Piercebridge Roman Site, County Durham

English Heritage ALSF Summaries. 2005/2006

The aim of the Roman Piercebridge project is to put into the public domain all the information currently known about this important site which lies on the boundary of North Yorkshire and County Durham at the point where Dere Street crosses the River Tees.  A fort lies on the northern bank of the river underlying the modern village and an extensive settlement interpreted as a vicus lies to the east of this in the area known as the Tofts Field.  South of the river Holme House is one the most northerly villas known in Britain and there was further road-side settlement.

Extensive excavation took place there from 1969 into the early 1980s.  The earliest excavations were conducted by Dr. (later Professor) D.W. Harding on the site of the villa, and thereafter by Mr Peter Scott on a variety of sites in both the civil settlement north and south of the river and in the fort.  The excavations have remained unpublished as sadly Mr Scott died in 1987 before he could complete the post-excavation work.  The villa excavations and those to the south of the river were undertaken in advance of aggregate extraction and so the project has been eligible for funding under Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund.  In addition to publishing these excavations, the project will also take into consideration the new information derived from the field walking project in the Tofts Field being conducted by Dr Richard Hingley and a team from Durham University, and from Ms Philippa Walton’s work on the find being recovered from the river.

The excavations produced very large finds assemblages including the most important assemblage of late samian pottery from northern Britain. These are allowing us to explore a variety of themes including the impact of the coming of Rome as the villa evolves from a native pre-Roman Iron Age farmstead to a fully ‘Romanised’ villa over a period of only a century.  Another theme is the development of an urbanised community as, though the civilian community has traditionally been regarded as a vicus, it appears to have been established a century or more before there is any evidence of military occupation.  The fort itself not being established until the third quarter of the third century.  Of particular interest is the evidence of continued occupation well into the fifth  century and possibly beyond.

The results of the project will be disseminated at various levels.  There will be an extensive electronic archive that will be available for free via the Archaeological Data Service.  A print excavation monograph will also be produced as will a popular guidebook that will place the monuments that can still be seen in the village of Piercebridge in context.  Up-dated signage in the village will also help the visitor.  It is expected that the preliminary results of the project will become available from September 2006 with the project being completed in the spring of 2007.  As the results of the work become available they will be published on the web. (http://www.barbicanra.co.uk/Piercebridge.htm )

The project is being jointly run by Durham County Council and Barbican Research Associates Ltd.

This page was published on 03/08/2006