Crossthwaite Common, on the south side of the Tees valley in Teesdale (County Durham), preserves a multi-period upland landscape including a Romano-British settlement with associated field systems, later medieval reoccupation, lead-mining remains, and a charcoal pit. The Romano-British component is likely to date broadly to the 2nd–4th centuries AD and represents the kind of small, enclosed native farmstead typical of the North Pennine fringe, engaged in mixed pastoral and limited arable agriculture.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site sits within the hinterland of the northern frontier zone, in country exploited for lead from at least the later 1st century AD onwards; such settlements illustrate how indigenous communities continued to farm marginal upland while the wider landscape was drawn into Roman extractive economies. The combination of farmstead, fields, and lead workings in one locale is characteristic of, and significant for understanding, Pennine rural life under Rome.
The site is known primarily from earthwork survey rather than excavation, recording enclosures, hut platforms, lynchets and field boundaries alongside shaft mounds and bell-pits from lead extraction and a charcoal-burning platform. No closely dated finds assemblage has been published for the Romano-British phase, so chronology rests on morphological comparison with better-investigated Pennine sites such as those on Cronkley and Holwick fells.
Crossthwaite Common, on the south side of the Tees valley in Teesdale (County Durham), preserves a multi-period upland landscape including a Romano-British settlement with associated field systems, later medieval reoccupation, lead-mining remains, and a charcoal pit. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Romano-British and medieval settlement and field systems,leadmines and charcoal pit on Crossthwaite Common, south of Park End Quarry 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 Two Romano-British hut circles and three shielings on Holwick Scars 250m south of Hungry Hall (1.6 km), Roman period native farmstead at Hind Gate, 140m south of Green House (2.7 km), Roman period native settlement and field system 260m west of Wynch Bridge (3.5 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 Romano-British and medieval settlement and field systems,leadmines and charcoal pit on Crossthwaite Common, south of Park End Quarry