by Tim Pestell
At Melton Ross the finds came, in the main, from four areas. Most of the Middle Anglo-Saxon coins and metalwork was concentrated in area marked ‘A’ on Fig. 12.5, with a further patch of finds to the south, ‘B’, an area which also produced some Early Anglo-Saxon metalwork. Both Early and Middle Anglo-Saxon pottery has been found on the field together with large quantities of lead melt, a common feature of Lincolnshire ‘productive’ sites. Although few of the coins have been seen by the writer,† they included Frisian sceattas of Series E, sceattas of Series J and R, Northumbrian stycas, and broad pennies of Coenwulf (796–821 and Æthelred II (986–1016), together with some Medieval sterling pennies. Perforated Roman coins, commonly found on Early Anglo-Saxon sites, were found in area ‘B’. Around 300m to the west of the main findspot is a group of finds near to a spring feeding the Welbeck stream, ‘C’. Material from this area suggests the presence of a Romano-British settlement followed by one of Anglo-Saxon date. Finds of Early Anglo-Saxon metalwork from an area 350m to the south show the presence of a cemetery, ‘D’, and burnt objects indicate that the cemetery contained cremations as well as inhumations.‡
One hundred and two pieces of metalwork have been found at Melton Ross, which can be broken down as shown in Table 12.2, opposite. Analysed by type, the finds may be broken down further, as shown in Table 12.3.
Seen in the context of the other Middle Anglo-Saxon sites in Lincolnshire, Melton Ross is only relatively ‘productive’. However, the detectorist, Mr Parkin, was only able to search part of the site and large areas remain unknown. Some items of high quality eighth-century metalwork have been found at Melton Ross suggesting a settlement of some importance (Fig. 12.4). In common with other sites in Lindsey, the ninth century saw a general fall in the quality of the metalwork but an increase in quantity. Tenth-century and Medieval finds from Melton Ross indicate that activity continued at a reduced level or moved to a site nearby while Stamford and Torksey ware (of the tenth to eleventh century) has been found in a garden between sites ‘A’ and ‘C’. The continued importance of the location is demonstrated by Domesday Book and the presence of Ross Castle, a large moated site in the adjacent field.*
Table 12.2. The breakdown of metalwork from Melton Ross, by date.
Roman 9
Fifth century 1
Sixth–seventh century 36
Eighth–ninth century 49
Tenth–eleventh century 4
Medieval 3
Total 102
table 12.3. The breakdown of Anglo-Saxon and Vikingmetalwork from Melton Ross, by type. N.B. Objects represented by only single finds are
not included in this table.
Brooches (Roman) 4
Brooches (Early Anglo-Saxon) 27
Wrist clasps (Early Anglo-Saxon) 4
Mounts (eighth century) 5
Pins (eighth/ninth century) 26
Strap-ends (ninth century) 15
Hooked tags (ninth/tenth century) 5
Knives 5
The Domesday survey of i086 provides useful information on Melton Ross and Barnetby le Wold. Barnetby was a soke centre and included a holding in the port of Barton on Humber (Hart 1992, 235, map 8.2a). In 1066, it was in the possession of Earl Harold and been valued at £15 (DB Lincolnshire, fos 349b, 353d and 362b). Unusually, by 1086, its value had risen to £20 16s. Melton Ross was valued at £6 in 1066 and, as with Barnetby, its value had increased and in 1086 it was worth £8 (ibid., fo. 362b). The assessments make reference to a church and a priest in Melton Ross and half a church in Barnetby.
FIGURE 12.4. Selected finds from Melton Ross. (a) Early seventh-century gilt copper-alloy sword pyramid, the apex inlaid with a square garnet and each of the four faces bears a simple curvilinear motif. (b) Eighth-century silver-gilt pinhead decorated with the stylised figure of a standing bird, left, looking back over its body. The wings and tail are raised and have club-like terminals, the shoulder bears what appears to be a panel of blundered interlace; the feet are also crudely executed. Drawn from a photograph, scale uncertain. (c) Eighth-century lozenge-shaped silver-gilt mount decorated with the figure of an animal, the limbs, ears and tail of which extend into interlace. (d) Ninth-century copper-alloy strap-end inlaid with niello. Two silver rivets at upper end, traces of silvering on back. The main field is divided into five panels containing Trewhiddle-style motifs. The terminal’s animal head has inset blue glass eyes, a feature of a number of items of Middle Anglo-Saxon metalwork in Lincolnshire including the eighth-century Witham pins. (e) Fragment of a gilt copper-alloy mount in the form of a disc containing an interlace-decorated cross pattée. There is a central perforation and each of the surviving arms contains the traces of a rivet or nail. Such mounts are generally considered to be mounts from book covers or shrines, which may have implications for the interpretation of the Melton Ross site.
