This is a small enclosed settlement situated on Whitcliffe Scar, the limestone escarpment overlooking the River Swale west of Richmond, North Yorkshire. It is one of a dense cluster of native Romano-British farmsteads occupying the upland fringes of Swaledale, likely active between the late 1st/2nd and 4th centuries AD, comprising a sub-rectangular or curvilinear enclosure containing one or more hut platforms — a typical pastoral and mixed-farming homestead of the indigenous Brigantian population continuing earlier Iron Age traditions under Roman rule.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Sites like this represent the rural economic base supplying the auxiliary fort at Cataractonium (Catterick) some 7 km to the east, and demonstrate the persistence of native settlement patterns across the Stainmore frontier zone with little obvious Romanisation of building form. Its location on the Scar, alongside numerous comparable enclosures and field systems, contributes to one of the better-preserved relict prehistoric and Romano-British landscapes in northern England.
The site is known principally from earthwork survey rather than excavation, recorded as upstanding banks defining the enclosure with internal hut circle traces; no published excavation finds are recorded for this specific monument, and dating relies on morphological comparison with excavated parallels in the Swaledale and Wensleydale uplands.
This is a small enclosed settlement situated on Whitcliffe Scar, the limestone escarpment overlooking the River Swale west of Richmond, North Yorkshire. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Romano-British enclosed settlement 340m north east of East Applegarth at Whitcliffe Scar 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 fort and prehistoric enclosed settlement 400m west of Carkin Moor Farm (6.8 km), Cataractonium Roman forts and town (9.1 km), Cataractonium (9.3 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 enclosed settlement 340m north east of East Applegarth at Whitcliffe Scar