This is a native British farmstead on the eastern slopes of Harehope Hill in north Northumberland, comprising a scooped settlement with associated enclosures and trackways typical of late Iron Age and Roman-period (1st–4th century AD) rural settlement in the Cheviot foothills. The site likely featured stone-founded roundhouses set within sunken yards cut into the hillslope, linked by hollow-ways to enclosed stock paddocks and rough grazing on the higher ground.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
It represents a characteristic example of the indigenous mixed pastoral-arable farming economy that persisted throughout the Roman occupation in the Cheviot frontier zone, lying beyond the limes but within the economic hinterland of forts such as Bremenium (High Rochester) and the Dere Street corridor. Such farmsteads collectively demonstrate continuity of native settlement patterns under Roman influence, with little evidence of direct Romanisation in material culture.
The site is known principally from aerial photography and earthwork survey (recorded by RCHME/Historic England and Northumberland HER) rather than excavation, with visible elements including scooped house platforms, curvilinear enclosure banks, and lynchetted trackways. No published excavation results exist for this specific farmstead, and dating rests on morphological comparison with excavated parallels such as those at Hartburn, Huckhoe, and Greaves Ash.
This is a native British farmstead on the eastern slopes of Harehope Hill in north Northumberland, comprising a scooped settlement with associated enclosures and trackways typical of late Iron Age and Roman-period (1st–4th century AD) rural settlement in the Cheviot foothills. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Roman period native farmstead and associated scooped enclosures and trackways on east slope of Harehope Hill, 925m south east of High Akeld Cottages is classified as a Roman site — 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 farmstead 900m north east of triangulation point on Gains Law (0.4 km), Romano-British native farmstead 970m north east of triangulation point on Gains Law (0.4 km), Roman period native homestead 400m south of Humbleton Hill hillfort (0.8 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 Roman period native farmstead and associated scooped enclosures and trackways on east slope of Harehope Hill, 925m south east of High Akeld Cottages