed the stone grave, 5ft 6ins (167cm) long, 3ft 3ins wide (c.1m) and 9ins (23cm) thick.

Whatever he represented, whether as a valued family member, an important representative of the community, or a symbol of something rather less conceivable, the burial itself was clearly important. Assembling the grave was no light-hearted exercise. Even without a barrow, cutting the stone for the the stone-lined cist, which would then have to be assembled, would have been a significant activity. Even more impressive, the quarrying of the stone for the capstone and moving the capstone into position would have required many hands, probably some lifting technology, and a great deal of incentive and determination.

We know that Brymbo Man had sustained an injury to his skull, which he survived. The nature of the injury suggests that it might have been made by an arrow, which could have been received in a hunting accident, or in conflict. There are numerous reasons why people might resort to violence, including livestock raiding, disputes over territory as well as personal grievances, but there is no matching data from other burials in the area, such as evidence of similar injuries, to indicate wider scale disputes. Although his injuries could have been connected to his role or status, and might have been a criterion by which he was selected for a round barrow burial, we simply have no way of knowing whether or not this was the case.

This photo shows a cairn that is better preserved than many located in exposed positions. Cefn y Gader 1 near Llangollen. Source: Megalithic Portal, photograph by “Postman”

Beyond speculation there is little information that the presence of a burial with a single Beaker and a single stone tool can divulge about who the deceased may have been in life. It is not even clear whether he was important in his own right or whether his burial represented a set of ideas and traditions, quite unlike our own, that led to his burial in this location. As things stand, we cannot form an opinion about whether he was any more important to his contemporaries than the event that placed him in the grave. What can be stated with some confidence is that the grave itself, and the dome of earth or stone that probably encased it, were significant to the people who built it, standing proud on a landscape that was inhabited by people, and to whom it would have communicated messages that we can no longer read.

What do we know about how Brymbo Man made a living?

We know something about Brymbo man’s vital statistics, and how he was treated after death, but so far we have not had the opportunity to look at how he may have lived his life. In Britain, Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age resources potentially included cereal (wheat and barley) and legume crops, as well as livestock, primarily cattle and sheep. In the earlier Neolithic period, after an initial burst of agrarian activity, livestock herding became dominant over cereal cultivation, possibly because of teething problems with the establishment of cereal farming in new territories by inexperienced farmers. Cattle herding increased, and soon sheep also contributed to the subsistence mix, with dairy products rising in importance. Before the end of the Early Bronze Age, cereal farming resumed on floodplains and other suitable land. Although different areas had access to different types of land and both wild and domesticated resources, there is no reason to doubt that the inhabitants of northeast Wales could obtain access to subsistence assets when they required them, choosing the best combination of crops and livestock for the conditions in which they lived. Hunting wild game probably supplemented the diet.

How much of this applies to the Brymbo area? We know that the grave was on a hillside above the River Alyn. The hillside is used used for sheep farming. Given that Brymbo Man was buried in this location, it can be assumed that he lived and worked here for at least a portion of the year, but whether this was a settled or mobile life is unknown.

Topographic map of Brymbo. The meandering blue shows the Alyn valley. Click to show the bigger image. Source: topographic-map.com

The point was made above that Brymbo Man was a sturdy individual with no obvious health defects, that 35 was a respectable age for the period, and that these observations suggest that he was healthy and probably had a nutritious diet. We can state with some confidence is that Brymbo Man was once part of a family, and a larger community, made up of farmers and/or herders, as well as stone and pottery workers who exploited the fertile lowlands and highland pastures of northeast Wales, possibly on a transhumant or otherwise seasonal basis. These were the people who buried him. There would have been many other men, women and children in the area when he was alive and making a living, each with a specific role within the community.

It is possible that some members of the community split away from the rest on a seasonal basis, following a pattern of taking up livestock onto the hills to take advantage of summer pasture, before returning in the autumn to help with the harvest. If the burial on the edge of Ruabon Mountain is an indication of an affiliation with this particular part of the landscape, Brymbo Man was probably involved in sheep or cattle herding, and was in easy reach of the Alyn valley for other agrarian activities. Climatic indicators suggest that the weather was warm and relatively dry, and although lowland areas could be freed up for agriculture by the clearance of often dense woodland before they could be cultivated, upland areas were often used for both cultivation and herding.

Coming back once again to the Beaker, it is as far as one can tell from other excavated sites in the region, something of an unusual object in northeast Wales and the borders. This one in particular seems to have affinities with other areas and it seems unlikely that it was made locally. The presence of the copper mine on the Great Orme indicates that there was significant trading activity from there to other parts of Britain, and that the development of complex overland and seagoing trade routes were established had been established by the Early Bronze Age. It is in not, therefore, far-fetched to suggest that this grave, overlooking the Alyn valley and only a few kilometres from the Dee valley, might have had connections further afield, and that the Beaker may not have been made by native potters, but was an import, either in trade, or in company with Brymbo Man. This is highly speculative and more data is required. Perhaps the beaker itself, and analysis of the clay from which it was made, could add additional data. Isotopic analysis of the skeleton might also well help to clarify some of these distance-related questions. As noted above, however, this would involve inflicting damage on the Brymbo remains.

Final Comments on Part 2

Brymbo Man remains elusive. One grave on its own, even containing a skeleton and grave goods, provides insufficient data for judging what the grave meant to the people that buried a man there, and covered his burial chamber with a giant capstone and, probably, a barrow or cairn. Isotope data could probably get us a little further, but only as far as assessing whether this man was likely to have travelled. All we can say for sure is that he had no obvious signs of ill health, that his physique, height and age suggest that he was well nourished, that he had received an injury apparently inflicted by another human, and that the hilly surroundings of his burial place might imply that he was involved in livestock herding or that this was a route he travelled in the course of another economic activity.

The real value of Brymbo Man, the objects in his grave and his burial mound is as a data source in comparative research to enable the development of a greater understanding of all these burials, the features they shared, and how they were differentiated from one another. Once sufficient data has been accumulated, probably not until decades from now, it may be possible to return to Brymbo Man, better informed, with more knowledge to hand, to ask some of the above questions again.

Bryn yr Ellyllon, the Early Bronze Age burial cairn that produced the Mold Cape, are discussed in a similar vein in Part 3.

Part 1: Who was Brymbo Man, what was the Mold Cape and why do they matter?

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From left to right. The Mold Cape and strings of amber beads superimposed on a digital sketch, which could be man or woman (Source: British Museum Partnership Programme); Photograph of the Wrexham County Borough Museum hologram of the reconstructed head of Brymbo Man (my photo); The recreated grave and capstone with original skeleton and grave goods of Brymbo Man in the Wrexham County Borough Museum (my photo).

Bryn y Ffynon (Brymbo) and Bryn yr Ellyllon (Mold) indicated by yellow markers, shown in relation to Chester and Wrexham. courtesy of Google Earth. Click to enlarge.

This is part 1 of a four-part overview of two Early Bronze Age graves and how they contribute to an understanding of the archaeology of the period in northeast Wales and the borders. All four parts have been written, and will be released over the next couple of weeks.

The series has been divided up as follows:

Part 1 (this post) – Introduction to the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in northeast Wales:

Introduction
Some Background to the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age
A rich heritage in northeast Wales
Discovering the graves
Sources (bibliography) for all four parts

Part 2 – What do we know about Bryn y Ffynnon, the grave of ‘Brymbo Man’?

Part 3 – What do we know about Bryn yr Ellyllon, where the Mold cape was found?

Part 4 – Bringing the threads together, plus visiting details

Part 1: Introduction

The series is based on two burial finds in northeast Wales, Bryn yr Ellyllon, near Mold and Bryn y Ffynnon at Brymbo, Wrexham. These two sites have been chosen 1) because excavated sites are comparatively unusual in northeast Wales, 2) the contents of both sites can be visited in museums, and 3) because of the differences between them, and the opportunity for assessing different types of knowledge about the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in northeast Wales. In spite of the differences between them, both represent variants of the broader burial tradition, and therefore have the potential to add their own unique voices to the discussion of how this period manifests itself in the region.

The Mold Cape (British Museum 188,0514.1) from Bryn yr Ellyllon near Mold. Source: British Museum

Bryn yr Ellyllon (which translates as Hill of Goblins or Fairies) was discovered by labourers in 1833 a few miles to the east of Mold. It was a round cairn (a mound of stones) that contained a badly decayed skeleton together accompanied by a number of very fine artefacts, one of which is the magnificent gold Mold Cape made of paper-thin gold and embossed with a decorative theme that emulates multiple strings of beads. The other objects included around 300 amber beads (the exact number found remains unknown, and only one survives), other pieces of gold that appear to have belonged to a second cape, and some poorly preserved items of bronze. These are now in the British Museum in London and are discussed further below and in part 3. Even though the objects were pulled from the site as pieces of treasure, the location of the site is known, and the objects form a relatively coherent assemblage. These are valuable details when understanding how objects were chosen to accompany the dead, and where burial sites were located in the landscape.

