A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



Why then do we not find at these points traces of promontory, or indeed 

 any pre-Roman fortresses ? The answer may be that in those early times 

 few enemies came by water to this northern region of tempestuous seas, 

 while the bare coast and wild uncultivated hinterland offered little incentive 

 to invasion by land or sea a fact which may also account for the absence of 

 early promontory forts on the hills throughout the county. We find but 

 two examples of this class of defensive enclosure one, Maiden Castle, near 

 the city of Durham, which is probably little, if any, earlier than the time 

 of the Roman occupation, and a hardly known enclosure in Brancepeth 

 parish. 1 



B. The next class in the Scheme consists mostly of hill fortresses or 

 camps. It is scarcely too much to say that no county in England possesses 

 in an equal area so few examples of this class, and there is hardly another 

 region in Britain so absolutely without a fortress as is the case in many square 

 miles of fells and moorland on the west side of the county. 



Canon Green well remarks on the equal absence of memorials of the 

 dead, as of the living, in all that great tract of high ground, which, under 

 similar circumstances elsewhere in England, would be occupied by the cairns 

 and barrows of the people. 8 



The constructors of great hill-fortresses elsewhere were mainly men of 

 the neolithic or later stone age, or of the late Celtic or early iron age ; some 

 however were of the bronze period. Why no neolithic men fixed their great 

 camps of refuge or fortresses here, we know not, and cannot but assume 

 their absence in force from the district, an assumption justified by the almost 

 total absence of relics of neolithic men among the discoveries from burial 

 mounds and otherwise in Durham. 8 The bronze age, which succeeded 

 the stone age, has yielded interesting relics ; but we have no evidence that any 

 defensive earthworks here, either large or small, belong to that period, though 

 a recent ' find ' of that age was unearthed in a tumulus not far from the 

 enclosure at Brancepeth to which reference has been made. 



It is more interesting to enquire why there are no large hill-camps of 

 the late Celtic period the great fortress-rearing age, the birth-time of a vast 

 number of the finest hill-camps in England ? The answer may be that, 

 instead of being a border land in need of defence from inroads, or occupied 

 by rival tribes needing defence from each other, this land was in possession of 

 the Brigantes, a powerful tribe whose territory stretched north, west and 

 south of Durham, leaving it central and safe. It is true that palisaded or 

 stone-walled enclosures, probably small in size, would have been neces- 

 sary to protect cattle from wolves and other wild beasts in early days, but 

 wooden palisades and stone walls easily disappear in the course of ages. 

 Some of the small enclosures which are met with may once have been cattle 

 shelters furnished with palisades on their earthen walls, but probably so wild 

 and little occupied was this land, even in late Celtic days, that few such 

 shelters existed. 



A small number of lesser works than the great hill fortresses, but 

 belonging to class B, were constructed in the county ; Shackerton near 



1 Since the above was written Mr. Edward Wooler has drawn public attention to this interesting 

 earthwork. 



* Greenwell, British Barrows, 1877, p. 440. See article on Early Man in Durham. 



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