The Little Book of Staffordshire (eBook)

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BEFORE STAFFORDSHIRE

The year 2016 marked the 1,000th anniversary of the first mention of Staffordshire in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle and the county celebrated with the inaugural Staffordshire Day. Of course, people lived, worked and died here long before that name existed and evidence of their existence can be found in the landscape that surrounds us.

NEOLITHIC AND BRONZE AGE

The Bridestones sit on the Staffordshire and Cheshire border and are thought to be somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 years old. It is an absolute wonder that these stones are still standing, and all the more remarkable when you read of their treatment in the past. Back in the eighteenth century, the site was regarded as a convenient quarry and was plundered for its stone, some of which was used to build local houses and some of which was taken to build the nearby turnpike road. There are also rumours that some of the stone can be found in the ornamental gardens at Tunstall Park, which was opened to the public in June 1908. The stones are said to have sustained yet more damage in the nineteenth century, both accidentally, when a fire lit at the site caused the stones to crack, and deliberately, when an engineer working on the Manchester Ship Canal supposedly demonstrated how detonation worked on one of the larger stones. There are stories that claim the stones mark the resting place of a murdered pair of newlyweds, a Saxon woman and her Viking groom. Others say weddings once took place here.

Near to Oakley Hall, at Mucklestone, there is a Neolithic monument frequently referred to as the ‘Devil’s Ring and Finger’, comprising of two large stones, one round with a 20in-diameter porthole in the middle and the other standing 6ft tall. No longer in their original position, they are thought to have been part of a burial chamber and have also been known as ‘The Whirl Stones’.

When Thor’s Cave in the Manifold Valley was excavated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, an assortment of archaeological finds including tools, pottery, beads and at least seven human burials was discovered, suggesting the cave had been in use from the Palaeolithic period through to the Iron Age and Roman periods.

A small copper alloy anvil, used as a Bronze Age gold-working tool, still with tiny gold flecks on its working faces, was discovered by a metal-detectorist at Knowle Hill in Lichfield along with several other objects from the same period, including an adze and a socketed axe.

At the confluence of the rivers Trent and Tame, a series of Neolithic or Early Bronze Age ritual landscape features have been termed the ‘Catholme cere-monial complex’. Amongst them are a Woodhenge monument, a ‘sunburst’ monument, a possible cursus and a large ring ditch.

In August 2015, a Bronze Age cremation urn was discovered at the Roaches by a man repairing a footpath.

A cemetery containing the cremated remains of twenty-one individuals along with the remains of five cinerary urns were discovered during the excavation of two ring ditches in Barton under Needwood in 1996.

A Bronze Age barrow at Leek, known as Cock Low, was destroyed in 1907 to make way for housing. On the 1838 town plan it is shown as a large mound and standing around 4m high. An urn discovered near the top of the mound contained animal and human bone and a heart-shaped carved stone.

A total of twenty-one burnt mounds have been discovered in the county, the majority in the Cannock Chase area.

When the Wardlow barrow was excavated in 1955 it was found to contain a central cremation deposit accompanied by an incense or pygmy cup, three fragments of a reddish-buff vessel, a barbed and tanged arrowhead, flint knives and other flint implements. The barrow was destroyed by the extension of Wardlow Quarry.

IRON AGE

Staffordshire has a number of hillforts including Bunbury Hill in the grounds of Alton Towers, Berth Hill in the Maer Hills, Bishop’s Wood near Eccleshall, Bury Bank at Stone, Berry Ring in Stafford, Kinver Edge and Castle Ring at the highest point on Cannock Chase, 240m above sea level. A high-status medieval building stands inside the latter and was excavated by local historian William Molyneux in the nineteenth century.

Local tribes in the area, which would later become Staffordshire, were known as the Cornovii, Coritani and Brigantes.

Four Iron Age coins were discovered near Gnosall in 2011.