Aerial photographs of the Melton Ross site show a series of enclosures marked by double-ditched droveways (Fig. 12.5) characteristic of the so-called ‘Butterwick’ type sites known from the eponymous site at Butterwick in East Yorkshire (Stoertz 1997, 58–9, fig. 30.1). Butter-wick lies in a bend of the Gypsy Race, the main stream in the Yorkshire Wolds. It was identified from the air and assigned to the Anglo-Saxon period on the basis of rectangular marks within the enclosures which, it was suggested, were Grubenhäuser. The double-ditched enclosures that typify Butterwick sites can also be seen at Cottam B, a site which has produced large quantities of Middle Anglo-Saxon metalwork (Richards 1999a). A Butterwick-type settlement has been recorded at Riby Cross Roads, eleven kilometres to the east of Melton Ross (Steedman 1994). In 1991, excavations conducted in advance of pipe laying provided a transect through this site, revealing ditches but no structures. Metalwork similar to that recorded from Melton Ross was found, together with large quantities of Early and Middle Anglo-Saxon pottery. It is rumoured that this site has produced large numbers of coins but few other objects.
FIGURE 12.5. The site at Melton Ross, showing the findspots, cropmark plots and the location of Ross Castle.
Parallels can be drawn between the siting of Melton Ross and the ‘productive’ site at South Newbald in East Yorkshire, which lay near the junction of the Roman road leading north from the Humber Estuary and the roads to York and Malton (Leahy 2000). Like Melton Ross, South Newbald was discovered and investigated by metal detector users who found 126 coins and 114 items of Middle Anglo-Saxon metalwork (ibid.). Early Anglo-Saxon material was absent and the finds suggest that activity on the site ended in the later ninth century, perhaps in 867 when York fell to the Vikings. Unlike Melton Ross, the Newbald site has produced no settlement debris suggesting that it had a different function, perhaps as a market site focused on a putative minster which would fit into a gap in the pattern of East Yorkshire minsters. Later the manor became a prebend of York, the fate of a number of former Yorkshire minsters (Morris i989, i38). North Newbald church is a magnificent late Romanesque cruciform structure, looking ‘more akin to a miniature cathedral than a parochial building’ (ibid., 283), again suggesting the importance of the parish.
FIGURE 12.6. The combined parishes of Melton Ross, Barnetby le Wold and the surrounding sites, taken from the 1887 2” Ordnance Survey map (Sheet XX.7). Parish boundari s are shown by a broken line.
The boundary between the parishes of Melton Ross and Barnetby is diverted in the area from which the finds come so that a tongue of Melton Ross parish extends down into Barnetby le Wold (Fig. 12.6). The parish of Barnetby was enclosed in 1766–8 but there is no map with the Award, our first detailed map of the parishes being the Tithe Award of i849. This shows the tongue of Melton Ross extending south of the parish boundary but includes a smaller area than that seen on the modern map, stopping just east of the Welbeck spring. The present boundary between Melton Ross and Barnetby appears to be a secondary feature, dividing an original, roughly triangular, area of land in two. At South Newbald the parish boundary also deviates from its line to bisect the site (Leahy 2000, 54–5). Originally this s
ection of the parish boundary was very complex with alternate fields belonging to the two parishes, giving a chequer-board like pattern, an arrangement apparently described in a charter of 963 (ibid.). The significance of the deviations near these sites is difficult to explain. Most English parishes appear to have been defined between 950 and ii50 as landowners built churches on their estates and allocated tithes to support them. The boundary thus often followed the limits of the earlier estate. At Melton Ross the deviation may have been to retain the Welbeck spring, or an associated site, within Melton parish: it is suggested that the adjustment at South Newbald allowed two parishes or estates to share in an important market/minster site. Like Melton Ross, Newbald lay at the centre of an estate that included all of the hundred of Cave (ibid.). Parishes within the hundred were inter-related, with Newbald having ancient rights of common and pasture in other parishes, and with another parish having a detached outlier.
