Longtown : A long story
Carly Tinkler BA CMLI FRSA MIALE
May 2021
This article is in two parts. It’s about a project I’m currently working on, but there are still many unanswered questions, so if any dowsers, historians or interested others reading it think they can help, please let me know!
Related photos can be obtained by writing to Info@CedJackson.org
Part 1.
I do love my job! I specialise in landscape planning. People ask me for advice about whether a development would be appropriate in a certain location, in terms of the effects it would have on the landscape and peoples’ experiences of that landscape. The work involves carrying out landscape character and visual assessments, with half the time (when the weather’s dry) spent outdoors taking photos, writing notes and talking to people, and the other half (when it’s wet) spent in the office doing desktop research, analysis, and writing up the findings (fortunately I enjoy writing - some of the reports are over 100,000 words long…).
Often, the assessments are used to inform and guide the siting and design of proposed developments, to ensure they respect and integrate as best they can into their surroundings, taking cues and clues directly from them.
“Landscape” and “landscape character” are complex but fascinating subjects. In a nutshell, landscape is a combination of natural factors (eg geology, hydrology, land cover); sociocultural factors (eg time-depth, settlement, land use); and aesthetic and perceptual qualities (visual eg colour and texture, and sensory eg sounds, smells and memories). Landscape character is derived from the combination of elements, features and qualities that are present in a particular place. Landscape architects have to learn ‘the language of landscape’.
The assessment process involves asking and answering a lot of questions. What is there? How important is what is there, and to whom? Why? Who sees it? How would development affect what is there and those who see it?
My favourite part is finding out what’s there, because it involves proper detective work, and you never know what you’re going to find.
Earlier this year I was commissioned to advise on proposals for a community-based project in Longtown, a small village on the south-western edges of Herefordshire. The Wales - England border and eastern boundary of the Brecon Beacons National Park lie about 2km west of the village, following the line of Offa’s Dyke (now a National Trail). The Dyke runs along the top of Hatterrall Ridge, a dramatic landform which rises abruptly out of the lowlands to form the eastern edge of the Black Mountains. The scenery is absolutely stunning.
PHOTO 1 goes here. Hatterrall Ridge looking north west along approach from east
Longtown is of historic significance, boasting the remains of a Norman motte and bailey castle and an associated medieval settlement, both of which are now designated Scheduled Monuments. I had visited the area a few years ago, but was looking forward to getting to know it more intimately. I always approach assessments as though I’m going to interview an eminent personality - first, I do my homework to find out as much about them as I can. For me, judgements based solely on ‘first sight’ and ‘looks’ aren’t as insightful as those based on good knowledge of the person’s character, and particularly, their past.
PHOTO 2: Longtown Castle
I began by reading up on the castle’s history. Why on earth would you build a castle there? I wondered. It’s not in a dominant or prominent position, and the area is remote. There was a rumour it had been built on the site of a Roman fort (noted as such on late 19th century maps), but until fairly recently, no firm evidence had been found to back it up. Then, I found information - indeed, evidence - which indicated that not only was the rumour correct, but also, that there could have been an Iron Age or even earlier settlement of some type on the site.
I realised I would have to go much further back in time than anticipated, and slowly work my way forwards, picking up whatever clues I could find along the way. I had such a strong feeling there was an interesting story to be told.
What a journey it was! In fact, I’m still on it, although things are much clearer now.
In order to understand why Longtown is where it is, one has to imagine what is now south-western Herefordshire, but as it was 12,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, when slowly-rising temperatures caused the vast ice sheets to the north - which by then had reached as far as the Severn Estuary - to station for a while, then melt and retreat.
Having said that, I did look at the situation as it was before the last Ice Age, and discovered that there is evidence of pre-modern human activity in this area dating from at least 60,000 years ago. Creatures such as woolly rhinos and mammoths would also have been roaming these landscapes. Sporadic activity continued for over 20,000 years until the onset of successive ice ages which precluded use or habitation. Finds at King Arthur’s Cave near The Doward Hill, Whitchurch (26km south east of Longtown) date from the Upper Palaeolithic period (around 36,000 years ago).
Perhaps 20,000 years or so after that, human activity resumed, although another cold spell meant there was little or no habitation in the region until around 10,000 years ago, when warmer conditions prevailed. The last woolly mammoth had died around 1,000 years previously.
The ice meltwater left lower-lying areas flooded, but as time went by, marshes and bogs developed. Over the next 3000 - 4000 years, the landscapes settled and began to develop the characteristics with which we are familiar today. There is evidence that human impact on the landscape increased from relatively minor woodland and soil intervention during the early part of the Mesolithic to more widespread woodland and soil management and settlement towards the end.
