Ritual Site?

Yeavering Bell may have been another sacred mountain, like Simonside, in earlier times, but during the Iron Age one or more individuals had the power to order the construction of this massive hillfort, suggesting perhaps that power now lay firmly in the hands of living individuals, rather than by reference to the ancestors of the old sacred landscapes. The fort ramparts were built of stone quarried from the very fabric of the old ‘sacred mountain’, and several ancient quarry faces can still be recognised within the fort interior.

It is interesting to note that the fort walls would have been bright pink when first constructed, as the local andesite is this colour when freshly quarried. After just a few years’ exposure to the elements, the rock weathers to a dull grey. (This process can be seen in local drystone walls today, where repairs often show as pink patches in long lines of grey). The use of this pink stone was, of course, necessitated by the fact that it was the only stone available here, but the use of colour in local prehistoric monuments is a subject that might repay greater study as work elsewhere suggests that red and pink may have been significant colours way back in prehistory.

There has been a tendency amongst scholars of the Iron Age to scoff at such suggestions, and to interpret hillforts as primarily functional, defensive settlements. Symbolic elements of various types, however, are often incorporated within hillfort architecture. For example, Yeavering’s main entrance (perhaps its only original entrance) appears to be aligned southwards towards the great domed profile of Hedgehope (the second highest of the Cheviot Hills). Everyday, a fraction before noon, the residents of the fort could look through the entrance and see the sun at just about its highest point of the day directly over Hedgehope.

Regardless of all this fascinating, but ultimately unprovable, conjecture, the Yeavering Bell hillfort must have been of considerable political importance. Some people resident within it may have exercised control over the wider landscape, and possibly over the residents of other Cheviot hillforts. Indeed, Yeavering is on an altogether different scale to all the other Northumberland hillforts, and perhaps belongs to a group of large forts in southern Scotland (including Traprain Law and Eildon Hill North) which may prove to be considerably older than most of the more ‘standard’ sized hillforts.

We currently have no scientific dating evidence for the initial construction of the Yeavering hillfort, and while most archaeologists would suggest a date of around 300BC, it is entirely possible that it could be much older, perhaps dating from not long after 1000BC. Only excavation can provide an answer to its origins and its chronological relationship with surrounding sites.