BAILIFFGATE COLLECTIONS - Key Persons

The evidence for occupation in the following neolithic period is mainly confined to burial sites and more sophisticated tools. At the end of this period, around 2000 BC, the puzzling, and as yet unsatisfactorily explained, rock carvings, known as "cup and ring marks" appear along with burial cists (stone coffins). In the next millennium, evidence of a more communal lifestyle can be found in hillforts. Apart from Yeavering Bell, most hillforts in Northumberland are fairly small. The Roman geographer, Ptolemy, writing in the second century BC, identified the people living here when the Romans arrived as part of the Votadini tribe. Their lands, according to Ptolemy stretched from the Tyne to the Tweed. Their (British) language was used in the names of rivers and hills, and is mingled in our common speech. The Roman army arrived in Britain in 43AD. But it was not until Agricola became the governor of the British province in 78AD, that any Roman campaign extended north of the Tyne. Even then he seems to have used Corbridge as base and marched to Scotland through High Rochester and Chew Green. The Votadini seem to have accepted Agricola's terms for surrender from the start and to have remained at least semi-autonomous, and were spared conquest and destruction. The Roman positions beyond the Firth were abandoned in 90AD (one of the four Roman legions in Britain was withdrawn at this time to deal with problems on the Danube) and, around 103AD, they were back to the Tyne. Little more is known about Britain until 117 when Hadrian, on becoming emperor, was given a report that the Britons could not be kept under Roman control. Hadrian came to Britain in 122AD and ordered the building of his wall. It could have been hardly finished before a new emperor (Antoninus Pius) ordered a change of plan and the army moved north in 139 and constructed the Antonine Wall from Firth to Clyde. This wall was apparently abandoned in 158 and Hadrian's Wall brought back into service. A new Emperor, Septimus Severus, arrived in 208 with the intention of making all Britain part of his Empire. He began campaigning in Scotland, but fell ill and died, at York, in February 211. Hadrian's Wall was probably the frontier from then until the withdrawal in 401. This means that what was to become Alnwick, and the whole of Northumberland, was outside the formal Empire for most of the Roman occupation. It may also have been largely ignored by them, due to the compliance of the Votadini leaders paying only some form to taxation probably in the form of cereals and animal products. It was a rural area with apparently long established (that is, pre-Roman) farms and no centres of population. The Devil's Causeway (a name it acquired long after the Romans left), which ran from Dere Street just north of Corbridge toward Tweedmouth, appears never to have been finished. A change of plan by a faraway emperor probably put a stop to it. The road passes just to the west of Edlingham at Learchild and this is the probable site of the Roman fort of Alavna. It is dated to the 1st or 2nd century and is of two dates with an earlier inner fort being replaced by an later slightly bigger one. So, maybe, there was more than one change of plan. A further road from this point lead west to High Rochester. Other forts along the line of the Devil's Causeway have recently been identified by aerial photography. The roads and forts are thought to date from Agricola's time.