The partial remains of Brymbo Man and his two grave goods from the Bryn y Ffynnon cist. Source: Peoples Collection Wales

In 1958 a stone-line cist called Bryn y Ffynnon, was found 10 miles to the northwest of Wrexham at Brymbo, containing the well-preserved remains of a partial skeleton, a flint tool and a ceramic vessel known as a Beaker. The name means Hill of the Well or Spring (with many thanks to Reginald Iain de Crawford-Griffin for the translation). It seems to have been named for a small farm of the same name on Brymbo Hill. The site was excavated in 1958, and the results published in an excavation report in 1959. The man to whom the skeleton belonged, now nick-named Brymbo Man, was around 35 years old when he died some 3600 years ago. The burial, including the skeletal remains, is now on display in the Wrexham County Borough Museum, together with a reconstruction of the skeleton’s face. The site is discussed further below, and in detail in part 2.

Each burial offers contrasting insights into the Late Neolithic / Early Bronze Age, and they are worth looking at both individually and together to highlight how different sites may produced different types of knowledge. Every individual site has something to say for itself, and as more sites are investigated, each feeds in turn into our knowledge about the period in which they were constructed, and during which they formed an integral part of the human landscape. It is the understanding of the period as a whole, rather than individual objects, that is important to archaeologists, who work to recreate past societies from the sites and objects that survive.

Some Background to the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age

Chronology of ceramics in Britain, Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Source: Parker-Pearson et al 2016

The Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age are usually discussed together. The period lasts from around 2900-1600 BC. The division from the earlier Neolithic lies in transformations visible in the material record, which may in turn reflect revisions of ideology, social organization and/or economic activity. These changes coincide with a period of climatic change.

Riverine connections during British prehistory, showing how the river network links from Wessex, the Thames valley and the Humber estuary. Source: Bradley 2019, p.20

The climate, cooler than in the earlier Neolithic, was still favourable for agriculture, and in particular may have supported agricultural development in hilly areas in the summer months. Astrid Caseldine’s analysis of environmental indicators suggests that this was a period of deforestation in many parts of upland north Wales, probably indicative of agricultural expansion into these upland areas. This is supported both by the notable increase in cereal pollen in these environments, and by the flowering of Late Neolithic – Early Bronze Age monuments across the upland landscape. This expansion could not have lasted indefinitely; the soils were simply not of sufficiently robust quality to sustain long-term agricultural expansion. Valleys were also popular locations for these sites, indicating that communities were adept at making the best of various different environments. The valley of the river Alyn, along which several sites are located including Bryn yr Ellyllon and the Llong, is one example.

Foremost amongst the transformations in material culture, suggesting social as well as economic changes, is a different form of burial practise, suggesting changes in the way that communities defined themselves and related to both others and the landscape. Although there were a number of tomb styles prevalent in the earlier Neolithic, most burial sites contained the remains of multiple individuals, but at the end of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Bronze age, smaller round barrows and cairns were favoured, usually containing a single burial in a small subterranean chamber at its centre, sometimes with a new form of pottery known as a Beaker. Sometimes additional burials added into the mound itself at a later date. At the same time, settlements became less substantial, more ephemeral, and much less easy to find archaeologically, the sites often consisting of little more than household debris with few, if any, signs of the circular structures that once contained them.

A suggested reconstruction of the 100s of beads found in the cairn at Llong, near Mold. Source: Curious Clwyd

Pottery styles also changed at this time, with the introduction of the new Beaker form from Europe and the replacement of earlier Neolithic styles with new home-grown Grooved Ware, Food Vessels and Collared Urns. As the name Bronze Age suggests, this was also the period during which metal-working began, first copper and gold, and later bronze itself, an alloy of copper and tin. North Wales was well placed as a base for the exploitation of mineral sources, an industry that gained momentum during the Early Bronze Age before becoming an important centre for copper and other resources in the Middle Bronze Age. The earliest copper tools in Wales were flat axes that had been cast in an open mould, a basic technology that improved over time. Decorative items, such as items of jewellery also appear much more frequently. The amber beads in Bryn yr Ellyllon and the jet and shale beads in the necklace found in a cairn at Llong, near Mold, both in the valley of the river Alyn, are both examples from northeast Wales.

Although these are the top-level identifiers of the new Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age material culture, there is considerable regional variation, and even within a region no two graves are identical. Although inhumations (burials) are typical of barrow graves, cremation steadily gained momentum, eventually replacing inhumation as the preferred method for disposing of the dead.

A rich Early Bronze Age heritage in northeast Wales

The Maesmor Estate macehead from near Corwen (near Llangollen). Found in 1840. Source: National Museum of Wales

Northeast Wales was a recipient of these new ideas, perhaps deriving them from earlier versions in south Wales, or perhaps more plausibly from similar manifestations in northern England with which the northern Welsh material appears to have certain affinities. The Bryn y Ffynnon Beaker, for example, bears a close resemblance to examples in northeast England, and stone maceheads from northeast Wales are comparable with those from the north of England, including a remarkable example from the Maesmor Estate at Llangwm near Corwen in the Ceirw river valley, not far from the Dee (shown left). Good quality flint pieces for more mundane stone tools are unavailable in north Wales, and this appears to have been imported from elsewhere. Yorkshire jet appears in northeast Wales during the Late Neolithic, as does amber. The nearest source of amber was the Baltic, but it also washed up on beaches along the Yorkshire coast. Amber was found in Bryn yr Ellyllon with the golden cape; jet (and black stone resembling jet) appears in the necklace, found scattered in a the stones of cairn at Llong, 1.5 miles (2.4km) southeast of Mold, overlying the burial of a crouched female skeleton. Although sea routes had dominated during the earlier Neolithic, the indications are that land and river routes now assumed a new importance, transforming networks of communication.

Distribution of round barrows and cairns in Wales. Source: Burrow 2011, p.106

However they arrived, the Early Neolithic and Early Bronze Age burial practices soon colonized northeast Wales, mainly round barrows (mounds of earth or turf) and cairns (mounds of stone) the majority of which, but by no means all, are thought to have been burial sites. Here there were none of the earlier Neolithic monumental burials such as the so-called portal dolmens found in northwest Wales and on Anglesey. There are 100s of mounds all over Wales, north and south, and there are particular concentrations in the northeast of Wales, and along the Welsh borders. See the map right. There are also a few other types of ceremonial monuments from the period, including stone circles and so-called henges. Sadly, as explained above, there is a severe dearth of settlement sites. Nearly all of the archaeological data available about the period in northeast Wales is derived from these round mounds, built of earth, turf, or stones. Most have not been excavated, and many have become very overgrown over the millennia, making it difficult to differentiate between them. Where they have been investigated, a number of different types have been identified, based on features like kerb stones, berms and ditches. Some round barrows and cairns are completely empty of burials, but may perform a similar function in terms of looking like a burial site and establishing a presence in the landscape.

Source: Prehistoric Funerary and Ritual Monuments in Flintshire and Wrexham, by Frances Lynch 2003

Of the round barrows found in northeast Wales, some have been recorded but are no longer visible. Others are visible, either as monuments or as crop marks in aerial photographs, but have not been examined. Some were excavated before sound archaeological techniques were developed, and just a few have been subject to modern archaeological investigation. In all, it’s a very mixed bag of data, but it all points to a very busy Welsh heritage during the Early Bronze Age period.

When Frances Lynch discussed the survey of Bronze Age monuments in Flintshire and Wrexham in 2003, she included a table that listed 284 monuments, capturing particular concentrations of Early Bronze Age burial activity on Ruabon Mountain and in the Alyn Valley. What is interesting about her list is the sheer number of round barrows when compared to any other type of contemporary monument. A single stone circle and a possible henge (ceremonial monuments) are recorded. Lynch makes the point that sites located side by side may or may not be directly related to one another, but even so, a landscape stuffed full or more or less contemporary monuments is a notable phenomenon.

1991 map showing the distribution of scheduled Bronze Age barrows and major finds spots in Clwyd. Scheduled monuments are those that are under state protection, but there are many more that are not scheduled, so this shows only those sites deemed to be most important. Source: Manley et al 1991, p.66

To understand the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, other types of site would normally be taken into consideration, a mix of domestic, funerary and ritual sites. These include other ceremonial sites, industrial sites like kilns, quarries and mines, and settlements. A combination of sites helps to create a sense of what the lived area was like. The profusion of round mounds argues that northeast Wales was clearly well populated, but settlement and industrial sites remain very rare, although the copper mine at the Great Orme stands out as a notable and welcome exception. In spite of these gaps, prehistorian Frances Lynch, who specializes in Welsh archaeology, suggests that these prolific barrow builders were far from insular, and that they were part of larger networks of communication

“Although the social character of Wales was perhaps more conservative than that of many parts of Britain, the country was not isolated. The presence of exotic beads made of amber, faience and jet demonstrates that even quite remote communities could obtain luxuries from a distance and that fashions in clothes, as far as we can reconstruct them, changed in step with those elsewhere.” (Lynch 2000 p.138)

I will be talking more about grave distribution and how these two graves fit into the general picture in part 4.

Discovering the graves

The two sites under discussion were found 125 years apart. That 125 years accounts for how differently each site was treated by its finders. Both sites were discovered by workmen. Bryn yr Ellyllon, which contained the Mold Cape, was found in 1833 and Bryn y Ffynnon (Brymbo) was found in 1958. The grave at Bryn yr Ellyllon on the eastern outskirts of Mold, was discovered on the banks of the River Alyn, by accident by workmen in 1833, using stones from the cairn (stone mound) that covered the cist and its contents to fill in a disused gravel pit at the side of a road. Similarly, Bryn y Ffynnon, was found by workmen building a new housing estate. They were laying pipes, for which they were digging a new trench in Cheshire View in the village of Brymbo.