The Glascote gold alloy torc was discovered by a canal worker who was told it was a coffin handle and to keep it as a souvenir. In 1970, it was declared treasure and purchased by the people of Birmingham and it has been suggested that it would have been made for a tribal chief. It is similar to a torc discovered in the Needwood Forest suggesting there may have been a craftsman in the area. The local high school was named after the find, as was a street in the vicinity. Other torcs from the period have been discovered near Draycott and Alrewas where three unfinished examples were discovered in 1996.

ROMAN

Just outside of Lichfield, in the village of Wall, are the remains of the Roman settlement of Letocetum, a Latinised version of an Iron Age place name meaning ‘grey wood’. The foundations of the bathhouse and guesthouse (or mansio), established here to provide rest and recuperation and a change of horses to those travelling along Watling Street, are still visible.

Many fascinating archaeological finds have been unearthed at the site and are displayed in the small site museum, including a carved stone, discovered built into the foundations of the mansio, along with seven others currently in storage at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. The carving seems to show two horned heads facing each other, with a circular object, interpreted as a shield, to their right. Heads also appear on some of the other stones found alongside it. One depicts a figure with a club in one hand, and a severed head or skull at its feet. Another features a head in what may be some sort of niche and a fourth has a head with an open mouth, which may suggest it is screaming. Carved onto a fifth stone are two ‘warrior’ figures with shields, standing side by side. A pattern of sorts around their legs has been interpreted as representing water. A second pair of figures, enclosed in a frame or box of some sort, lie at right angles to these ‘warriors’. Two further stones have inscriptions, or at least partial inscriptions – ‘CUINTI ... CI’ and ‘DDBRUTI’ – and on the eighth stone is a carving resembling a Christian cross, although it may be a pagan symbol representing the sun. All but one of the stones were built into the foundations of the mansio in an inverted position, and there is a theory that they were originally part of a Romano-British shrine dedicated to a native god or gods, demolished sometime around the building of the mansio.

The reason for the shrine’s demolition at this stage is unclear, but it has been suggested that it may have been replaced by a yet to be discovered temple dedicated to a Roman god built elsewhere on the site. Incorporating the stones upside down suggests that the native gods represented by the carvings were still respected, and perhaps even feared by the builders of the mansio. A ninth carved stone, found separately in a hypocaust in the north-east of the mansion appears to depict a phallus, and was inserted after construction to provide additional protection for the building.

The late Professor Mick Aston of Time Team had one of his first experiences of archaeology at Letocetum, under the guidance of Jim Gould FSA.

Whilst excavating the Wyrley to Essington canal at Pipehill, at the end of the eighteenth century, a 500-yard section of a Roman military barricade (or palisade) made from trunks of oak trees was discovered. It was thought to have originally stretched from Pipe Hill to the Roman settlement at Letocetum.

A lead ingot dating to AD 76, inscribed with the names of the emperor Vespasian and the maker Deceangli, was discovered on Hints Common.

At Chesterton, there was a first-century Roman fort and settlement excavated in 1969.

In 1960, a man digging in his garden on Lightwood Road in the Longton area of Stoke-on-Trent came across an earthenware pot containing over 2,400 coins and two silver bracelets. The find, now at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, is known as the Lightwood Hoard.

A Roman fort was established at Rocester in around AD 69, and earthworks are still visible.

A series of Roman military sites, including two forts, several camps and a small, defended settlement known as Pennocrucium, have been identified in the Stretton Mill and Water Eaton area.

ANGLO-SAXON

At Holy Trinity church in Eccleshall, there are two fragments of a Saxon preaching cross, one featuring two figures separated by a tree and the other, a man and horse. The pair of figures on the former have been interpreted by some as Adam and Eve alongside the Tree of Life and the figure on the latter as a possible early representation of St Chad, who was of course the first Bishop of Lichfield. Although there is little other evidence at present, the presence of the cross and the ‘Eccles’ element of the place name, suggests that there may have been an early Christian community here.

The Staffordshire Hoard is the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever discovered. It was found in a field alongside Watling Street, in the parish of Hammerwich in July 2009 by a metal detectorist and consists almost entirely of...