Here as is often the case in other parts of the country, the vast majority of early occupied sites (and those used for worship / burial / defence) are on higher ground. According to some sources, an elevation of just over c. 120m AOD, ie well above the then water level, may be significant in terms of having influenced early settlement locations. However, nearby lakes and marshes would have offered good opportunities for hunting, grazing, and resources such as reeds.
A significant extant landscape feature dating from the Neolithic period is ‘Arthur's Stone’, a chamber tomb which lies on an elevated ridge above Dorstone in the Golden Valley, 14km due north of Longtown. It was built at some point between c. 5,700 and c. 4,700 years ago, and is believed to be Herefordshire's oldest man-made structure. According to historian Keith Ray, it is ‘a member of a distinctive group of early Neolithic long-cairns whose distribution stretches around the northern flanks of the Black Mountains’. The ‘ancestral halls’ were found to be identical to those at a similar feature at Gwernvale near Crickhowell, and were thus ‘an integral part of the earliest fully Neolithic cultural development of the whole region’. It seems likely that there are other extant features dating from this period yet to be discovered.
PHOTO 3: Arthur’s Stone, Dorstone
Early farmers began clearing established woodlands for hunting, settlement, keeping animals and growing crops, and using felled timber to build permanent structures and enclosures (some of England’s hedgerows date from this time). Evidence suggests that during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, and possibly into the Iron Age, the valleys and ridges east of the Black Mountains were the most densely-populated part of what is now Herefordshire.
The Mountains dominate the landscapes to the east, looming and ever-present except when hidden by cloud or in the dark. Even then, one can sense them, as they affect local weather patterns, influencing where and how the wind blows, and how much rain falls. In the Longtown area, Hatterrall Ridge forms the eastern edge of the Mountains. Its vertiginous upper slopes are a formidable barrier, physically and visually (sometimes culturally too) - no public roads cross them. However, the experience that is gained on reaching the ridgeline is well worth the effort.
PHOTO 4: Hatterrall Ridge at The Darens
The Ridge comprises a series of plateaux and summits running north from Hatterrall Hill; Offa’s Dyke and the Wales - England border run along it. There are exceptional views in all directions, especially westwards towards the Brecon Beacons. Iconic Ysgyrid Fawr (The Skirrid) is visible 11km south / south east of Longtown. The Ridge is intervisible with the Malvern Hills to the east, and with the Shropshire Hills to the north; in clear weather, Snowdonia’s mountain peaks are just visible. The mountains are vast, dramatic, ancient, rugged, rough, open, exposed, bleak, and challenging, with elemental beauty that excites the senses.
Early travellers and settlers must have been drawn to Hatterrall Hill and Ridge for these reasons, and chose them as the location for sites of significance, for example ceremony and burial. There are standing stones which may date from the late Neolithic, and several Early and Middle Bronze Age features some of which (in Wales) are Scheduled Monuments. They include cairns, earthwork / stone-built enclosures, and a cross ridge dyke.
Throughout the Bronze Age, long-distance networks were established along which goods and trades were exchanged. People were travelling further north, wherever possible following land lying higher than the marshes but below exposed and inhospitable ridges and peaks. River-crossings were established where stepping-stones could be placed / rough bridges built - many of the crossing points are still used today. And, northbound travellers returned, often having identified sources of important commodities such as salt. Soon, a network of well-used routeways developed in the Longtown area, usually aligned north - south as dictated by the area’s geology / topography.
And thus, it seems quite likely that Longtown was found to be a naturally good place at which to pause en route, and ultimately, to settle. It was above the wetlands but below the top of Hatterrall Ridge. Access to abundant fresh water is known to have been a factor in the siting of early settlements: the slopes of Hatterrall Ridge are peppered with springs. Other factors would have been a wide variety of habitats available for foraging, hunting and building (marshes / open grassland / dense woodland); fertile soils; sheltered valleys; and good visibility from the prominent hills which now characterised the lowlands (perhaps drumlins?). All would have been readily available here. The ceremonial / burial sites on Hatterrall Ridge may already have been established, another reason to settle in this place; or, they were chosen and created by the new communities.
