Huntcliff Roman Signal Station

Huntcliff Roman Signal Station

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The north east coast of Yorkshire saw the construction of a series of Roman forts, built as an extension to the Roman coastal defence system, and manned from around AD 369.

Scattered along the Yorkshire coast from Saltburn to Filey, a group of forts occupied positions which were unlike any of those on the Saxon Shore in the south. They are perched on high cliffs which drop sheer to the sea and they command wide outlooks. Huntcliff Roman Signal Station was one of these stations.

Britain is an island which is very closely tied to the continent of Europe. Although many geographical and historical writers have emphasised its insularity and its separation from Europe, it is, however, not the insularity of the island but its dependence on the European continent which really matters.

That part of southern Britain which faces the continent is fairly flat, and therefore offers no strategic obstacle to invaders. Its only features, its forests and its fens, do not protect it from European influences. Britain is a land which was made to be invaded from the continent. Indeed, the islands geographical features helped the incoming of two successive invasions by Celtic tribes and later, they enabled the Romans to conquer the south and east of Britain with very little trouble. It took the armies of Claudius less than five years to march from the Kentish ports to the Humber, the Severn and the Dee, and to subdue most of the land within those boundaries. Later still, when the western Roman empire was near its end, it was invasion from the east, not Scottish from the north or west, which broke down the Roman civilisation and converted Britain into England. Furthermore, the geographical kinship of southern England to Europe brought over in the early English period much Merovingian and French culture, and led directly to the Norman conquest and to the long connexion of the rulers of England with territories in France.

In the Roman period, this characteristic of Britain resulted in a need for some form of coastal defence, whether by the use of a fleet or by the provision of fortifications along the shore. In the early empire, while Rome was strong, the government used principally a fleet.

A classis Britannica patrolled the Channel from a main station at Gessoriacum (Bologne) and subsidiary posts on the Kentish coast at Dover and Lymne. The operation of this fleet was apparently confined to the narrow seas which divide the Kentish coast and the Thames estuary from the opposite Gaulish coast and the mouth of the Rhine. We may suppose that the fleet was primarily intended to prevent piracy. It would seem, however, that for two centuries at least, pirates seldom troubled the south-eastern coasts of Britain. Whether the conditions were worse in the west and north is not so easy to decide as no station of the classis Britannica can be traced there.

The attacks of the barbarians on the empire altered the state of Roman security.

These attacks by sea first became troublesome towards the end of the third century; it was then thought necessary to appoint a special commander, one Carausius, to deal with their assaults. He showed how sea-power could relieve Britain from its dependence on Europe, using his fleet to assert the independence of the British province and to establish himself as emperor of that part of the Roman world, thus winning for himself a renown which he did not altogether deserve and causing the Roman government to make changes in the system of British coastal defence which cannot easily be determined with certainty.

When Carausius was dead Rome recovered the British province and established an officer with the title, "Count of the Saxon Shore " (governor of the coast which the Saxons vexed), and put under him nine forts which, so far as they can be identified, stood close to the coast at intervals from the Wash to Beachy Head or perhaps to Portsmouth. At the same time all reference to a British fleet disappears.

This coastal defence of south-eastern England by fort and fleet seems to have been sufficient at first but the pirates began to creep along the continental shore to pillage, in preference to voyaging long distances across open water.

The northern coast itself is dangerous to those who do not know well its reefs and currents; it suffers with many storms, and is lined for miles with long and precipitous cliffs.

Nevertheless, when the barbarian attacks grew worse, that is after about AD 350, it was thought necessary to provide some form of defence for this coast as well as for the easier and richer south. The North Yorkshire coast was particularly vulnerable as some of the richest parts of Yorkshire lie within a day’s march of the North Sea shores. We can therefore begin to trace, in the second half of the fourth century, an extension of the Roman coastal defence system, in some form or another, to the north of England.

The north east coast of Yorkshire saw the construction of a series of roman forts that were manned from around AD 369. Scattered along the Yorkshire coast from Saltburn to Filey, a group of forts occupied positions which are unlike those of the Saxon Shore in the south.

They were perched on high cliffs which drop sheer to the sea and they command wide outlooks. Moreover, they are small, and, so far as we can tell, they could not have accommodated the 500 or 1,000 men which garrisoned the southern forts. Their purpose is plain. They are signal stations, strong enough to be held against small parties of raiders, but meant primarily for scouts whose beacons would flash back to the interior and to their fellow-stations along the coast a warning of the approach of any large fleet of pirates.

Huntcliff is probably the best known of the Roman forts along the North Yorkshire coastline.

The site was first identified in circa 1862 and by the time it was excavated by Hornsby and Stanton in 1911-1912 only the southern half survived, the remainder having been lost to coastal erosion. The remains of this Roman signal post has since slipped into the sea and all that survives are the few Roman objects found - including coins, pottery and animal bones - that are now in Whitby Museum.