Bryn yr Ellyllon (containing the Mold Cape and accompanying grave goods)

Imaginative reconstruction of the discovery of the Mold Cape at Bryn yr Ellyllon by Tony Daly. It is far more likely that the skeleton was lying on its side, and we know that the cape was in pieces. Still, it is a useful way of visualizing how the site was uncovered. Source: British Museum Partnership Programme

An early 19th century discovery is almost inevitably bad news for a site in terms of excavation techniques, the proper recording of archaeological finds and the finding and preservation of delicate organic remains, such as, for example, very small pieces of human skeletal material, animal bones, plant remains, foodstuffs and any fabrics or bits of basketry. Even so, if the Bryn yr Ellyllon grave had been subjected to any form of contemporary archaeological investigation it would have fared better than it did.

When the labourers at the Bryn yr Ellyllon grave found the treasures that accompanied a decayed skeleton, they simply disposed of the bones and divided the spoils between themselves and the landowner John Longford. No records were made of the skeleton, and any contents that could be expected within the cairn itself, such as any secondary burials or artefacts within its structure, were lost. It is possible that other more pedestrian objects like stone tools may have been in the grave but, like the skeleton, were disposed of at the time. Had it not been for the Reverend Charles Butler Clough, the vicar of Mold, the find might never have come to academic light, and its discovery by a team of labourers would have been the kiss of death. Fortunately, the Reverend Clough heard of the find and took great interest in it, writing a letter to John Gage, in which he described the find, referring to the cape as a corselet:

I regret to say, that the Corselet suffered considerable mutilation. Mr. Langford, upon its discovery, having no idea of its value, threw it into a hedge, and told the workmen to bring it with them when they returned home to dinner. In the mean time several persons broke small pieces off it, and after I saw it, one piece of gold, apparently a shoulder strap, which was entire (or piece passing over the shoulder from the front to the back of the arm) was taken away ; two small pieces, of what I believe to have been (from its similarity to what I had seen) the other shoulder strap, with several small pieces of copper upon which the gold was fixed, are still in Mr. Langford’s possession; several rings and breast pins have been made out of the pieces carried away.

Illustration of the Mold Cape and fragments of a different cape from the same grave, all found in 1833. Source: Gage 1835

Hair-raising stuff. It was common for the clergy to write up this sort of discovery, as they were frequently the most scholarly and informed people around, and often had a profound interest in history. It is because of the Reverend Clough that anything at all is known about the grave beyond the surviving grave goods. His report was published in the journal Archaeologia in 1836, three years after the discovery, and the British Museum picked up on it and went to Mold to see if they could rescue the finds. It took over a century for enough of the pieces of the cape to be assembled for a reconstruction to be made (in the 1960s). Some fragments are still missing presumably those that Clough said had been recycled into rings and pins.

A geophysical survey was carried out in 2013, hoping to find either the site itself or anything associated with it, but its findings were limited to the discovery of the possible original site of the cairn, estimated at 25m in diameter.

The grave contents are now in the British Museum in London and the cape itself was featured in Neil MacGregor’s radio series (and the book that followed) “A History of the World in 100 Objects,” based on objects in the British Museum. In 2013 it was loaned to Wrexham County Borough Museum where it was put on display for five weeks, together with Llong shale and jet necklace, discovered in another burial nearby. It is is decorated with impressed designs, and absolutely remarkable for the skill required to work something so thin.

Bryn y Ffynnon (the grave of “Brymbo Man”)

The 1950s Brymbo housing estate, during the construction of which the Bryn y Ffynnon grave was found. Its rural surroundings are clearly visible. Source: Archwilio

Bryn y Ffynnon was found in 1958, and was very soon the subject of professional excavation. The workmen laying pipes for a new housing estate on the outskirts of Brymbo had stumbled across the corner of a vast slab of stone when they dug down to create a trench, about 30 cm (1ft) below the modern surface. When they investigated further, they found that it was the roughly hewn capstone (lid) of a cist (stone-lined rectangular grave)., which contained a burial and two artefacts: a pot and a flint tool. They removed the long bones and the beaker, for reasons unknown, but left the rest undisturbed.

Even in 1958, archaeology had not come of age in Britain. Radiocarbon dating had been invented but was still giving inaccurate dates, and was not calibrated (corrected) until 1967, after which many further modifications were made. Field techniques had not yet been fully refined, although they were improving all the time. Nor was there the same awareness that there is today of the value of leaving discoveries like this in situ, like a crime scene, so that they objects can be understood in relation to one another as they were deposited, in keeping with the intentions of those who interred the deceased and the grave goods.

The importance of relationships between objects, such as placement of finds near the head, hands or feet, help archaeologists to understand the lost language of ritual practises, just as the positioning of the skeleton itself, including its orientation (e.g. north-south) and the direction in which it was facing (e.g. east or west) help to understand how widespread these traditions and ideas actually were.

It is particularly nice, therefore, that in spite of the fact that the burial was found in the middle of a construction site, the details were passed over to the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, who in turn passed the news over to the National Museum of Wales to enable them to send a team and excavate the site as a rescue dig. The aim of rescue archaeology is to recover as much data and material as possible at a site in the allotted time before the halted construction or other activity must resume. Many rescue digs were carried out in the countryside during the 1950s due to the expansion of housing on formerly rural land. Without a cairn or barrow to signal its presence, the cist was only found whilst work was already underway, and work had to stop to allow the site to be excavated.

Plan and elevation by H.N. Savory published in 1959, showing the grave, together with its contents, as it was found in 1958. Source: Transactions of Denbighshire Historical Society

When they arrived on site, the National Museum of Wales archaeologist H.N. Savory and his team were able to replace the bones in their original position and went on to record the entire grave in situ before removing the grave, slabs and all, to enable the pipe-laying to proceed.

The following year Savory published a short but comprehensive excavation report with illustrations in 1959 in the Transactions of Denbighshire Historical Society, not yet digitized but available today in the public library in Wrexham. The plan and elevation of the grave is taken from that publication.

The grave and its contents were initially sent to Cardiff, where they were put on display in the National Museum of Wales, but are now in the Wrexham County Borough Museum. The grave is excellently displayed. The skeleton has been nick-named Brymbo Man. A reconstruction of the head, based on the remains of the skull, gives Brymbo Man a possible face, also on display in the museum.

In Part 2, both Savory’s excavation, together with the later post-excavation work that took place, will be discussed.

Final Comments on Part 1

Northeast Wales is home to 100s of round barrows. There are even two in Wrexham itself, miracle survivors of urban development. Not enough sites have been excavated to be able to talk in terms of a typical site, but both both sites stand out for the quality of their artefacts. Although the Beaker in Bryn yr Ffynon is not a rare piece, it is certainly unusual in this area, at least in the context of our current knowledge, and the Mold cape is acknowledged as a national treasure.

Photograph on display in the Wrexham County Borough Museum of Bryn y Ffynnon being excavated during the construction of a new housing estate.

Neither site was found under ideal circumstances, but Bryn y Ffynnon fared much better than Bryn yr Ellyllon, due almost entirely to the 125 years between the two discovery dates, and the much greater awareness of the value of archaeological sites, and their protection by law. In a field where funding is always an uphill battle, it is often due to accidental findings during construction work that result in excavations. Ironically, given that it signals the destruction of a site, rescue archaeology is enormously helpful in filling out the picture of archaeological periods, but it is relatively rare that such rescue work is required in rural areas. It was only because of the expansion of Brymbo into the surrounding countryside that Bryn y Ffynnon was discovered and rescued. What this means, in practical terms, is that the recovery of the archaeology of northeast Wales will inevitably remain piecemeal, as funding for excavation (and post-excavation analysis) is secured on a case by case basis, or as other rescue opportunities arise.

Each burial and its accompanying objects will be discussed in much greater depth in the next two posts, Bryn yr Ffynon (Brymbo) posted in part 2 and Bryn yr Ellyllon (Mold), posted in part 3. In part 4 all the strands are brought together to talk about how the two sites contribute to what is known of the archaeology of northeast Wales and the borders.