Both Melton Ross and Newbald are close to large Early Anglo-Saxon cremation cemeteries. On Middlegate Lane, three and a half kilometres to the north-west of the Melton Ross was the Elsham cemetery (Leahy 1993, 40) and, just over six kilometres to the north of Newbald, again in an adjacent parish, is the Sancton cemetery (Myres and Southern 1973). Paul Everson has suggested a relationship between these large cemeteries and later Domesday soke centres, the Cleatham cemetery being linked with the great soke of Kirton in Lindsey, and South Elkington linked with Louth (Everson 1993, 98). Everson considered that Elsham was too far away from Caistor to be linked with it, but it now seems possible that Elsham was linked not to Caistor, but to the soke centre in the adjacent parish of Barnetby. Both Melton Ross and South Newbald are also close to Early Anglo-Saxon inhumation cemeteries, the cemetery at Newbald being just over a kilometre away from the site (Leahy 2000, 54).
FIGURE 12.7. The Yarborough Camp earthworks. Plan based on a survey carried out by K. A. Leahy and J. C. Dyson in May 1984. The ditch was filled with leaf litter and was located by probing.
Two kilometres to the north-east of Melton Ross, on the boundary with the neighbouring parish of Croxton, is Yarborough Camp, a o.62ha trapezoid enclosure (Fig. 12.7)*. The monument is now obscured by woodland, but a survey showed it to consist of a bank and surrounding ditch. At each of its four corners is a mound, probably representing the remains of a bastion and a ten-metre wide gap in the east side of the enclosure may mark the position of an entrance. This monument is difficult to date on morphological grounds. It was visited by the antiquarian William Stukeley in 1724 who recorded:
Two miles west of Thornton (Curtis) is a great Roman camp, called Yarborough which surveys the whole hundred dominated from it, and all the sea coast. Vast quantities of Roman coins have been found here: Mr Howson of Kenington (Kirmington) hard by, has pecks of them, many of Licinius (Stukeley 1776, 101).
As no coins have been found at Yarborough Camp in recent times it has been suggested that Mr Howson’s coins came not from the Camp, but from the Roman site at Kirmington two kilometres from Melton Ross (Scheduled County Monument 217). Occupation at Kirmington started in the Iron Age and following a brief military phase, the site went on to become a large, unenclosed civil settlement. When metal-detecting was allowed on the site it yielded large quantities of Romano-British metalwork but very little Anglo-Saxon material, activity having perhaps moved from Kirmington to Melton Ross.
In the collection at North Lincolnshire Museum are four sherds of pottery found by archaeologists at Yarborough Camp in 1967. One sherd is Bronze Age, two are of Romano-British greyware but the fourth is of Early Anglo-Saxon gritty ware. There is also a record of the bases of two Romano-British pots being found in the south-east corner of the enclosure. Perhaps the most significant feature of the site is its name. ‘Yarborough’ comes from the Old English eorburg, ‘earth fortification’ and this name was also applied to the Yarborough wapentake in which it lies.* This suggests that the camp was the centre of the wapentake and acted as the moot or meeting place. Eorburg is the word the Anglo-Saxons used for pre-existing earthworks, their own fortifications being referred to as burh (Cox 1996, 50). This would support the evidence provided by archaeology for the earthwork’s prehistoric, or possibly Romano-British origin. Barry Cox has suggested that Yarborough Camp and the other Yarboroughs in Lindsey represent the remains of a late Roman defensive system (ibid., 59) or formed part of a defensive system dating from the seventh century wars between Mercia and Northumbria (Cox 1994, 53–4). Late Roman fortifications employed bastions but those at Yarborough Camp differ in that they fail to extend beyond the defensive line and would not have allowed flanking fire. We may instead be looking at a seventh century burh. Yarborough wapentake is not unique in being centred on a prehistoric earthwork. Dickering (‘dike-ring’) wapentake in East Yorkshire was centred on the massive i20m diameter Bronze Age earthwork at Thwing; Thwing may be derived from thing, the Old English word for a meeting place.*
Excavations carried out at Thwing between 1973 and 1987 revealed, in addition to the prehistoric remains, evidence that the enclosure had been re-occupied from the eighth to the tenth centuries ad (Manby 1988). Buildings, including a large Grubenhaus, were erected within the earthwork which was surrounded by a series of palisades and enclosures forming ditched drove-ways resembling those seen on the Butterwick-type settlements. In spite of the clear importance of Thwing, the amount of Middle Anglo-Saxon metalwork found was relatively small, with only thirty-seven copper-alloy objects and sixteen coins. Many of the coins appear to be ‘as struck’ suggesting that they were being issued from the site. In the centre of the earthwork was a cemetery of 132 close-packed graves containing the remains of men, women and children aligned roughly west-east, and some graves had been used for successive burials (Manby 1986, 1–8). Thirty of the graves contained iron coffin fittings, marking them as burials of some quality. Just outside of the cemetery were two graves containing the remains of individuals who had been executed, suggesting that the site had a judicial role.
