Archaeological Overview

Place-names, often coupled with Scandinavian personal names, point toward the presence of a settled Anglo-Scandinavian rural society developing by the early to mid-10th century in north-west England.

This seems to have begun as a take-over of existing Anglian and British estates mainly near the Irish Sea coast and the trans-Pennine routeways, later expanding inland onto poorer and higher ground (Fellows-Jensen 1985).

Agriculture became more complex and geographically spread, as indicated by toponymic evidence for Hiberno-Norse shielings and upland pastures in Lancashire and Cumbria (Higham 1995). The prestige, ancestry, and changing beliefs of settled Anglo-Scandinavian landowners are marked and illustrated by their patronage of stone sculpture groups found in parish churches across the region. They were probably also amongst the most influential consumers of traded goods at the time.

Early archaeological investigations tended to raise more questions than answers. Several Viking mound burials were reported by antiquarians in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At Aspatria, Cumbria, a burial mound was discovered and removed in 1789. About 30 m in circumference, it stood 2 m in height upon a rise known as Beacon Hill. The mound was ‘levelled,’ during which a stone kerb or cist was exposed beneath the cairn. It contained a poorly preserved skeleton accompanied by grave goods (now lost or locations unknown) including a sword, a ‘dagger’ (probably a spearhead) studded with silver, a gold or gilt strap end of Carolingian or Frankish type, a gold buckle, and iron objects including a spur, horse bit, axe, and possibly the remains of a shield.

A report of the discovery with an engraving of the finds (Figure 2.2) was published in the journal Archaeologia (Rooke 1792). Also illustrated were two curious carved boulders bearing circular and

FIGURE 2.2 Aspatria burial (antiquarian drawing from Rooke 1792).

Linear marks. They may have been of Bronze Age or Iron Age origin and were re-used as part of the stone cairn of the Viking burial although no other prehistoric material was discovered.

The site was re-investigated in 1997 in advance of the construction of a mobile telephone antenna on Beacon Hill (Abramson 2000). Nothing of the mound remained visible, but an elliptical pit discovered within the area investigated contained pieces of disarticulated human bone and several finds including a copper alloy ringed pin (late 9th to early 10th century), a tin-plated buckle, a folding knife, part of an axe head, and 15 very corroded iron fragments. The objects are consistent in date with those illustrated in 1792, suggesting that they were interred sometime in the early 10th century as a group.

Two further mound burials were discovered as the result of separate road realignment works in 1822. The more northerly of the two was at the inland location of Hesket in the Forest, Cumbria. A mound that caused a slight deviation of the Carlisle-Penrith road was removed and charred fragments of a burial were discovered beneath it as reported in the Newcastle journal Archaeologia Aeliana (Hodgson 1832; Cowen 1934 and 1948).

The materials appeared not to be inside a cist, but lay on a bed of ashes and charcoal, which led to suggestions that they had been exposed to ‘considerable heat’ although the heat could not have been in situ because an unburnt bone comb and case were included in the deposit together along with about 20 other items. One find was a deliberately bent sword with silver decoration on the pommel that was somewhat melted as if fired. The other metal finds were all of iron, including an axe with two spearheads (one with a deliberately bent point), a conical shield boss, a horse bit, spurs, two small iron buckles, and a small hone or whetstone.

South-east of Morecambe Bay, near the banks of the River Wyre (Lancashire), stands Claughton Hall. A new road being built to take passing traffic further away from the house necessitated the levelling of a small sandy mound, within which was a grave assemblage including two gilt copper alloy Scandinavian oval brooches arrayed back-to-back with traces of cloth, and a human molar surrounded by two beads. A sword, spear head, axe head, hammer head, and brooch converted from a gilt copper alloy Frankish or Carolingian style baldric mount were also discovered (Edwards 1970).