Sources:

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Websites:

Advanced Amber Kretaceous Zoologia (AAKZ)
British Amber
http://www.aakz.com/British-and-Irish-amber.html

ARCHAEO-death by Howard Williams
Questions for Brymbo Man
https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/questions-for-brymbo-man/

Archwilio
CPAT Regional Historic Environment Record Mold: Bryn-yr-ellyllon, Geophysical survey, 2013
https://archwilio.org.uk/her/chi3/report/page.php?watprn=CPAT166880&dbname=cpat&tbname=event&sessid=CHI39bx3hf5&queryid=Q883547001681323677

BBC News
Great Orme: Rare Bronze Age axe mould declared treasure, June 1st 2022
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-61663012

British Museum
Cape
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1836-0902-1

Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust
Mold Gold!
CPAT Newsletter, Autumn 2007, p.6-8
https://cpat.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/CPAT-Autumn-2007-1.pdf

Current Archaeology
December 1st 2016
The Cist on Whitehorse Hill
https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/cist-whitehorse-hill.htm
October 1st 2018
Spinning the tale of prehistoric textiles
https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/news/spinning-the-tale-of-prehistoric-textiles.htm

Dartmoor National Park
Whitehorse Hill
https://www.dartmoor.gov.uk/wildlife-and-heritage/heritage/bronze-age/whitehorse-hill

The Fire on the Hill
Index of Brymbo Placenames
https://thefireonthehill.wordpress.com/index-of-places/

Getty Museum
The Properties of Amber
https://www.getty.edu/publications/ambers/intro/6/

The Independent
Discovery of vast treasure trove of fine textiles shows importance of fashion to Bronze Age Britons by David Keys, 14th July 2016
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/vast-treasure-trove-of-fine-textiles-shows-importance-of-fashion-to-bronze-age-britons-a7135786.html

Mellor Archaeological Trust
Necklace of Amber Beads
https://www.mellorarchaeology-2000-2010.org.uk/archaeology/finds/amberbeads.htm

PBS Time Team America
Isotope Analysis
http://timeteam.lunchbox.pbs.org/time-team/experience-archaeology/isotope-analysis/

Wrexham County Borough Museums and Archives
Brymbo Man Revealed
https://www.wrexhamheritage.wales/brymbo-man/

A terrific visit to the Lion Salt Works in Northwich

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The Pump House

What a brilliant place! The Lion Salt Works in Northwich is not only the last open-pan salt works in Cheshire but one of only four remaining in the world. I had really very little idea of what to expect, but of all the places I have visited, this one most resembles an industrial time capsule. It is as though things were left just as they were when the Works closed, which is more or less what happened. The biggest market for Lion Works salt was West Africa, but when the Nigerian Civil War broke out in the late 1960s, and the political situation that followed it failed to improve matters, the Lion Salt Works struggled to survive, and the business closed in 1986. The decision was made to convert the Works into a museum of salt working, and what a good decision that was. There are lots of information boards, models and sound effects, all excellent, but what really grips is the sense that this could all start up again tomorrow.

Roman and Medieval salt pans

Another extraordinary aspect to the place is how for just under a century, between 1894 and 1986, the method of making salt from brine hardly changed. In fact, the method used was pretty much the same as that employed by the Romans in the same area. Open-pan salt manufacturing is just what it says – the salt-carrying water, brine, was pumped up from two levels of rock-bearing beds from below the surface and then fed into huge rectangular iron pans, which were heated from below to drive off the water, and then dragged to the side of the pan to help them drain

Salt beds beneath the Lion Salt Works

The Cheshire salt was once suspended in sea water. In the Triassic Period, c.220 million years go, the Cheshire Basin was a tropical lagoon in which seawater became trapped. As the water evaporated from the lagoon, it left behind a rock salt known as halite (Sodium Chloride). Two bands of of salt lie under Northwich and were tapped by the Lion Salt Works. The first is 40m (131ft) down and is 20m thick (65ft), then there is a 10m (33ft) layer of marlstone and then a second, 30m (90ft) layer of salt. When rainfall entered the water table and washed over the salt layers, it dissolved the salt again, and created subterranean streams of highly salted water known as brine. Natural forces pushed these salty streams to the surface in the form of natural springs, but the streams themselves could be tapped by drilling down to them and pumping the brine out at the pump house.

Inside the Pump House

The pump house is a good place to start your visit on the way from the car park to buy your ticket in the former Stove House, now containing a brightly modern shop and café. The brine, once extracted from the borehole, was stored first in a tank and from there it was distributed to the salt pans for processing. A steam engine powered the pump, and both the engine and its boiler are still visible in the pump house. The pump was known as the “nodding donkey” due to the motion of the overhead beam as it rose and fell.

Once beyond the ticket office, you follow the signs to enjoy a self-guided tour. There are plenty of disabled elevators for the leg-challenged and for wheelchair users, which you can operate yourself.

The first building that you come to is a former terraced house, the Red Lion Inn. The original Red Lion Hotel was knocked down in order to expand the mining operation, so two terraced houses were purchased in order to give the workers somewhere to relax after the heavy labour in the stove and pan houses. This building is now used to show Roman and Medieval versions of the pans (just smaller, not actually any different in how they were used) and to show a reconstruction of the works office, complete with clocking-in machine, and the Red Lion bar.

Indoor salt pan on the first floor

It is difficult to get one’s head around the salt pans. The concept is childishly simple, but the sheer hands-on labour involved even as late as the 1980s is truly remarkable. There are displays showing the role of each of the workers. The Lion Works was set up and run by six generations of the Thompson family, and the workers were all local people. At first both men and women were employed in the heavy duty work of the Works, but later women were confined to the less strenuous work of packing up the salt and carrying out administrative tasks.

The two main initial tasks were to rake up the salt in the pans once the water had been evaporated off (creating steam-heavy rooms), and to feed the fires in the stove houses. Here’s a somewhat eye-popping excerpt from the guide book:

Salt-making was a ‘dark art’ and the salt workers would add all sorts of things to make the salt crystals form. These included strong ale, bullock’s blood and eggs, but these were replaced by soft soap and glue

First floor stove room

Workers known as wallers worked in the outdoor pans, pulling the salt along the edges of the pan to form large walls to drain it. Inside, lumpers worked on smaller (but still huge) pans to rake the salt to the sides where it drained, before pacing it into blocks or lumps. The lumps were taken on barrows to the stove rooms to dry out. From here they went through a crushing mill, a splendid piece machinery that was steam-powered until the 1950s when it was converted to electricity. The resulting salt grains were graded from fine to coarse before being packed up in bags or small plastic packs.

The salt that was processed outside was inferior to that made inside, not due to the original brine or the work of the crushing machine, but due to the temperature at which it was heated in the pans. This is because of the multiple uses of salt, from fine-dining to packing fish caught at sea. The Trent and Mersey Canal runs alongside the works. Coal to power the engines and to heat the pans was delivered by narrowboat and the packaged salt was also sent out by narrowboat. The canal network was huge, and even though canal travel was slow compared to the railways that eventually replaced them, was well equipped for transporting heavy, bulk products reliably to towns, cities and ports.

The mining works had a dramatic knock-on effect on the structural stability of the town of Northwich. The story of the subsidence caused by the mining is another aspect to the story that is truly compelling. On the approach to the Lion Works, one of the mines subsided so thoroughly in 1928 that two flashes now flank the road. The subsidence had a truly transformative impact on buildings and infrastructure, and not in a good way. Buildings shifted, some tilting backwards or forwards, others dividing slowly into two, the brickwork forming great fissures as the subsiding and pulled them in opposite directions. The solution was to go back to Medieval domestic building traditions, creating light-weight frames and building in jacks points into which levers could be inserted, in order to persuade buildings back into position. Other buildings, like the Bridge Inn, could simply be moved in their entirety. This gives the town today a half-timbered look. It is an astonishing idea that to respond to the conditions, buildings became just as shiftable as furniture. Roads too subsided, and one collapse caused a major breach in the neighbouring canal.

Left: The Bridge Inn in Northwich on the move, giving new meaning to nomadic settlement strategies. Middle: The Marston Hall mine collapse caused part of the canal to subside in 1907. Right: Warrington Road frequently sank and 1000s of tons of salt pan cinders were used to build it up again.

There is lots more to find out at the museum, and I recommend it for anyone interested in industrial heritage. As well as the Works themselves, there are plenty of really excellent information boards, some interactive displays aimed mainly at children, and some absolutely splendid photographs.

Visiting

We piled out to Northwich along the M56, and it was easy to find the Lion Alt Works by leaving at Junction 10, but we had intended to return via the A51, taking in the Anderton Boat Lift on our way back. In our dreams. At the time of writing (September 2022) Northwich is up in extensive roadworks, and the diversion signs must lead somewhere, but heaven knows where. A sign half-buried in an overgrown verge directed wannabe Boat Lift visitors to follow the diversion signs, which was hysterically funny as the diversion signs were, as stated,completely unfathomable. We just about found our way to the A51 to Chester (although not by following the diversion signs), but we never did find the Boat Lift, in spite of several attempts, both with and without the SatNav.

At the museum there is a car park, café and shop. A free map is given out, but a really useful guide is available for purchase too. The opening times on the website state that the museum is closed on Mondays except bank holidays, and there is an entrance fee. For up to date information check out their website.
https://lionsaltworks.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/

The smithy

The staff at the museum were friendly and helpful. We were chatting to one of them at the end of our visit when we were sitting in the café. His knowledge was immense, and he knew the answers to all the questions that we fired at him. I failed to catch his name, but my sincere thanks.

The coffee came from a push-button machine, but was absolutely fine, and the tea was served in a lovely little pot. The coffee was a particularly nice surprise after the undrinkable swill that was being served with breakfast in the Novotel in Greenwich (London), where I was staying recently!

For disabled and mobility-challenged visitors, there are wheel-chair friendly lifts to the upper floors, and you can operate these yourself. The whole museum is intended to be disabled friendly, and at least to my eyes, looked very well thought out.

Feeding the ovens beneath salt pan 3

I wanted to see if there was any edible (as opposed to ornamental) local salt for sale, but forgot. I am real salt enthusiast and always have several types at home for both cooking and seasoning at the table, so I am a tad miffed that I forgot to look! If you go, do let me know if they were selling any. There were blocks of ornamental salt for sale, in beautiful shades of pink, but I have no idea if it was edible too.