Could the first settlement in Longtown be on the site of what is now Longtown Castle? I wondered. There is a documented well and/or spring there. Or, could it have been a little further north, at what is now a small cluster of houses at Pen-pwll-sond, also with a nearby spring? The Historic Environment Record (HER) lists a possible medieval ‘holy’ well in the vicinity, saying, ‘The name may mean that it was the site of a Dark Age holy well, as found in parts of Wales and Ireland. The Welsh name for the group of houses nearby is Pen-pwll-sond, meaning the head or end of a sacred pool’. Notably, several probably ancient routes converge there, one being the road which now runs through Longtown, and which could possibly be along a salt way between Nantwich and Abergavenny.
According to Alfred Watkins (famous for his book The Old Straight Track and the concept of ley lines), in a lecture to the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club in 1921 (about early British trackways), saltways ran along ley lines, and ‘The salt ley for Hereford came from Droitwich through the White House, Suckley… [and] Hogg’s Mount, Hereford, and on to its terminal on Mynydd Ferddin Hill through Whitfield Mansion’ (NB the Wyche Cutting through the Malvern Hills is also supposed to have been the - or a - Droitwich saltway route).
Mynydd Ferddin is an elongated rounded hill which dominates the landscape south west of Longtown village, and it occupies a significant part of Longtown parish. It has an extraordinary, very solid, brooding presence, and although there don’t appear to be any records of features of historic interest on the hill, I do feel there must have been something there once, looking down over Longtown and up towards the sacred sites on Hatterrall Ridge. Perhaps dowsers can enlighten me!
PHOTO 6: Mynydd Ferddin
In fact, Watkins’ lecture notes mention several features associated with ley lines in and around Longtown (the very mention of ley lines and sighting notches causes the project archaeologists to splutter loudly!!). They include causeways across rivers and eight ‘sighting notches’ (used for long-distance orientation) cut into the mountain ridges between Longtown and Llanvihangel Crucorney (including at Black Darren, above which are the cairns and enclosures). I have identified two possible candidates so far.
PHOTO 7: Possible sighting-notches on Hatterrall Ridge
As the Bronze Age transitioned into the Iron Age, some 2,800 years ago, hillforts became a common feature in the area’s landscapes - there are at least eight known sites within 10km of Longtown village, and no doubt many more yet to be identified (dowsers / historians?!).
The main criteria for their location appear to be high elevation and prominence, although proximity to productive lowland landscapes may have been a factor. Also, intervisibility with other hillforts could have been important in certain cases, and some hillforts may have been constructed on sites created / used by Bronze Age / earlier communities. However, for some reason which appears to be as yet unknown (more questions…), a few hillforts in the region appear to have been abruptly abandoned at some point not long before 100 BCE.
The warmer and drier conditions of the Bronze Age gave way to a cooler and wetter climate. Large swathes of the open grasslands and wetlands were probably retained for grazing, hunting and foraging, but woodland regeneration may have been encouraged, along with hedgerow planting. There were fewer unenclosed settlements and a transition to enclosed farmland, the layout of which appears to have been carefully considered by the landowner. There are no known Iron Age cemeteries in Herefordshire (in fact, only a few in the country), although ritualised burials took place; it is possible that existing burial sites continued to be used, or waterbodies.
In the Black Mountains area, long sections of trackway have been discovered with stone surfacing dating from this period. Some tracks would already have become the holloways which are now highly characteristic of Longtown and the lower slopes of Hatterrall Ridge. It is possible that some followed Bronze Age processional routes, saltways, or visual / other links between important sites and features; many of the tracks are now lanes and roads.
PHOTO 8: Holloway on slopes of Hatterrall Ridge
In the second half of the first century CE, what is now Herefordshire became part of the Roman province of Britannia. A fort at Abbey Dore in the Golden Valley was probably built and occupied at some point before 85 CE; the Romans arrived in Wales in c. 75 CE. Once the violence of invasion had subsided, a ‘relatively peaceful’ ‘Romano-British’ period began. However, the area which was later called the Marches became the base from which the Romans sought to control the Welsh tribes which were rising in the west.
There have been very few Roman finds in the Longtown area to date; however, according to a recent report, Roman remains were found during the building of Longtown School in 1869. Furthermore, the report sets out the findings of a survey carried out during 2016-17 which confirmed a long-held but unevidenced view that a Roman auxiliary fort had been built on the site of what is now Longtown Castle. That led me to the HER entry for the castle (SMR 1036), which states: ‘A pre Roman date from a charcoal sample recovered from immediately above the natural (along with the recovery of a flint blade and two flint flakes) suggests that there may have been an Iron Age or earlier settlement of some type on the site’ (my emphasis).
At last, the reasons for the Normans building a castle at Longtown were becoming clearer….
PHOTO 9: Longtown Castle viewed from Mynydd Ferddin looking west
TO BE CONTINUED….