To the south of Claughton Hall, possible cairn burials have been noted in Lancashire at Blackrod near Wigan and at Billington on the Ribble (Edwards 1992, p. 48). References to a ‘British burial mound’ in the sand hills at Meols, Wirral, may be linked to the discovery in the winter of 1877-1878 of a series of iron weapons including a spearhead, a deliberately bent arrowhead, and an axe (Figure 2.5), suggesting that a furnished burial was exposed by the sea (Griffiths, Philpott, and Egan 2007, pp. 71-77). This probable Meols burial was in a highly marginal coastal location, in sand dunes only slightly above the beach—a location paralleled by Talacre and Benllech in North Wales (Griffiths 2004) and Irish grave sites such as at Three Mile Water (Arklow, Co. Wicklow) and Eyrephort (Co. Galway) (Harrison 2001).

In spring 2004, Peter Adams of the Kendal Metal-Detecting Club reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme the discovery of first one, then two Viking-style composite copper alloy oval brooches of Viking character that date to the 9th or early 10th centuries and are the same type (Petersen Type 51) as the Claughton Hall pair. These finds (Lee, Chapter 4, Figure 4.1) occurred in open agricultural land on a small ridge above a small beck at Townfoot Farm, Cumwhitton, in the Eden Valley (Cumbria).

Finds of oval brooches, especially in pairs, normally indicate burials. This implication led to further investigation and then full excavation by English Heritage and Oxford Archaeology North during the summer of 2004 (Newman 2009; Paterson et al. 2014). The first two oval brooches came from a grave that turned out be part of a small cemetery. Six burials in all were exposed; the initial discovery was set apart just over 10 metres from the other five. The burials formed a tight cluster, orientated south-west to north-east with their heads to the west, apparently without an external boundary.

Apart from part of a badly decayed cranium found in the first grave, no human bones were retrieved due to decay caused by acidic soil conditions. Traces of wooden linings survived in two of the graves. However, a rich and varied assemblage of artefacts was recovered, as both iron and non-ferrous metals survived reasonably well. Based on the types of objects and the presence or absence of weaponry, the occupants of four of the graves were interpreted as two males and two females (including the initial discovery with the two oval brooches). The male graves included a sword, a ringed pin, a drinking horn mount, a silver-inlaid knife, a spearhead, and spurs.

There were no coins but other objects in the graves helped to give a provisional date of the early to mid-10th century for the group. Apart from the oval brooches, the objects included D-shaped and square scallop-edged belt buckles, ring-and-dot decorated strap ends, and ringed pins of types found generally in 10th century contexts elsewhere around the Irish Sea. A third oval brooch, glass beads, combs, small shears, chain links, and more utilitarian objects such as flint strike-a-lights, small whetstones, and plain iron knife blades were found in varying quantities in and around the six graves.

A number of antiquarian observations of finds (usually weapons such as swords) suggestive of further burials come from rural sites apparently not associated with settlements, mounds, or churches. These are mostly isolated finds and difficult to interpret, exemplified by a sword and a spearhead found sometime prior to 1788 during road construction near Bolton, north-west of Manchester (Graham-Campbell and Edwards 2008). B. J.N. Edwards collated a series of observations of antiquarian finds from churchyards in Cumbria including a ringed pin found beneath a church tower in Brigham, south of Aspatria, and a sword from Rampside on the Furness Peninsula (Edwards 1998, p. 21).

A burial found in the churchyard at Ormside in the upper Eden Valley in 1898 contained a sword, a shield and a small knife. This discovery occurred in the same churchyard as the earlier find (circa 1823) of the Ormside Bowl, a splendidly decorated Anglo-Saxon silver cup (Wilson 1984, pp. 56-59). It was originally made in the 8th century and repaired in the 9th, so it was far from new when deposited. Edwards, following the earlier comments of W. G. Collingwood, described the object as ‘Viking loot’ and listed it amongst stray finds of precious metals. However, its churchyard context suggests that it probably came from a burial; the rest of which was not recognised at the time of discovery.