A mile or so east of Saltburn the long low mass of Huntcliff runs out to sea. It is the northernmost outlier of the Cleveland hills, and the most northerly too of the cliffs which fringe the Yorkshire coast with rare intervals for 50 miles from Saltburn to Flamborough head. It rises sheer out of the sea 300 feet or more, and a ridge of hill behind it towers nearly 200 feet higher. From it one can see north-west over all the flat estuary of the Tees and the south coast of Durham, and there is a wide though more limited view south-

eastwards towards Loftus. On this headland, at a point 365 feet above sea level and on the brink of the precipitous cliff, stood a Roman watchtower. All of it has now been lost by falls of cliff although enough of it had survived at the time of its excavation to show its character.

The foundations indicated a fort of roughly rectangular outline with strongly rounded corners, measuring 105 feet within the walls from east to west and perhaps the same from north to south. (The northern part, two-thirds or three-quarters of the whole, had vanished and the length from north to south could not therefore be accurately recovered). The internal length and breadth may both be accepted as about 105 feet, and the internal area as about one-fifth of an acre.

The defences of the fort were, first, a wall 44 inches thick, built of roughly coursed local stone and strengthened at the angles by projecting semicircular bastions, and secondly, a broad ditch, some 28 feet wide from lip to lip, which is separated from the wall by the usual Roman device of a flat berm. In the middle of the south face of the wall was an entrance not quite 7 feet wide, furnished inside with walling suggestive of either guard-chambers or a gate-tower. Inside the fort was a rectangular building 52 feet long, of which only one wall had survived.

The excavations also revealed 25 coins, all except one being “third brass." Almost all belong to the second half of the fourth century; the latest coin is of Arcadius, A.D. 388-392. Earlier coins are of Valentinian. This evidence is conclusive. The fort can hardly have been built much before 360 and was occupied at least until after the overthrow of Magnus Maximus in 388. The coinage of Roman copper practically ceased very soon after 390 and for many years the earlier issues of copper continued in use. On present evidence, therefore, the fact that the latest coin is little, if anything, later than 388-9 would not be inconsistent with the idea that the fort was held for ten or twenty years longer.

The pottery which was excavated gives a general confirmation to this dating, but it is important because it can be dated within thirty or forty years from the coins rather than because it aids the dating of the fort. It consists entirely of quite late fabrics, principally black wares and red wares decorated with scrolls of white paint, which are otherwise known

to have been in use in north Britain in the fourth century. There was, however, one piece of Samian.

Many skulls and other human bones were also found, all in the well; and belong to probably fourteen or fifteen persons of both sexes, varying in age from one or two to about 65.

Several seem to be assignable to one family, which included a man of about 65, a woman of about 22, and two children, one two years old and the other eight. Except for one shin-bone of a man 6 feet high, the bones indicated smallish men and women, the former about 5 feet 4 inches tall, the women rather less. The skulls were wide and low with a relatively small height. One skull bore the marks of a deep cut from some weapon. These bones belonged presumably to refugees or to the families of some of the garrison of the fort than to the garrison itself. Whoever they were, they were killed when the fort was stormed and burnt, and their bodies were cast into the ready grave offered by the open well.

The remains of a second signal station were found to the south of Huntcliff at Goldsborough, just 4 miles north of Whitby. This station had similar foundations to those at

Huntcliff. The Goldsborough Roman Signal Station is situated at 131m above sea level and 500m from the cliff edge with commanding views along the coast to NW and SE. It survives as a square mound about 40m across and up to 1.4m high with rounded corners and a roughly level top. Excavations at this site and others in the series have shown they were built to a common design with a central stone tower 30m high surrounded by a stone wall enclosing an area about of 90sq m beyond which was a ‘V’ shaped ditch. Excavations in 1918 recovered over 300 coins and it is on the basis of these that the site has been precisely dated to AD 368 to 395. Other finds included animal bones, offering an insight into the diet of the garrison, while a well in the enclosure contained three human skulls, one from a woman. Two skeletons were also found within the ruins of the tower and this has been taken to imply that the occupation of the site came to a violent end.

The site of another fort was discovered at Ravenscar. It crowned the high promontory of Peak, 400 feet above the sea, which forms the southern end of Robin Hood's Bay. Here stone foundations and a Roman inscription were found about 1771 close to the house once called Raven Hall, now the Ravenscar Hotel, when the house was built or rebuilt. Of the foundations no record survives, though some of them are said to exist below ground. The inscription is now in Whitby Museum. Its lettering and the interpretation is in some points doubtful although from some of the wording it may be assumed that the inscription was set up and the fort in which it was found was built or repaired, not so very long before A.D. 406.

Another of the sites, the best preserved of all the signal stations, was found at Scarborough, perched on the edge of the Scarborough Castle headland, and was excavated by Mr M G Simpson around 1917 where the foundations of the stone walls were discovered along the cliff edge.

