Ingram : Iron Age (700 BC – AD 70)

Yeavering BellBy the second half of the first millennium, hillforts such as those at Brough Law (NT 998163), Greaves Ash (No. 2 & 3, NT 966166) and Middle Dean (NU 004146) had been established in considerable numbers throughout the Cheviots. Some hillforts, such as Wether Hill (No. 80, NU 013144) seem to have had earlier origins. Here, the earliest enclosure seems to have taken the form of a timber palisade no more than 60m in diameter, perhaps dating to the Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age. In the Cheviots and adjacent Scottish border region, there is some evidence to suggest that the construction of a timber palisade may have been a precursor of more substantial fortifications, such as stone walls or ramparts, as at Yeavering Bell, and Hownam Rings, Roxburghshire.

While it is unsafe to assume that all hillforts necessarily originated as palisaded enclosures (Welfare 2002, 74), at Wether Hill, the bank, ditch and counterscarp bank postdate the palisaded phase and suggest an increasing need for defence into the Iron Age. Although the double ramparts and commanding situation suggest that defensive criteria were important, the hillfort’s primary function may have been to demonstrate power and status through public display, with defence a secondary consideration (McOmish 1999, 113).

The remains of hut circles inside the inner enclosure indicate that Wether Hill served as a settlement at some stage, though not all the hut circles are contemporary with the ramparts, and in common with many other Cheviot hillforts, such as Castle Hill, Alnham and West Hill, Kirknewton, there seems to have been a significant settlement phase after the ramparts had fallen into disuse (ASUD 2002, 39). At Greaves Ash (Site nos. 2, 3, NT 920180) the western enclosure ramparts may date to the Iron Age, but the majority of the hut circles seem to be of Romano-British date, directly overlying the defences. In general, many hillforts are too small in interior area to have supported any sizeable population and are perhaps best explained as defended farmsteads (Oswald et al. 2000, 53).

In all likelihood, there is no single explanation for all so-called hillforts in the Cheviots; they may have served as animal enclosures, market places or trading stations, defensive enclosures, community centres, places of worship and expressions of power and status in a competitive society. Only detailed work, such as that recently undertaken as part of the Discovering our Hillfort Heritage Project, has the potential to understand this very complex situation.