Heaton

Cist (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NZ 260 656

Archaeology & History

All remains of this prehistoric burial site have obviously long since fallen into only the vaguest of memory, but its incidence deserves reviving for those who may live nearby and seek for a place where our truly ancient ancestors once faired. Here, beneath the modern buildings of homo-profanus, less than a mile north-east of Newcastle city centre, a small prehistoric burial chamber, or cist, was uncovered quite accidentally by a Mr Russell Blackbird (1832) in the first-half of the 19th century. In a letter to the newly-formed (as it was back then) Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle in April of that year he told,

“In trenching some ground for planting, this morning, we discovered a stone vault, 4 feet long by 2 feet wide, and 20 inches deep, deposited in a dry hard marl below the soil, which we were taking out for making the walks in the garden. It contained the bones of a man, the head, in particular, quite perfect, with all the teeth in it. Also a small urn (was found)… There was some red-coloured earth in the urn which the labourers threw out.”

Mr Blackbird sent the antiquarian society a sketch of the urn that he and his colleagues discovered, reproduced here.

References:

Blackbird, Russell, “Account of the Discovery of a Stone Vault and Urn, at Villa Real, Jesmond,” in Archaeologia Aeliana, volume 2, 1832.

Acknowledgements: Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Cist (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 117 353

Archaeology & History

High up in the landscape on the northwestern edges of Bradford, where we now find the Chellow Heights reservoirs, ancient man saw fit to place the remains of their dead. It’s in a damn good location too, typical of burial sites. The views to the immediate north are directly at Rombalds Moor where, as we all know, Bronze Age and other prehistoric remains are found in huge numbers.

It was during the construction of the Chellow Heights reservoirs when the site was uncovered. Twas here, in June 1921, where segments of three urns and,

“an incomplete incense cup, 2 inches high and 3 inches diameter at its base, were found together with partly burnt bones”,

of what were thought to be a young female adult. There are few other details. The fact that there was no mention of any covering mound, nor mass or stones, strongly implies that neither a tumulus or cairn covered these urns—and neither place-name evidences nor early maps indicate anything to suggest such a monument—so it would be fair to surmise they had been deposited in a stone cist.

References:

Barnes, Bernard, Man and the Changing Landscape, Merseyside County Council 1982.
Longworth, Ian, Collared Urns of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland, Cambridge University Press 1984.
Rowe, J.H., “An Ancient Burial at Chellow, near Heaton,” in Heaton Review, volume 2, 1928.

Tag: Heaton

Villa Real, Jesmond, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland

Chellow Heights, Heaton, Bradford, West Yorkshire