June 2001

Parish History Episode 2

THE TOMBS OF THE MIGHTY DEAD

Among the many hills that surround Houghton-le-Spring, two stand out as being crowned with distinctive features. One is Penshaw Hill, the other Copt Hill. The Monument on Penshaw Hill is obviously artificial. So also is the cluster of beech trees, “the Seven Sisters” atop Copt Hill. It is not a natural feature, but a man-made barrow, or tumulus, a site where the founders of Houghton were laid to rest. It was excavated in 1877 by Canon Greenwell of Durham Cathedral, and by Mr. Robinson, churchwarden of this church, and owner of the brewery which then stood at the Durham Road/ Hetton Road junction, and which has recently been converted into flats (and they presumably had assistance from many labouring men).

Greenwell and Robinson had assumed before they started that Copt Hill was a typical round barrow of a sort common in Southern England, and associated with a Bronze Age people who dwelt in these islands during the Second Millennium B.C. But they discovered, as they dug, that it was much older, having been first built as a long barrow, by Neolithic people, apparently during the Third Millennium B.C., and later converted from a long to a round barrow.

These people of the Neolithic Period (the New Stone Age) were the first farming people to settle in our country. They came from overseas, ultimately from the Near East, and seem to have arrived in the British Isles (previously inhabited only by hunting tribes), in two separate waves. One group of people (the more numerous) came up the Danube, down the Rhine, and across the North Sea. The other group came by sea all the way, coasting along the Southern and Western capes of Europe. These latter settlers brought the Megalithic culture with them, and built enormous stone tombs, which can still be seen in some areas, particularly Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Cumberland, Galloway, and the Western and Northern Isles of Scotland.

The “Danubian” settlers were more modest, it would seem, in their claims on the after-life. Their funerary monuments were not so pretentious, but they did bury their dead (at any rate, their chieftains) in long, rock-hewn tombs, over which they piled stones, whitewashing the top layer, so that the tombs would be visible at a great distance.

This was what happened in Houghton. Some of these people, who had sailed across the North Sea, and who had landed on the Durham Coast, as the first farmers in this part of the World, appear to have made the Houghton ( or Hetton ? ) area their sacerdotal capital, and to have built the barrow on Copt Hill as a last resting place for the most respected persons (chiefs ? priests ?) of their community. Perhaps originally it was a grave for one man - the founding father of our town, perhaps ?

When Greenwell and Robinson excavated the barrow, they first had to dig their way through loose soil, and then through layers of smaller and larger stones, and then at last they came to the stones which guarded the tomb at the heart of the barrow.

Greenwell made a careful report of the discoveries that they made, and his report was published in 1878 edition of the “Archaeologia Aeliana” ( the annual report of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne” ). I have based the greater part of this article on Greenwell’s own description of what he and Robinson discovered underneath Copt Hill.

Here, in the heart of the barrow, they found a stone bed, about seven feet long and two wide - ideal for the final repose of a man. A chamber was built around him, with limestone flags, about two feet square, placed around and above, in order to support the weight of material above: about two feet of large stones, including small whinstone boulders, like those found in the churchyard in 1999, almost certainly deposited here by glaciers, and gathered up to be placed around and above the Great Man’s tomb; then about one and a half feet of loose stone chippings; and then over three feet of soil.

The stone chippings may have originally been the top layer of the barrow, and may have been whitewashed. The whole barrow may have been about two hundred feet long, East to West, and about fifty broad, North to South. There may have been a hump of sorts towards the East end, over the chamber where the Great Man was buried, and there was a passage leading in from a sealed gate at the East end, down to where the dead rested; and there were smaller passages to act as flues, and to give ventilation for the fire which would be ignited on two hearths in the central chamber, for the cremation of the body placed between the hearths. The chamber in which he was laid was packed with wood, and this would have been ignited by his dependents before they withdrew through the passageway, and closed and sealed the door.

That was not however to be the last time the tomb was used. Many other cremations took place within the barrow over the next few centuries, but not apparently of whole bodies. The bodies selected for cremation at Copt Hill (perhaps those of the Great Man’s direct descendants) were apparently first “exposed” to the birds of the air (as in the “Towers of Silence” of present Parsee practice), and then, when the bones had been picked clean, they were brought to Copt Hill, placed haphazardly within the tomb, the fires were lit, and what remained of the body would be destroyed.