Some of the ‘productive’ sites may also have had a judicial role. The 1852 Ordnance Survey map records that eighteen human skeletons were found on the Newbald site but gives no further details. It is possible that they were linked to a minster, but eighteen is a low number for a churchyard and no further bones have been seen by the detectorists. They could instead have been placed around a gallows linked to the market/administrative functions of the site. By the side of the former main road just over two kilometres from the Melton Ross site stands a simple gallows. While the present structure is a modern replacement, this is an old place of execution. Gallows were recorded here on the 1824 Ordnance Survey map and the Hundred Roll of 1276 refers to a furc at Melton belonging to Robert de Ross (Illingworth 1812, 377b).† In describing the Melton furc the Roll uses the term antiqui conquest showing that they were not a newly-installed amenity, but pre-dated the Norman Conquest. Again the parish boundary is diverted, here to include the gallows within the parish of Melton Ross. At this point the boundaries of the parishes Melton Ross, Barnetby, Elsham and Wrawby meet. Locations in elevated positions, on parish boundaries, are characteristic of gallows sites (Reynolds 1998b).* The Newbald boundary may also have been diverted to include a gallows.†
To summarise, there is in the area around Melton Ross/Barnetby le Wold a remarkable concentration of Anglo-Saxon material and evidence. We have, in a relatively small area, the ‘productive’ site itself with its concentration of finds and settlement debris; cropmarks; an Early Anglo-Saxon cemetery and settlement; deviations in the parish boundary in the area of the finds and the gallows; the crossing of two major routes with implicit commercial activity; the wapentake centre at Yarborough Camp; gallows; and an important Medieval manorial centre.
Here are most of the main elements of Middle Anglo-Saxon administration, the main omission being the absence of any direct evidence for an ecclesiastical function, although gilt copper-alloy mounts like the example shown on Fig. 12.4e occur on monastic sites such as Whitby and H
artlepool. The parish church at Melton Ross was built in 1867, replacing an earlier structure. At Barnetby however, the redundant church of St Mary contains Anglo-Saxon work.‡
In conclusion, the large number of finds recorded as part of the Portable Antiquities Scheme has presented us with new opportunities to study the Anglo-Saxon period. The metal-detector finds cannot be seen in isolation and must be evaluated on both a site-specific and an inter-site basis. Every available source of evidence, archaeological, historical, topographical must be integrated, allowing us to move from the mere amassing of data to something more interesting and exciting.
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank Marion Archibald, Mark Bennett, Marina Elwes, Sarah Golland, Dave Haldenby, Mike Hemblade, Nick Lyons, Terry Manby, Gary Parkin, Rex Russell and Alison Williams. The drawings of the finds on Fig. 12-4 are the work of Marina Elwes. The digital mapping is the work of Mike Hemblade and the plan of Yarborough Camp, Fig. 12.7, is the work of the writer.
* This paper is based on finds recorded over the last twenty years, first as a personal initiative by the writer but for the last three years with the assistance of Mrs Marina Elwes, as Finds Liaison Officer. The material recorded has not been removed from its stratigraphical context by the metal-detector users. Lincolnshire is one of the most heavily cultivated areas of England: on average 46 percent of the land in an English county is under crop or fallow but in North Lincolnshire 78 percent of the land is ploughed. The damage done to the historical environment is appalling. The metal-detector finds often represent all that survives of a destroyed historic landscape and it is vital that this material is recorded.
* Such as the eighth-century silver pins and bowl from the River Witham (Wilson 1964, 132–4, pls. IIc and XVIII). With the work of the East Midlands Early Anglo-Saxon Pottery Project on Maxey-type ware (Vince and Young 1990–1, 38–9) we are beginning to understand the regional ceramic sequence.
