This is a multi-period upland site on the east slope of Brands Hill in the Cheviot foothills of Northumberland, comprising at least one Romano-British native settlement with associated field system, overlain or adjoined by a medieval shieling. The Roman-period component likely dates to the 2nd–4th centuries AD and reflects the small enclosed farmsteads typical of the region, while the shieling represents seasonal upland stock-grazing in the medieval period (broadly 12th–15th centuries).
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site sits in the hinterland of the central Cheviot frontier zone, between Dere Street and the line of Hadrian's Wall, in a landscape of dispersed native farms whose inhabitants formed the rural economic base — chiefly pastoral and mixed subsistence farming — supplying produce and probably manpower to the Roman military zone. Its combination of Roman-era settlement, contemporary cultivation remains and later transhumance use illustrates the long continuity of upland land-use in the Anglo-Scottish borders.
The site is known principally from earthwork survey rather than excavation, with visible remains likely including stone-founded round-house platforms, an enclosure or yard, lynchets or cord-rig traces of the field system, and a small rectangular shieling hut; no significant excavated assemblage from this specific site has been published. Detailed artefactual evidence is therefore lacking, and dating rests on morphological comparison with
This is a multi-period upland site on the east slope of Brands Hill in the Cheviot foothills of Northumberland, comprising at least one Romano-British native settlement with associated field system, overlain or adjoined by a medieval shieling. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Roman period native settlements, field system and medieval shieling on the east slope of Brands Hill, 550m west of Middleton Old Town 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 Roman period native settlement and medieval shieling on east slopes of Brands Hill, 1100m south east of Carey Burn Bridge (0.4 km), Roman period native settlement on the south east slopes of Brands Hill, 430m north west of Cowboy's Cairn (0.7 km), Roman period native settlement and associated field system and trackway on north east slope of Brands Hill (0.7 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 settlements, field system and medieval shieling on the east slope of Brands Hill, 550m west of Middleton Old Town