Manager’s house

Northwich town itself looks as though it will be well worth visiting after all the roadworks have come to a close, particularly if you are a fan of inland waterways and the architecture and civil engineering that goes with them (which I am). Make sure that the Anderton Boat Lift is open if you want to see it, as its opening times seem to be something of a movable feast.

The crushing mill

Interior of the smithy

Exhibition: “The Tailor’s Tale” at Tŷ Pawb gallery, Wrexham

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Image source: Tŷ Pawb website, with original image © Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales). The giraffe is sublime, but the panther is bliss.

The Tailor’s Quilt, by James Williams. Click to see the larger, clearer image. Image source: Tŷ Pawb website, with original image © Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales).

The Tailor’s Tale exhibition, at the Tŷ Pawb gallery in Wrexham, is on until September 24th 2022. It is a rare opportunity to see the mid-19th century “Tailor’s Quilt” without having to go to south Wales to see it in its usual home. The exhibition is showing at the same time as the exhibition Blanket Coverage, in the same gallery, about which I have already written here.

The Tailor’s Quilt was made by master military tailor James Williams of Wrexham (c.1818 – 1895). It is on loan from the St Fagan’s National Museum of History in Cardiff. The museum bought it in 1935 from Williams’s grandson during the economic depression, where it joined a national folk art collection, which now has over 200 examples of Welsh quilting and patchworks.

As well as the quilt itself, which is a complete joy, the exhibition features modern art works, including designer clothing and accessories by Sarah Burton (fashion house Alexander McQueen) and fashion designer Adam Jones; a range of items by Mark Herald, based on the quilt and commissioned by Tate Britain; and a set of four small pieces by Quilter’s Guild of the British Isles members Judy Fairless, Anne Gosling, Barbara Harrison and Helen Lloyd. It is one of the pleasures of The Tailor’s Tale, that 19th and 21st century approaches to patchwork and quilting by local textile specialists can be seen side by side, with all the implications of social and economic change that each implies.
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The Tailor’s Quilt

First, a bit of terminology. A quilt is generally defined as at least two layers of fabric with padding, called wadding, between them, all stitched together either with straight lines crossing each other to form squares or diamonds, or in more elaborate designs. A patchwork consists of pieces of fabric sewn together. A patchwork quilt is a patchwork that has been provided with a wadding and backing, and has been sewn together at multiple places across the surface to connect all three levels, to form a patchwork quilt. The Tailor’s Quilt, technically, is a patchwork, because it is made up of different fabrics sewn together but is not sewn over to join all the layers together. It is made using the intarsia method, as described by Dr Clare Rose of the V&A: “This technique, also known as ‘cloth intarsia’, ‘mosaic needlework’, ‘inlaid patchwork’, ‘inlay patchwork’ and ‘stitched inlay’, involves cutting motifs out of wool cloth and stitching them directly to each other with no seam allowances and no backing fabric.” Features like the panther’s very smug smile, are picked out in silk thread.

James Williams, Draper, located opposite another draper and a boot maker at the gates to the church. Source: @Tiffypox on Twitter

As modern as it looks, and as imaginative as it is, the Tailor’s Quilt was crafted by James Williams in his downtime over a period of 10 years between 1842 and 1852, using leftover fabrics from the suits and military outfits that he made, as well as from textile sample books that were no longer of use. It is truly astounding for its scale, imagination and the splendid combination of representational scenes and abstract designs. The quilt is surprisingly huge, and framed behind glass it is a real presence.

It is thought that Williams was born in 1818. His name is listed in trade directories between 1850 and the year of his death in 1895. A photograph survives of his shop sign with the church in the background, which is supposed to show a shopfront on 8 College St., Wrexham. I went to have a look to see if the original building is still there. The view shown left, which shows a sign with the legend “J. Williams Draper,” cannot possibly be College Street, which approaches at a very awkward side angle to the church tower. This is without question Church Street. Perhaps Williams moved from one premises to another at some point in his business life.

A view down Church Street today.

The Tailor’s Quilt measures 2.34m high by 2m wide (7.6 x 6.5ft) and contains over 4,525 pieces of material. It is far bigger than I was expecting, even knowing the measurements. It uses a fairly limited but perfectly harmonized palette of colours, drawn from what Williams had to hand. It shows scenes from the Bible such as Adam naming the animals, Noah’s Ark, Jonah and the whale (fabulously, with only the legs showing out of the whale’s mouth), and Cain and Abel, with the sky filled with lightning. It also features motifs symbolizing Wales (a leek), England (a rose), Scotland (a thistle), and Ireland (a shamrock). Giving the composite scene a really modern twist, the Menai Suspension Bridge and Cefn Viaduct (with a steam engine and two carriages passing over it) are also prominently featured. The significance of the Chinese pagoda seems to escape most commentators, but perhaps (speculating recklessly) it was inspired by Chinese ceramics, which had become mainstream in 19th century Britain at the time. Part of the fun of the piece, with a huge, self-satisfied black panther dominating the composition, is looking for the vignettes and enjoying the details in each one.

The combination of abstract, symbolic and representational takes time to absorb, and it works perfectly both on the level of the detailed vignettes and as a complex composition that instantly creates an attractive and appealing impression. It is difficult to imagine how, over a 10 year period, Williams was able to keep hold of the compositional elements to create something so beautifully balanced and proportioned. As the Tŷ Pawb website puts it, “The quilt is now widely regarded as one of the best surviving examples of Welsh folk art.”

It was exhibited at the Art Treasures Exhibition of North Wales in 1876 and the National Eisteddfod in 1933, both held in Wrexham, and in the British Empire Exhibition in Wembley in 1925. Although its travels were put on hold for conservation work, it is now fit for travel once again, and was displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Quilts 1700-2010 exhibition in 2010, and was loaned to the Wrexham Museum for a temporary exhibition in 2017. Its return to Wrexham at Tŷ Pawb in 2022 is very welcome.

Modern Responses to the Tailor’s Quilt

One of the reasons that this exhibition is so appealing is that it explores how The Tailor’s Quilt influenced and inspired other artists working in the same medium. It offers an opportunity not merely to see a sublime example of the genre, but to see how modern textile artists have incorporated design elements of the quilt in their own work.

The most original of the contributions is that made by fashion designer Adam Jones, who was commissioned by Tŷ Pawb to make a quilt of his own to be displayed adjacent to the Tailor’s Quilt. It works superbly, because Adam Jones has a style that is quite unlike that of James Williams. His bright, often garish clothes are attention-grabbing and regularly make use of clashing colours, textual elements and pub-themed motifs to make often loud, sometimes kitschy and frequently humorous statements. Adam Jones is from Froncysyllte near Wrexham, but is now based in London. Although there are garments from Adam’s collection in the exhibition, to demonstrate some of his creative range, his quilt is particularly interesting in this context. It combines the inspiration of the Tailor’s Quilt with a unique vision of Wrexham, its football team and pubs, and has its own intense personality. The composition is set against a bright, shiny red background (Wrexham FC’s dominant colour), and is full of references to Wrexham, and in particular Wrexham Lager. Contrasting textures, like lace and towelling, and everyday objects like a butcher’s apron and a pair of gloves are intertwined with abstract geometric shapes inspired by the Tailor’s Quilt. Instead of all four nations, Wales is given pride of place with the dragon at its base. Flanking Jones’s quilt are huge photographs of the quilt with local people, one man sitting on it, another draping it around her shoulders, removing textile art from the clean walls of the gallery and taking it back to its spiritual home. Great fun.

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Painter and printmaker Mark Herald was commissioned by Tate Britain to create some pieces based on the Tailor’s Quilt for the Tate’s shop. Mark’s sketchbook is displayed here, together with some of the items that he created for Tate Britain (some of which are currently for sale in the Wrexham Museum, a short walk away). His pieces include pictures, mugs, plates and bags. He takes motifs and themes from the Tailor’s Quilt, gives them a bright hit of colour, and arranges them in harmony on the new surfaces. They work superbly, echoing the Quilt, the motifs unmistakeably lifted from its progenitor, but given a bright, modern twist on the surface of everyday objects. Although none of his other works are shown in the exhibition, a quick web search shows why Tate Britain chose him. His own artworks are similarly full of light, often referencing the animal world, full of bright colours and dynamic shapes.

The name that pops up repeatedly when you do a search on the Tailor’s Quilt is clothes Sarah Burton, Creative Director of the fashion house Alexander McQueen. Sarah Burton was inspired by the Tailor’s Quilt on a visit to St Fagan’s Museum, and incorporated its themes into her Autumn/Winter 2020 collection.

Her work provides yet another contrast. Just as the Tailor’s Quilt is the product of a professional tailor working in Wrexham, and Adam Jones’s quilt and clothing specifically reference the small town environment of the 70s and 80s that were part of his upbringing, Sarah Burton’s clothing is self-consciously aimed at the catwalk and is the product of the couture design world. Angular shapes and big panels of fabric are imprinted with motifs lifted directly from the Tailor’s Quilt, but given a new colour palette and an entirely new feel.

Four small pieces exhibited together are by Judy Fairless, Anne Gosling, Barbara Harrison and Helen Lloyd, who each made a piece as a response to the Tailor’s Quilt for the Llangollen Quiltfest in 2017.

