Hillfort, Yeavering Bell

To the SE of KIrknewton in the Cheviot Hills, a large univallate stone-built hillfort, oval in form, with an internal area of 5.6ha.The site lies on the twin-peaked hill of Yeavering Bell at 355m OD, overlooking the River Glen. It is the largest hillfort in Northumberland and is conjectured to have been a tribal capital. A substantial, but now collapsed wall of rough stones encloses the summit of the hill. Excavation (Tate 1862) showed the wall was originally 3-3.5m thick, with a probable height of 2-2.5m which has now collapsed with a spread of 8-9m. There is some evidence that the bank was faced externally with a drystone wall. No ditch is evident. External crescent-shaped banks 102m long in the E and 130m long in the W, may represent an earlier line of defence, abandoned when the main enclosure was constructed. Stone walled shelters adjacent to and within the fort and gaps in the rampart are probably medieval or post medieval. There are four breaks within the enclosure wall with the slightly in-turned entrance in the S considered to be the only original entrance. In the region of 125 timber built roundhouse platforms have been identified within the interior, with further sub-surface features expected to survive. The stone for the walling was probably sourced from the hill as suggested by quarry hollows within the interior. A natural, but artificially levelled mound at the eastern summit of the hillfort with an encircling rock cut ditch enclosing 1.9ha has been shown to cut through roundhouse platforms (Oswald and Pearson, 2005) confirming it to be a later feature. Within it a mound of reddened stones has been interpreted by investigators variously as a beacon or cairn. The hillfort has seen a number of investigations, the earliest in the 19th century (Tate 1862) when a quernstone, jasper ball of around 7.5cm diameter, charred wood, coarse pottery, unworked flints and polished oak rings described as armlets were recovered. An excavation in 1958 (Hope-Taylor 1977) investigated the N side of the eastern summit as well as the southern entrance and what was considered at the time to be the northern entrance. A plan was published by Jobey in 1965 and description in 1966 and further surveys were carried out by RCHME in 1986 and 1998 including a geophysical survey. The main phase of the hillfort is thought to date to the third century BC, with possible short-lived or transitory Roman activity. The site is shown on Armstrong's map of Northumberland 1769 and recorded on 1882-1900 1st edition OS mapping 

Source: Lock, Gary and Ralston, Ian. 2024. Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland. Available at: https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk (CC BY-SA 4.0)