These cremations obviously bore some relationship to the original commitment of the Great Man’s body to the Gods. But seven other funerals, or groups of funerals, seem to have later taken place at Copt Hill. They are listed here in apparent chronological order.

1. First of all, at some time in the Second Millennium B.C., at about the beginning of the Bronze Age, Copt Hill was adapted for other rites, presumably as a result of a religious reformation. The long barrow was reconstructed as a round barrow, and, though smaller in area, it was built up higher by piling a layer of soil about three feet deep on top of the whitewashed stones of the Neolithic Age. It may be at this period that beech trees were first planted on top of the barrow. However, the soil around Copt Hill is pretty thin and poor, and even if the Reformers had left the barrow buried under three feet of good, newly turned-over soil, without attempting to plant anything, plant life would have soon colonised it, and such a preparation would have been ideal for a small family of beech trees.
Burnt bones - originally presumably in containers, along with the ashes of the dead - were found buried towards the South-Eastern corner of the barrow. These were probably burials from this “Reformation Period”.
2. The body of a baby was buried at no great depth close to the original Neolithic burial chamber. A flag-stone had been placed above it, presumably to protect it from wolves and foxes. This looks very like an “unofficial” burial, as if the mother had taken her dead child to the barrow, because the priests refused to say the rites, or she could not afford to pay them.
3. A man had been buried near the centre of the round barrow, about one and a half feet below the surface. Again, this looks like a private funeral.
4. Another man was buried, somewhat deeper, a short way away from the previous burial.
5. A few feet away from him, yet another man was buried. He was accompanied by food vessels, which presumably contained his rations for his journey to the Future World. The remains of two partially cremated bodies lay close to him, and almost above him.
6. A short way away from him, and buried much deeper, was a funerary urn, thirteen inches high, and packed with the remains of many different individuals.
7. Most surprising of all, and most recent of all these interments, the body of an Anglian man, of about A.D. 500, or a bit later, was found buried, three feet deep, almost exactly on top of the funeral bed, of the original “Great Man”, first buried here three thousand years earlier.

Did the Angles know about the first burial here ? It seems impossible. Had they, searching for treasure perhaps, dug down and found the original grave chamber, and decided to lay their own hero to rest immediately above his remote predecessor ?

This would be hard to credit, even if he were a pagan. But there are some indications that he might have been a Christian. He was buried (as was the first Great Man, before he was burned) on his back, with his feet to the East - so that he might rise at the Last Trump, facing Jerusalem and the Sunrise ? - and there were no weapons or grave-goods buried with him, as was often the case in pagan funerals.

But if he were the first Christian to be buried here, he was also the last. After his time, Christian burial came to take place, almost invariably, in Christian church-yards.

* * * * * * *

For over a century, Canon Greenwell’s report remained the definitive account of the origins of Houghton-le-Spring. Then in 2002 some local historians formed a “Copt Hill Society”, with the aim of repeating the excavation, a century and a quarter later, and seeing if modern techniques might uncover anything that Greenwell and Robinson had missed.

Professional archaeologists were brought in, from the Tyne & Wear Museums Service and from Durham University, and the work is still in progress, with more being uncovered each summer. So far relatively little has been discovered within the barrow itself, but much of the surrounding area has been investigated, and surprising discoveries have been made.

Camp-sites of great antiquity have been found close to the barrow. Some of these appear to date back to the Mesolithic Age (the Middle Stone Age), about seven thousand years ago. The Mesolithic people were, like their predecessors of the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) periods, hunters and gatherers, with no knowledge of agriculture, but they had made several technological discoveries, of which the most important was the development of archery - bows and arrows. Through use of the bow, Man the Hunter became a very efficient huntsman, much superior to his predecessors, who had been armed only with flint-tipped wooden spears. We can only guess what attracted them to this site, as far as we know long before any human burials had taken place at Copt Hill.

Also lines of post-holes, dating back probably to the Neolithic Age, have been found, leading towards the barrow, suggesting ceremonial pathways, possibly used for funeral processions and for commemorations, with perhaps some decorative posts, possibly totem poles, beside them. In one case, there is a double line of post-holes, which suggests the possibility of a covered walkway used for religious processions.

By the time that the current programme of work at Copt Hill has been completed, we will probably have more information about the origins of our community than is possessed by any other town in the North-East of England.

Dick Toy

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