Dunstanburgh is a coastal headland on the Northumberland coast where traces of Romano-British activity have been identified beneath and around the more visible 14th-century castle of Earl Thomas of Lancaster. The Roman-period evidence points to a small native settlement of the type common across north-east Northumberland during the 1st–4th centuries AD, likely a farming community of roundhouses and enclosed yards rather than a Romanised villa estate.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site lies well to the east of Dere Street and beyond Hadrian's Wall's main military zone, in a coastal hinterland of indigenous British farmsteads whose inhabitants engaged only intermittently with the Roman provincial economy. Its significance lies in attesting continued native settlement on this exposed coast during the Roman period, rather than in any military or administrative role.
Investigations at Dunstanburgh — including geophysical survey and limited excavation carried out around the castle by English Heritage and others — have recovered residual Romano-British pottery and indications of earlier enclosures and field systems on the headland, but no substantial structural sequence of Roman date has been published. The Romano-British presence is best characterised as a low-status native settlement, the details of which remain poorly defined compared with the well-studied medieval castle that overlies it.
Dunstanburgh is a coastal headland on the Northumberland coast where traces of Romano-British activity have been identified beneath and around the more visible 14th-century castle of Earl Thomas of Lancaster. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Dunstanburgh Castle: Romano-British settlement, 14th century enclosure castle and harbour, and World War II pillbox and foxhole is classified as a Roman settlement — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Romano-British enclosed settlement, 800m NW of East Bolton (14.3 km), Romano-British farmstead 1km south-west of East Bolton (14.8 km), Defended settlement, Romano-British settlement and field system 100m south and east of Jenny's Lantern (15 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Research the area around Dunstanburgh Castle: Romano-British settlement, 14th century enclosure castle and harbour, and World War II pillbox and foxhole