A1-The Great North Road
Just north of Scotch Corner, Junction 56 marks the start of the A1(M) through County Durham but we'll leave the motorway and stay on the Roman course of Dere Street, heading a couple of degrees west of north, towards Piercebridge. Apart from a little wobble, likely to have existed even in the Roman road, to avoid a steep gradient at Hang Bank the B6275 is very straight, presumably true to the ancient line.
Four miles north and a couple of miles west of Scotch Corner lies one of the largest iron age sites in Britain. The Stanwick fortifications are centred around the hamlet of Stanwick St. John. When the Romans first arrived in northern Britain, the fort of Stanwick was the most important stronghold of the Brigantes. It was from here that the tribe fought the Romans at the Battle of Scotch Corner. When the Brigantian Queen, Cartimandua handed over the British rebel Caractacus to the Romans in the year 51 AD she infuriated her husband Venutius, who occupied Stanwick and rebelled against the Romans. The Romans eventually forced the Brigantes to abandon the fort in 73 AD. A pre-Roman earth and rock ridge, known as Scotts Dyke, runs parallel to the A1, a little to the west of Scotch Corner, northwards from Richmond as far as Melsonby.
Sir Mortimer Wheeler described the Stanwick Fortifications as follows: A mostly 1st century AD British fortification, defences of the last epoch of Brigantian independence from Roman conquest between AD 71 and 74. Political and domestic feud between King Venutius of the Brigantes and his pro-Roman Queen Cartimandua came to a head in AD 51 whereafter Venutius remained a confirmed and active enemy of Rome. Venutius rallied the anti-Roman party beyond the immediate reach of Roman intervention, and a site in northern Yorkshire would well fit the conditions as they affected him. To Stanwick there is in fact no known rival for this episode. Stanwick stands at a natural geographical focus, close to the point where the subsequent Roman Great North Road was to divide into alternative routes towards the Scottish lowlands, a point strategically suited alike for tribal assembly and for anticipation of an enemy from the south.
Excavations in 1844 revealed some large iron hoops, the tires from a chariot burial. The associated assemblage of La Tène pottery indicates a first century age, a few centuries later than the chariot burials at Wetwang and elsewhere in eastern Yorkshire.
Aldbrough St.John is a particularly attractive village, just off to the west of Dere Street (here the B6275) a couple of miles north of the point (Junction 56, in a disused quarry) where the A1(M) bends north-east on its way to by-pass Darlington. Aldbrough St.John also has a particularly attractive website with an account of the history of the Stanwick fortifications.
Let's let Jessie Mothersole paint her picture from 1927: As Dere Street approaches the river Tees, the modern road swerves slightly to the east, and then boldly to the west, before crossing the river by a fine stone bridge, built in 1798, after the great floods of 1771 had swept away its predecessor. Dere Street appears to have gone straight on, crossing the river by a bridge about a furlong east of the present bridge, and then going up a field known as the Tofts, on the east side of the Fort of Piercebridge. In dry weather it can still be traced through the grass of this field. A deep-cut lane near Bluebell Houses seems to mark the place where the river was forded during the many years when the bridge lay in ruins. I crossed there on foot in perfect ease in a not unusually dry season, but in winter with a swollen stream the lack of a bridge must have been a terrible hardship to foot-passengers, and a source of danger to wheeled traffic.
According to Ramsden, writing in 1947:"The Roman road from York (Eboracum) to the Wall runs dead straight between Catterick and Binchester in a stretch usually known as Watling Street or High Street, and it crosses the Tees at Piercebridge, two and a half miles below Gainford. Here, on the north bank, a large fort was built to guard the crossing. The present village, another cluster of colour-washed cottages surrounding a green, covers a big part of area originally enclosed within the defences.
"The old antiquaries have always taken an interest in Piercebridge, and they have recorded the various discoveries made by chance in the neighbourhood, but it was not until the systematic excavations in the years 1933 to 1935 that the main problems in connection with its date, size and purpose were settled. The present bridge at Piercebridge is higher up the river than the original one, and the detour needed to reach it has made a break of about six hundred yards in the line of the Roman way, where it approaches and leaves the Tees. That part of the road which has gone out of use can still be traced across a field known as the Tofts, to the east of the village, where it is shown up by a belt of parched grass during dry seasons. Many coins have been found in this field and they are known locally as 'tofts pennies'.
"William Stukeley, writing in 1776, says: ' From Piercebridge we entered immediately upon the Roman road, which comes to the river a little lower down than the present bridge: it is a broad, very strait, and hard road at this day; the great ridge of stone originally laid being not worn out through so many ages, though broken and in great need of reparation." (Iter Boreale.)
"The excavators of 1933 established the line of the road beyond question by digging trenches to cross it at two separate places. They exposed the old surface, fifteen feet wide, well cambered and edged by kerbs, at a depth of about six inches. Further digging revealed the layers of its construction and the fact that an earlier surface existed lower down. During the same season a most interesting find was made in the bed of the river, when one of the investigators discovered three groups of oak piles lying with their heads pointing downstream and towards the middle of the channel. The positions of these piles led to the conclusion that they were some of the foundations which carried the stone piers and abutments of the original Roman bridge. It is possible that this was the bridge, still in use after many rebuildings and repairs, to which Leland refers in his Itinerary: "Piersbrigg, sometime of five arches-but late made new of three arches."
"The 1934 excavations were concentrated on the north-east corner of the fort and the site was cleared later. They revealed the main rampart, ten feet thick, and the chamfered plinth stones of its base, together with an arched culvert running on its inner side. The culvert may have been an aqueduct supplying the baths or, more probably, the remains of a large latrine. The latest work was carried out in 1935 on the west side of the village, and it revealed the elaborate and thorough construction of the fortifications. The rampart wall was found to be encircled by at least two deep ditches, and possibly three, with counterscarps between tern. This formidable protection showed the strategic importance of the place in the Roman system, but the most interesting conclusion, arrived at from examination of the pottery, was that the fort was built about A.D. 300, late on in the period of the Roman occupation.
"A little museum in the village houses many of the smaller finds made on the site, broken Samian ware, ridge and roofing tiles, altars, implements of iron and bronze, jet dice, all the usual, rather pitiful, fragments and pieces of a vanished civilization.
"The present bridge at Piercebridge with its three pointed arches dates from the early sixteenth century, and there records showing that, at several subsequent periods, it was in sad state of ruin as a result of damage caused by great floods in the river. There are some remains of a small chantry chapel in a garden close by."
The Roman history of Piercebridge is surrounded by controversy. Here is a flavour, with a bearing of the relative importance of road and river transport in Roman times and the Northern Archaeology Group has been digging around recently.
A Roman milestone is reputed to have been found just north of Piercebridge.
The George Hotel, describes itself as a charming, 16th century riverside coaching inn. One wonders how much of a coaching trade there was in the 16th century. More plausibly, it claims to be home to the (no longer reliable) grandfather clock immortalized in song.
Jessie Mothersole spent a week of her 1926 bicycle ride up 'Arcicola's Road to Scotland, in Piercebridge. Of her lodgings, she writes: It had a charming view of the trees on the green through its bow-window, and of the old-fashioned garden, whose flaming crimson phloxes were reflected rose-red on the white painted ceiling. This, perhaps is the where she stayed:
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Lincolnshire
©Biff Vernon 2002, 2003