To these older discoveries from churchyards can be added three ‘transitional’ groups of multiple burials with Viking period objects from ecclesiastical sites excavated under modern conditions. At St Patrick’s Chapel, Heysham (Lancashire), excavations in 1977 and 1978 of up to 90 graves revealed that one skeleton had a complete, decorated, iron-riveted bone comb of 10th century Viking type placed by its pelvis (Potter and Andrews 1994). The two excavations reported in this volume add to this picture.

At Carlisle, a cemetery of 41 pre-Norman graves was discovered in 1988 during excavation prior to the construction of a new diocesan treasury at the west end of the cathedral (McCarthy et al. Chapter 9). Another group of graves with Viking period objects was discovered at the fire-gutted church of St Michael’s in Workington (Cumbria) that was partially excavated prior to renovation from 1994-1997 (McCarthy and Paterson, Chapter 8).

Scandinavian lordship in north-west England is also marked by stone crosses, grave covers, and memorials. Many of the ancient parish churches in Cumbria, around Morecambe Bay, and in Wirral, house collections of stone monuments found nearby and within their bounds (the Fylde, southern Lancashire and eastern Cheshire, by contrast, have markedly fewer examples). Some areas such as Gosforth (Cumbria) have collections of such distinctive character that they have been labelled ‘schools.’

Viking period stone sculptures include complete and fragmentary standing crosses, recumbent grave slabs, and the long-house-shaped monuments known as hogbacks that were probably grave markers although few when found were directly associated with burials (Lang 1984). Art and inscriptions are particularly valuable for charting changing cultures and beliefs, and in the case of the stone monuments, their territorially rooted and publicly visible character maintains vital links to place, landscape, and artistic patronage on the part of local rulers.

A famous example of a graphic combination of Norse legend and Christian symbolism is formed on the shaft of the slender and miraculously well-preserved sandstone cross still standing in the churchyard at Gosforth (Cumbria) (Jesch, Chapter 3, Figure 3.4). We see a group of images representing the Viking Doomsday, Ragnarok, interspersed with scenes of the Crucifixion. The Norse gods ViSar and Loki are depicted, the former on the east face fighting a terrible monster that probably represents Fenrir, the wolf that killed OSin, while on the west face, the latter is being punished for his role in the death of the virtuous god Baldr.

Other mythological scenes are visible on crosses from Halton (Lancashire) (Jesch, Chapter 3, Figure 3.3) and at sites in the Viking-settled areas of Yorkshire and the Isle of Man. The use of Norse and pagan imagery may seem strange on what are explicitly Christian crosses. However, it seems these were used as a means of drawing together older traditions and forming cross-cultural allegiances to underpin the landed power of patrons in the new Christian Age (White, Chapter 12).

FIGURE 2.3 Bidston Hogback, Wirral. (Photo courtesy of Ross Trench-Jellicoe.)

Hogbacks seem, on the basis of their frequency east of the Pennines, to be 10th century innovations and closely linked to the kingdom of Northumbria and its lands west of the Pennines in Cumbria and North Lancashire, and also in Wirral. Various sub-types exist in size and decoration; the Cumbrian examples are generally thinner and taller than those found elsewhere.

Most distinctive are those of the Brompton School (named after a parish church in North Yorkshire with a particularly splendid group), with gripping beasts or bears at the ends of the ‘long houses.’ A miniature version of this Northumbrian type was recently unearthed from the garden of a former parish vicarage at Bidston, Wirral (Bailey and Whalley 2006) a parish perhaps significantly dedicated to a Northumbrian saint, St. Oswald (Figure 2.3).

Unlike the crosses, hogbacks rarely exhibit well-understood mythical scenes and present a more eclectic range of images ranging from battle scenes to beasts. A battle scene with helmeted standing warriors arrayed in formation with round shields and spears appears on a Gosforth hogback (‘The Warrior’s Tomb’) and a ship in full battle formation arrayed with shields appears on a hogback from Lowther (Cumbria). Perhaps this difference indicates that, like the furnished graves, hogbacks were primarily personalized statements, and perhaps not intended for the same publicly didactic purposes as crosses.