From top left, clockwise: Ann Gosling “What a busy life I lead;” Helen Lloyd. “Jump,” Barbara Harrison, “The world around me,” and Judy Fairless, “All Stitched Up”

Although every exhibition has a curator and a team of skilled assistants, the general public does not often hear much about them. This exhibition was the brainchild of the late Ruth Caswell, to whom the exhibition is dedicated. She was a very remarkable and award-winning costumier, designer, artist and teacher, as well as a skilled curator of exhibitions, of which this was her last. The Tŷ Pawb website explains how she started out:

Ruth moved to London in the 1960s, when she met and married her husband actor Eddie Caswell. Ruth said: “When we married and moved to London, we had only £12.50 to our name so I made clothes in my back bedroom and sold them in Kensington Market on a stall next to Freddie Mercury’s. I delivered them on the 73 bus each Friday and they sold instantly.” Ruth’s clothes were photographed for Vogue and worn by model Jean Shrimpton.

There is a video in the exhibition showing Ruth talking at fascinating length about textile design, and her enthusiasm, eloquence and generosity of spirit are very evident.
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Final Comments

Quilting and patchwork, as craft activities, have a long tradition in domestic contexts, either for daily use or to mark special occasions from the Medieval period onwards. The Tailor’s Quilt, imagined and hand-stitched by a professional tailor, was very much the product of a professional skill, but was also created within a domestic context. The exhibition makes it clear how craft activities are now gaining traction in the fields of design and textile arts, featuring on catwalks and in art galleries. The liminal position held by textile arts for at least a century, is slowly being eroded, and textile is coming of age in a number of commercial contexts where they are recognized as both design and art.

It was a particular stroke of genius to organize The Tailor’s Tale and Blanket Coverage at the same time, and provide them with a single space to share. Whilst quite different in their content and their style of display, both raise questions about how textiles are regarded today, and what they bring to the world of art. Both of the exhibitions, the one exploring the impact of a single magnificent piece (the patchwork quilt) and the other exploring the multiple facets of a single genre (blanket weaving), work beautifully both in isolation and together.

With this new exhibition, the Tŷ Pawb gallery has again provided the perfect venue for bringing together modern art and local history, whilst also exploring more universal themes. The exhibitions The Tailor’s Tale and Blanket Coverage run at Tŷ Pawb until September 24th 2022 between 10am and 4pm Monday to Saturday. Entry is free of charge.

Sources:

Books and papers

Jones, J. 2016. Welsh Quilts. Seren

Rose, C. 2011. A patchwork panel ‘shown at the Great Exhibition. V&A Online Journal, Issue No. 3 Spring 2011
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/journals/research-journal/issue-03/a-patchwork-panel-shown-at-the-great-exhibition/#:~:text=This%20technique%2C%20also%20known%20as,allowances%20and%20no%20backing%20fabric.

Ty Pawb handouts, 2022.
– Artist Biographies
– Ruth Caswell

Websites

175 Heroes
Ruth Caswell
https://175heroes.bradfordcollege.ac.uk/ruth_caswell.html

Build Hollywood
Your Space or Mine: Adam Jones
https://www.buildhollywood.co.uk/work/adam-jones/

National Museum of Wales
Patchwork Bedcover
https://museum.wales/collections/online/object/4ce80b8d-182e-3822-8038-54080af6b0b8/Patchwork-bedcover/

Tŷ Pawb
https://www.typawb.wales
The Tailor’s Tale / Blanket Coverage at Tŷ Pawb 02/07/22 – 24/09/22
https://www.typawb.wales/exhibitions/the-tailors-tale-blanket-coverage/

Based in Churton
Exhibition write-up: The luxuriant “Blanket Coverage” at Tŷ Pawb gallery, Wrexham. By Andie Byrnes
https://wp.me/pcZwQK-2F8

An impressive exhibit of decorated Roman tombstones in Chester’s Grosvenor Museum

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Introduction

Chester’s role as an important Roman military headquarters surrounded by a growing settlement, known as Deva, is very well understood, but there is not a great deal to see on the ground. This means that Chester’s Roman legacy is largely preserved in excavated archaeological remains, some of which are on display in local museum spaces. There is a small gallery of Roman objects in the Grosvenor Museum in Chester showing a wide variety of artefact types, from elite pottery to drainage pipes, but to display some of the large number of Chester tombstones, a special exhibition space was was created for them in a dedicated room in the museum, showing them off to great effect.

The display opens with a Roman style couch under a canopy, setting the scene for a walk down a path between the tombstones, emulating one of the Roman roads heading out of Deva. The walls behind the tombstones capture the sense of the surrounding landscape, part military installation, part civilian settlement, and part rural vistas. The tombstones are organized either side of the “road,” each one facing out towards the visitor. Low level information boards, great for wheelchair users and children, show useful illustrations of key examples, together with translations of the texts.

In the discussion of tombstones below, each example is accompanied by an RIB (Roman Inscriptions of Britain) number. Each inscription in Britain has been given a unique number. When I was at university studying the Antonine Wall, the Roman Inscriptions In Britain were recorded in print, but this was obviously the sort of content that was best suited to a database, and one of the best online resources for Roman Britain is Roman Inscriptions in Britain online. As a resource it has been developed and expanded, and the user interface is excellent. If you want to know more about any of the tomb stones mentioned below, this is a great place to start, with translations, illustrations and further references all available.

Burials and memorials

Altar RIB 3149, found at the Chester amphitheatre

The Romans disposed of their dead in a variety of ways that included both inhumation (deposition in the ground) and cremation. Wealthier Roman inhumation burials in Britain were traditionally accompanied by this sort of memorial, and might include tomb stones and commemorative slabs. In terms of how they were used, tombstones are much like the grave stones and chest-like tombs found in Christian churchyard cemeteries today, but dedicated to different deities and with far more elaborate scenes depicting the owners of the graves engaged in activities that showed them in activities that they enjoyed, or which highlighted particular qualities.

Collectively, these memorials are a useful source of information about Roman life and death in Britain, but individual memorials also have the potential to tell their own stories about the owners, the way in which the owners wanted to be remembered and the ideas with which they wanted to be associated. Although the Grosvenor Museum’s display primarily features tombstones, there are some altars too. Altars could be found in similar contexts, but might also be found in homes, public buildings and at religious sites. The above example from the museum’s exhibit, RIB 3149, was found in a room behind the amphitheatre arena’s wall during excavations in 1966, and reads, in translation, “To the goddess Nemesis, (from) Sextius Marcianus, centurion, in consequence of a vision.”

Roman cemeteries

Roman Chester with modern roads superimposed (click to enlarge). Source: British History Online

The area around the fortress was under military control and the location of the cemeteries was decided by the Praefectus castorum (camp prefect), who decided where civilian quarters and various facilities were to be located. Roman law was very strict on the matter of refusing burial with in urban and residential areas. Roman cemeteries were built outside towns and cities, and depending on the size of the urban centre there might be a number of them. The earliest tombstones and altars were erected along the sides of roads, but more formal cemeteries would have been established over time. These will have been destroyed as Chester spread out in all directions during subsequent centuries. Most of the stones in the museum, sculpted or inscribed, or both, had therefore originally come from one or more Roman cemeteries, and were probably dumped somewhere together to make space for urban spread.

Plan of part of the Infirmary Field excavation. Source: Chester ShoutWiki

One cemetery was revealed during rescue excavations carried out between 1912 and 1917 by Professor Robert Newstead. It was located at Infirmary Field to the west of the fortress, the site of a planned new wing for Chester Royal Infirmary. The presence of a possible cemetery had been known since the mid 19th century due to the discovery of burials adjacent to the Infirmary in 1858 and 1863. During his excavations Newstead found that the cemetery contained men, women and children who, judging from the objects in graves, were both military and civilian.

The tombstones in the walls

Section of the Chester City walls thought to be Roman, sitting on bedrock above the canal.

The high sandstone walls that surround the city of Chester were originally established in the Roman period, but were built upon in subsequent periods to repair damage and to raise the overall height of the walls. There are only a few places where Roman phases can be clearly identified with confidence, such as that shown on the right. The repair of the walls over time incorporated both newly quarried stone, and whatever stone was lying around from earlier collapses.

Although tombstones and altars are known from various locations around Chester, most of the Chester tomb stones in the Grosvenor display are from a cache found incorporated into the Chester city walls, completely divorced from their original funerary context, but would once have come from one or more cemeteries. The re-use of ancient building materials is common the world over. In ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh Horemheb re-used painted blocks from palace buildings of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten as rubble fill to create the thick walls of his monumental gateway at the temple of Karnak on the Nile. In both the Chester and Karnak cases, these items used as building materials have enormous historical value to us today as information about the past, but were simply unwanted rubbish when they were employed as building materials.

Plate A from Cox’s publication of his excavations in 1891

In 1883 the Chester City Surveyor Mr Matthew Jones was overseeing repairs to a section of the lower courses of stonework in the walls and the fill behind them near to Morgan’s Mount. As they prepared the site for the work he realized that he was looking at pieces of Roman stonework and that one was clearly part of a tomb stone, and he retrieved what he could see. Although no further investigations were carried out in1883, further repair work was required in 1887 between Northgate and the King Charles Tower, this time rather more extensive, and more Roman funerary pieces were found. Again, they had been used to repair the lower courses of the wall. So many were found this time that it was decided to extend the work and locate more of Chester’s Roman heritage. The Chester Archaeological Society, founded in 1849 (and still going strong today), was brought in to supervise the investigation of the wall to the west of the Northgate between 1890 and 1892. Taking all the finds from 1883, 1887 and the 1890-92 excavations, more than 150 stones were found, of which the Grosvenor exhibit is a tiny sample showing some of the best of the examples.