The Scarborough Signal Station is very typical of the other signal stations on the Yorkshire coast. It is a 50-foot square tower surrounded by a curtain wall and ditch. The walls of the tower were probably five and a half feet thick, each story about ten feet high, and it probably was about a hundred feet tall. Around the tower was a twenty-five foot courtyard, surrounded by a four and a half foot thick curtain wall with rounded corners. Again it is evident that this thin wall, even with its corner turrets, was not built to withstand a prolonged or serious attack. One strange feature of the Scarborough signal station is that the foundations for the wall do not have rounded corners. Judging by the difference in construction of each corner the builders obviously tried to compensate by modifying the corners. The ditch is separated from the wall by a 30-foot berm, an orthodox defence of the time. No well dating from Roman times has been found and it is probable that they used the same water supply as the later medieval chapel (built on top of the remains of the Roman station) did.

The coins found at Scarborough Signal Station again suggest that the station remained in use at least until AD 394. By and large these coins could not have been in circulation for long because they show little wear, and their dates span only about fifty years, which suggests that Theodosius brought the money for building the signal stations with him from Rome and that the stations did not last long.

The garrison at Scarborough is also known to have been overrun and the inhabitants slaughtered when the tower perished.

The final station to be discovered along this coast was sited at Filey Brigg, the southernmost of the five stations, on the high headland called Carr Naze which is the northern limit of Filey bay. Here, on the edge of the cliff, Roman remains were noted after a landslip in 1857, and small-scale archaeological excavations took place in 1923 which revealed foundations and various minor objects. The foundations covered a space of about 25 by 70 feet, but were not followed out to their full extent ; they included rough masonry, a floor of puddled clay, five stone bases suitable for holding wooden pillars, and much burnt wood, as if from a fallen roof. Among the smaller remains were many potsherds, most of which resemble the Huntcliff fragments, while one piece was of Samian ware, a fragment of which was also found at Huntcliff. In 1993/94, due to increasing erosion, the Filey Station was re-excavated

by York Archaeological Trust, supported by Scarborough Council.

Although about two-thirds of the site has disappeared over the cliffs, it is clear that the plan of the Filey signal station is very similar to that of the others in the group. It measured about 50m across and at the centre stood a tower 14m square of which the substantial clay and stone foundations have been found. In 1857 five large stone blocks were recovered which may have supported the first floor of the tower. The tower was surrounded by a small walled courtyard which was entered through a gate on the west side. Beyond the gate there was a defensive ditch which presumably ran across the headland, but did not enclose the whole site. Since the Roman structures have been totally demolished, probably in medieval times, it is difficult to know what they originally looked like, but it is possible that the tower rose to a height of as much as 30m.

The signal station garrison probably consisted of a small band of local militia whose duties were to warn local people and the Roman army inland of the approach of sea-borne raiders.

Excavation of the courtyard around the tower revealed a thick layer of refuse left by the garrison which included broken pottery, animal bones, and other food debris. Research on the bones and shells by the Environmental Archaeology Unit at York University has shown that, in addition to beef, mutton, and chicken, locally available sea-food, primarily limpets and mussels, were eaten, supplemented on occasions by sea-birds such a guillemot and razor bill.

Again it is difficult to date the construction of the Filey signal station with any accuracy within the late Roman period, but coins from the courtyard suggest that refuse tipping began after c AD 385. Occupation is unlikely to have continued much beyond the early fifth century. The abandonment of the site by the Romans was not the end of its use for defensive purposes, as at some subsequent date, probably in the sixth - eighth century AD, a massive rampart composed of clay and turf was built on the east side of the signal station.

This earthwork, which was about 30m wide, still stands about 1.8m high. It can be seen today and accounts for a rise and fall in the path along the top of Carr Naze. The exact

purpose of the rampart is unknown, but it clearly formed a defensive barrier across the headland.

Archaeologist Steve Sherlock has recently uncovered the foundations for a Roman settlement on the east Cleveland coast at Street House, Loftus. Mr Sherlock, who began excavations in a farmer's field near Loftus in 2005, uncovering evidence of Anglo-Saxon royalty in the area, returned to the site (2008) and has been able to trace even further back in time.

Helped by volunteers from Teesside Archaeological Society, Mr Sherlock discovered the look-out station, just inches below the ground’s surface. His painstaking work has also resulted in the discovery of a 1,600 year-old site for creating jet jewellery.

He said: "It's another completely exciting find. I came here to find a Saxon settlement and I'm discovering a very significant Roman site, too. To find a significant Roman site at Street House that is contemporary with the Roman signal station at Huntcliff is fantastic. We have also found a Roman jet working site that would have made jet jewellery."

Aerial photographs first guided Mr Sherlock's Iron Age research project to the location in 2004, showing evidence of an Iron Age enclosure. Excavation of the site in 2007 revealed 109 Anglo Saxon graves, dating back to the seventh century. A hoard of brooches, pendants and beads was also uncovered in superb condition as well as a gold (bracteate) brooch.