The East Mellwaters site lies in the Stainmore Pass corridor of upper Teesdale, immediately south of the Roman road (the modern A66) running between Bowes (Lavatrae) and Brough (Verteris). It is a native Romano-British farming settlement, characterised by enclosures, hut circles and associated field systems, broadly active from the late Iron Age through the Roman period (1st–4th centuries AD).
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The settlement is one of a cluster of indigenous upland farmsteads along the Stainmore route, sitting in the shadow of the heavily militarised trans-Pennine corridor with its forts, signal stations and marching camps. Its significance lies in illustrating the persistence of small-scale native pastoral and mixed farming communities operating alongside — and likely supplying — the Roman military infrastructure rather than being displaced by it.
Earthwork survey (notably by RCHME/English Heritage as part of the Stainmore Pass project) recorded stone-founded round houses, curvilinear enclosures and conjoined paddocks/yards, with adjoining cord-rifg-like cultivation traces and field walls extending east and south-east of the present farmhouse. There has been little or no modern excavation, so dating rests largely on morphological parallels with comparable settlements such as Crackenthorpe, Waitby and Ewe Close in the northern Pennines.
The East Mellwaters site lies in the Stainmore Pass corridor of upper Teesdale, immediately south of the Roman road (the modern A66) running between Bowes (Lavatrae) and Brough (Verteris). It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Romano-British settlement site to the east and south-east of East Mellwaters farmhouse 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 signal station 190m north west of Vale House Farm (2.2 km), Roman aqueduct, prehistoric field systems, cairnfield, enclosure and round cairn on Ravock (2.2 km), Lavatris (2.5 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 settlement site to the east and south-east of East Mellwaters farmhouse