Key features of tombstones

Tombstone of Flavius Callimorphus and Serapion. RIB 558

The earliest tombstones and altars known from Chester date to the 1st century. For example, the tombstone of Flavius Callimorphus showing him with his son or nephew Serapion (aged 42 and 3 ½ years old respectively) was discovered at the Roodee in 1874, in situ over a grave, and was erected by Flavius’s brother Thesaeus (RIB 558). These are Greek names which may indicate that they were freedman and/or traders who had settled in Chester. Flavius is shown reclining on a funeral couch, and the elaborate nature of the decoration indicates that this was a wealthy family. Within the grave were two skeletons accompanied by a gold ring and a coin of the emperor Domition, dating to the latter half of the 1st Century A.D. Callimorphus and Serapion, the former lying on a couch with the latter in his arms, shown in the photograph to the left. On a small table in the foreground is a bird, which is a metaphor for the journey into the afterlife. Next to the table is an amphora that may or may not suggest that Callimorphus was an importer of wine. Although it is speculation that he was a wine importer, the family names indicate that they were of eastern Mediterranean origin, where Greek was preferred to Latin, and could well have been traders who settled locally. The name Serapion is of particular interest, as it refers to the god Serapis, who was venerated during the Ptolemaic (Greek) and subsequent Roman occupation of ancient Egypt.

Altar from Watergate Street. RIB 445. Source: British Museum BM 1836,0805.1.

Amongst other Roman finds, a 2nd Century A.D. stone altar was found in lower Watergate Street when Georgian terraces were built in 1778. It was dedicated to Fortuna Redux (Fortune, who brings travellers home safely, including soldiers and traders) and gods of healing and health Aesculapius and Salus. It was raised by freedmen and slaves of a Roman imperial legate, perhaps a provincial governor, who has the longest recorded name in Roman Britain: Titus Pomponius Mamilianus Rufus Antistianus Funisulanus Vettonianus. This is the only example shown here not on display in the Grosvenor Museum. It is now in the British Museum (BM 1836,0805.1; RIB 445)

Nearly all the memorials on display in the Grosvenor are made of red sandstone. The quality of the stone chosen was important, both for engraving scenes and text, and for durability. The raw material selected was not the most locally available sandstone, but according to Wilding was sourced some 8 miles away where better quality red sandstone was available.

The tombstone of Caecilius Avitus, RIB 492. On the left is the original as it was found. On the right is the replica with its bright paint, both on display in the museum.

The stones would originally have been brightly painted, which is a strange thought. A cemetery would have been a colourful place, new memorials brighter than older ones, creating a dazzling visual spectacle. At the entrance to the Grosvenor Museum exhibit there is a facsimile of one of the Chester grave stones showing how it might have looked in full colour, and when compared with the original unpainted version that is also on display, it is a completely different entity. It shows an optio (junior officer who was an accountant-adminstrator, second in command to a centurion) called Caecilius Avitus, wearing a cloak, a staff of office, a legionary sword and a writing tablet (RIB 492). It is like seeing the Lady Chapel in Chester Cathedral, painted to show how it would have looked in the Medieval period, or the glorious 17th century decoration of Rug Chapel at Corwen, near Llangollen, both of which are similar eye-openers, revising how we look at past objects and architecture. To modern eyes, so accustomed to seeing the past in subtle monochrome, the bright paintwork of Caecilius’s tombstone is almost shocking, but Roman life was anything but dull, either at work or at play, and the colours of the stones reflected this multi-hued existence.

Between the moment of death and the burial itself there were ceremonies, rituals and processions that marked the transition from this world to the next. For the very rich, this could be ostentatious and elaborate, involving music and theatrical performances, but for the poor it was a much more mundane affair. Often a Roman might provide for their funeral in his or her will, but if not the responsibility fell to the person who inherited the rest of the property of the deceased. When the deceased was buried, graves could be visited by the living, and at the end of February during the Feralia festival offerings were made to dead ancestors at their graves.

Tombstone of Curatia Dinysia. RIB 562, described below

Popular themes on the Chester tombstones are dedications to certain deities, symbolism surrounding the afterlife and depictions of the deceased lying along a banqueting couch. Reclining on a couch was a popular eating position used by wealthy Romans, and the couch represents a banquet in the afterlife, indicating eternal wellbeing. Some objects in scenes may hint at the profession of the deceased. Where an inscription is included, in Latin, the names can give an indication of the origins of the individual.

Text on tombstones is always highly abbreviated, which would not have been a problem for literate contemporaries (or for researchers today) because the abbreviations were standardized and the texts were highly formulaic. Many of the inscriptions begin DM, standing for Dis Manibus (To the spirits of the departed), and finish HFC, standing for Heres Faciendum Curavit (the heir had the stone made). The heir often adds his or her name and relationship to the deceased. Between these topping and tailing devices there may be additional information about who died including, for example, the name of the deceased, the age at which they died, who erected the stone in their honour, the place from which the person originated, the role that the person performed, a legion or auxiliary unit in which a soldier served and the number of years for which he served.

The Grosvenor Museum tombstones

Showing some of these features is a woman reclining on a couch, framed within two columns and an arch. She is shown in the photograph immediately above. Her name is Curatia Dinysia (perhaps a mason’s error for the name Dionysia), holding a drinking cup, with a three-legged table in the foreground (RIB 562). Sadly the head and face are damaged. She sits between two garlands or swags of ivy leaves, sacred to the deity Bacchus, each of which supports a dove, signifying the release of the soul. Above this scene, incorporated into the architecture of the arch, are two tritons (half men, half fish, like male mermaids, but sometimes shown with horse forelegs) blowing trumpets, representing the journey to the Isles of the Blessed where Bacchus resided. The drinking cup, probably filled with wine, may also reference Bacchus. As with Calimporphus and Serapion, the name Dinysia/Dionysia is thought to be Greek. The inscription reads, in translation, “To the spirits of the departed, Curatia Dinysia lived 40 years; her heir had this erected.”

The illustration on the right is by Dai Owen (Grosvenor Museum 2010)

Another woman is shown on a very worn tombstone, also cleverly recreated by illustrator Dai Owen (RIB 568). The woman’s name is damaged, but ends “-mina” She reclines on the banqueting couch with the familiar three-legged table in the foreground, a drinking cup in hand and a ring on the little finger of her left hand. Most remarkably, behind her, on the the high-backed couch, is a giant sea shell flanked by dolphins, again a reference to her journey to the Isles of the Blessed. Only part of the inscription has survived, with the DM of Dis Manibus (to the spirits of the departed) legend just beneath the three-legged table, and the end of the lady’s name just below that at far right.

Tombstones featuring women are usually found in this sort of military context, where many were wives, (more rarely mothers or daughters) of soldiers, and could communicate their own status alongside their husband’s, making statements about their own identity. It is good to have these as they are a distinct minority. Allason-Jones, for example, estimates that inscriptions dedicated to women make up only around 10% of the total inscriptions found in Roman Britain. These represent only the middle and upper echelons of those living in Roman areas. As with low status men, those women who could not afford any form of memorial have been lost.

The auxiliary cavalryman (equitis) Aurelius Lucius, who has a Latin name, but was probably not of pure Roman origins is an interesting case (RIB 552). Aurelius is shown with a moustache, beard and big hair. Again, he is reclining on a couch, and like Curatia Dionysia, he holds a drinking cup in one hand, whilst in the other he holds a scroll of paper that represents his will. Behind his legs are his plumed helmet and the top of his sword, and in the foreground is a small three-legged table and a boy holding a detached head. Auxiliaries were often recruited from conquered lands and were not Roman citizens. After 25 years in service they could apply for Roman citizenship. The uncharacteristic hair and the severed head, perhaps a war trophy, may refer to a background from one of these conquered regions, but Aurelius also chose to depict himself in a traditional Roman pose, with a traditional Latin inscription. Perhaps he had become a citizen, incorporating his career as a foreign cavalryman but opting for a Roman afterlife.

One of the most remarkable of the Grosvenor’s tombstones is this rider on a horse carrying a flying standard. It is thought to represent a a Sarmatian from an area now occupied by southern Ukraine and northern Romania. The Sarmatians were nomadic hunters and pastoralists, excellent horse breeders and riders and formidable warriors. No inscription survives, but he was almost certainly an auxiliary, as the Sarmatians were conquered in AD 175, and some are known to have been present in Britain. Although none are known from Chester, there were Sarmatians in a regiment deployed at Ribchester in Lancashire, and it is not unlikely that a detachment of that regiment was present in Chester when this individual died. The tall helmet is distinctive, and he holds a standard which he holds in both hands. If he was indeed Sarmatian, this would have been topped with a fearsome dragon’s head with brightly coloured fabric flying to its rear. When wind ran through the dragon’s jaws at speed, it made a terrifying noise to put fear into the hearts of the enemy. His sword is in its scabbard at his side.

Another cavalryman is depicted on a scene that has lost its inscription, other than the letters DM (Dis Manibus) (RIB 550). It is very worn, and the top of the head and the hand (and whatever it is holding) are missing but the scene is full of energy. The horse, with its bridle and a blanket serving as a saddle clearly visible, is galloping with its mane blown back, and the rider’s legs hold tightly to its flanks. The rider’s right arm is raised above his head, probably holding a spear, whilst his left hand, hidden from view, holds the rein or the bridle. Trodden beneath the hooves of the horse is a naked victim who lies gripping a six-sided shield that has demonstrably failed to protect him.

Marcus Aurelius Nepos and his wife. RIB 491

A rather more domestic scene is provided by Marcus Aurelius Nepos and his wife. The stone is right at the rear of the exhibit, and the inscription is difficult to see (it was not particularly clearly engraved in the first place) and is confined to the left, beneath the figure of Marcus Aurelius, centurion of the XXth Legion Valera Victrix, who died aged 50 years old. There is a space beneath the figure of his wife for an inscription, but for reasons unknown this was never added. As it was she who commissioned the stone, she was clearly still alive when the carving was made and may have left the space for an inscription of her own when she herself died, but perhaps she died elsewhere. Marcus Aurelius is bearded, carrying a staff and has a prominent belt, a cloak over his shoulders with a small brooch attached. His wife is holding a cup, and lefts the hem of her dress with one hand to reveal the skirt beneath. Not visible in the photograph is an engraving on the side that shows a mason’s hammer and set square and the words SVB ASCIA D[edicatum], meaning “dedicated under the axe,” perhaps a formula to deter vandals. The tombstone dates to the 3rd century AD.

RIB 560. Tombstone of the child slaves Atilianus, Antiatilianus and Protus

The tombstones with elaborate or contained scenes are plentiful, but are still a minority in the context of British funerary memorials, representing only the most wealthy purchasers. Some tombstones merely showed a little decorative work to accompany the text. This example (RIB 560), although still very fine, was provided with ornamental features but no elaborate scene. It was dedicated by a master to three young slaves. It reads, in translation, “To the spirits of the departed, Atilianus and Antiatilianus, 10 years old; and Protus, 12 years old. Pompeius Optatus their master had this made.” It is possible that the 10 year olds were twins. Although the thought of slavery always sits uncomfortably in today’s world, it should not be forgotten that in a period when slavery was the norm, it was by no means uncommon for masters and slaves to develop relationships of mutual affection and respect. Perhaps that is what we are seeing here.

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Final Comments

Architectural detail showing a male gorgon, with four snakes emanating from each side of his head.

The tombstones described above represent only a a small sample of the total number of engraved stones preserved from Chester. Of those that were not tombstones, some were pieces of altars and others were fragments of bigger pieces of architecture, many of which also came out the 19th century excavations in the Chester walls, some showing Roman deities. They are out of the scope of this post but, do watch out for those too in the display if you visit the museum.

The tombstones are particularly evocative and hopefully the small sample provided here gives an idea of what sort of themes were common, and how people like to have themselves depicted. Death in the Roman empire was an integral part of a soldier’s life, and in the military life of Chester, death had its own role and its own places, with its own objects and iconography. Most of the individuals represented here were of relatively high status, except for the slaves of their master Pompeius Optatus, but they came from a variety of backgrounds, all either stationed here or drawn here for commercial reasons by the military stronghold, and it is good to be able to see some of the variety that made up Deva society.

19th century illustrations from Chester Archaeological Society reports of the tombstones and other engraved stones excavated from the walls (click image to enlarge). Sources, left to right: de Gray Birch 1887, Watkin 1887, de Gray Birch 1888, Jones 1887, all in the Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society volume 2 (references below).

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For those who are interested in seeing something of Rome under foot in Chester, to supplement what can be found in museums, there are a number of guided tours available (some lead by Roman Centurions!). If you prefer a self-guided tour, the Royal Geographic Society’s “Discovering Britain” website provides one, which can be downloaded as a a PDF or as an app for your mobile device: https://www.discoveringbritain.org/activities/north-west-england/trails/chester-trail.html.

Sources:

Those that were of particular use for this post are shown in bold

Books and papers

Allason-Jones, L. 2012. Chapter 34, Women in Roman Britain. In (eds.) James, S.L. and Dillon, S. A Companion to Women in the Ancient World. Wiley

Bell, C.E. 2020. Investigating the Autonomy of Power: Epigraphy of Women in Roman Britain. Dissertation Submitted for the Master’s Degree in Archaeology, University of Liverpool
https://www.academia.edu/44879704/Investigating_the_Autonomy_of_Power_Epigraphy_of_Women_in_Roman_Britain

Brock, E. P Loftus. 1888) The age of the walls of Chester, with references to recent discussions; The discussion on the above paper; Mr Brock’s reply to the various speakers. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 2. Vol 2, p. 40-97.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_002/JCAS_ns_002_040-097.pdf

Cox, E.W. 1891. Notes on the sculptures of the Roman monuments recently found in Chester. The Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vols.43044, 1891-92, p.91-102

Eckardt, H. 2014. Objects and Identities. Roman Britain and the North-Western Provinces. Oxford University Press

de Gray Birch, W. 1888. Notes on a sculptured stone recently found in the North Wall of the city of Chester. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 2. Vol 2, p. 25-39.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_002/JCAS_ns_002_025-039.pdf

de Grey Birch, W. 1888. The inscribed Roman stones recently found at Chester, during the second series of repairs to the North Wall. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, vol.2, p. 98-131.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_002/JCAS_ns_002_098-131.pdf

Grosvenor Museum 2010. A Guide to Roman Stones at the Grosvenor Museum Chester. Illustrations by Dai Owen.

Henig, M. 2002. Tales from the Tomb. In (ed.) Carrington, P. Deva Victrix; Roman Chester Re-Assessed papers from a weekend conference held at Chester College 3-5 September 1999. Chester Archaeology
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/CAS_DevaVictrix/CAS_DevaVictrix_075-078.pdf

Jones, I. Matthews. 1888. Official report on the discoveries of Roman remains at Chester, during the first repairs to the North Wall, in 1887. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 2. Vol 2, p. 1-10.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_002/JCAS_ns_002_001-010.pdf

Mason, D.J.P. 2007 (2nd edition). Roman Chester. City of the Eagles. Tempus

Thompson Watkin, W. T. 1888. The Roman inscriptions discovered at Chester, during the first repairs to the North Wall, in 1887. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 2. Vol 2, p.11-24.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-2910-1/dissemination/pdf/JCAS_ns_002/JCAS_ns_002_011-024.pdf

Wilding, R. 2006. Graham Webster Gallery of Roman Stones at the Grosvenor Museum, Chester: Explore the Hidden Mysteries of the ‘lost’ Roman Gravestones.

Websites

Roman Inscriptions of Britain (RIB)
https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/

Chester Archaeological Society
Professor Robert Newstead F. R. S. Lecture given to Chester Archaeological Society, 5th December 2009. By Elizabeth Royles, Keeper of Early History, Grosvenor Museum
http://chesterarchaeolsoc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LRoyles-NewsteadLecture_05-12-09.pdf

Roman Baths
You can decode tombstones at the Roman Baths, Bath
https://www.romanbaths.co.uk/sites/roman_baths/files/heritage/SECONDARY%20SCHOOL%20Decoding%20Roman%20tombstone%20leaflet_0.pdf

Encylopedia Britannica
“Sarmatian.” The Editors of Encyclopaedia, 29 Mar. 2018. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sarmatian

Some of the vital statistics

The earliest British copper mining

Discovery and excavation of the Great Orme mines

Why copper and bronze?

The source of the Great Orme copper

Mining the ore

Mining tools

Opencast shaft mining

Underground tunnel mining

Processing the ore

Cleaning the ore

Copper smelting

Bronze smelting

The manufacture of metal tools

The copper miners

The copper trade – selling and travelling

Trade and/or exchange

The end of copper mining in Britain

Final Comments

Visting

Sources

Quick wins

Books and papers

Websites

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The environments that preserved the logboat

Cheshire Logboats

Baddiley Mere

Warrington 1 and 2, Arpley Meadows

Warrington Logboat 3 (Corporation Electrical Works)

Warrington Logboat 4 (Corporation Electrical Works)

Warrington Logboat 5, Arpley

Warrington Logboat 7, Walton Arches

Warrington Logboat 11, Gateworth

Cholmondeley 1 and 2

Ciss Green Farm, Astbury, near Congleton

Oakmere, near Delamere

Other submerged wooden constructions

—- Dates

The manufacture of a logboat

Potential uses of logboats in daily life

Preserving and conserving logboats

Prehistoric logboats as special objects

Final Comments

Sources:

Books and papers

Websites

—– Online references for some other logboats in Britain In alphabetical order by site/boat name

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Background History

The Museum

Visiting Information

Sources

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The discovery in 1991

The early 20th century discovery of the Holt Tile-works

What was the Holt tile-works like?

Corresponding about the tile in 1991

The inscription

Publications mentioning the brick

Connecting with the past

Final Comments

Sources:

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—– Getting your bearings: The waterworks

A Short History of British Milling

Grinding grain

Medieval mills

Stretton Mill

The Medieval and Early Tudor Mill

Stretton Mill 1600-1900

The 1940s

The modern era

What you see today

The exterior

The water wheels

The machinery

The ground floor (meal floor)

The top (bin room) and middle (stone room) floors

Visiting details

—-
Dates

—–
Online references for some other logboats in Britain
In alphabetical order by site/boat name

—–
Getting your bearings: The waterworks