THE EARLY HISTORY OF BARLICK (11)

[Stanley]

THE EARLY HISTORY OF BARLICK (11)

04 December 2001

Round about 410AD the Romans abandoned Britain. This was never officially acknowledged as a withdrawal but the legions were taken out to fight in Europe and never returned. The strange thing is that some isolated units were left to guard important sites, particularly the Wall. It was almost as though the empire expected to return but they never did and as far as we know, the remaining troops either defected or dissolved into the local population.
What was happening to Barlick during the long period up to 410 that is called by some The Pax Romana, the Roman Peace? Until quite recently scholars who had examined the archaeological evidence in the South of England had formed the opinion that immigration from the continent had taken place under the Romans. They saw the evidence of quite high status houses and small towns and assumed that these must be the result of incoming culture because the native Britons weren’t sophisticated enough to have reached these standards. We are now almost certain that this was wrong, what we are looking at on these sites are the homes of quite well-to-do Britons who have amassed wealth by trading with the Romans and raised the quality of their life and standard of living. However, we have to bear in mind that these sites are largely in the Civil Rule and in the lowlands, the highland areas of the north under Military Rule were not so lucky.
This is not to say that there was no wealth in the north. Towns like Chester, York and Carlisle were very wealthy and there were many smaller centres. The key to how well they did was how strategic they were to the Romans. If they were a legionary base or stopping point on an important route, like Lancaster, they would prosper. Lower down the scale, places like Ribchester and Ilkley got their share of the economic activity and became important local centres. The knowledge we have about these towns gives us some clues as to what was happening to Barlick.
The bottom line is that I suspect nothing much went on. Barlick had no strong trading connection with the Romans because apart from the odd sale of provisions to passing troops there was nothing here that the Romans wanted. We had no great forests, no minerals and because of the upland nature of the land, no big surpluses of grain to sell. This wasn’t all bad because it meant that the Romans wouldn’t annexe any of the land and any taxes levied would be low because it wasn’t worth expending effort to get blood out of a stone.
I think that once again Barlick was left to get on with it. Then as now, it wasn’t on the beaten track and would be a fairly isolated place. Looking down on the settlement from Weets we would see virtually the same scene we looked at in 100AD, a small cluster of houses at Townhead with field systems round it and tracks leading to neighbouring settlements. There would be another small settlement at Brogden and perhaps some isolated farmsteads at Hey, up Tubber Hill and down towards Coates. The tracks would be rough narrow lanes with no paving apart from some minor repairs in wet places. One thing we would recognise very clearly would be boundary walls alongside the tracks, if you want to see what they looked like have a look at the boundary hedge alongside the road just above Hey Farm. If you look carefully you will see a rough wall of large stones and turf holding back a bank with a hedge planted on it. Pieces of boundary like this are some of the oldest features of our modern landscape.
There was another advantage to living in an insignificant place like Barlick, none of the land was taken into the Imperial Estate. The Romans did this if they wanted something like room for a fort and its associated parade grounds and field systems, land for veterans or land which had some resource like good woodland or easily accessible minerals. This was before the time of the nobles and great landowners and all the land around Barlick was free, if you wanted to create a new field you simply did it as long as nobody else had got there before you. All the game on the hills and the fish in the streams was yours for the taking. If you wanted to cut turf for fuel, fell timber or gather wild fruit from the hedgerows, you were at liberty to do so. The bottom line is that all the resources of the area were yours for the effort of taking them.
I’m not suggesting that living in Barlick during the Pax Romana was easy, by our standards it would be very hard indeed. However, we suspect that during this period the population was slowly growing and this is an indication of local plenty. There would still be disease and the occasional raid by rustlers but these were accepted as part of everyday life. The old Pagan beliefs were alive and well, there was nothing to replace them and the Romans had certainly done nothing to stop the practices, the regular festivals and rituals would be performed and it is almost certain that the Barlickers had favourite sites for these but we don’t know where they were. We can be pretty certain that by at least 200AD word of a new religion would have reached Barlick and perhaps been accepted and incorporated into their existing beliefs as yet another deity. One thing is certain, the advent of Christianity was not sudden, there was no mass conversion and abandonment of the old beliefs.
The same thing can be said of the Romans. They were great ones for secret cults connected with deities and we know that this is how Christianity first evinced itself in the legions. We have examples of them building Romano-British temples where they appropriated a local deity and incorporated it into their beliefs. They did the same thing with Christianity even though it was a prohibited religion in the empire until the fourth century.
There were some surprisingly familiar problems. Around 250AD the Roman coinage was debased by inflation because the emperor was minting money to pay debt. I doubt if this affected Barlick much, I would have assumed that most trade was by barter and their exposure to the worst effects of inflation would have been confined to any dealings they had directly with the Romans.
Another change in the wider empire which would eventually have far reaching consequences was reform of the Roman army command structure which introduced the concept of promotion through the ranks. Every legionary was theoretically capable of rising to a position of higher command. Once this possibility was raised in-fighting and anarchy became endemic in the army, in our terms ‘office politics’ had arrived! Between 259 and 273 Gaul, the Germanies and Britain virtually severed their links with the emperor in Rome. This was regarded as rebellion and these separatist movements were put down. The emperor Constantinius came personally to Britain in 296 and 305/6 to restore order.
Things became more and more unstable, we have archaeological evidence which suggests that by 350 parts of some of the towns associated with the larger Roman forts were falling into disuse. What seems to be happening is that the civilians were moving into the fort with the soldiers for security and they were becoming more like fortified villages. Further afield, the emperor Constantine, having been converted to Christianity and therefore making it the official religion of the empire, died in 337 and split the empire between his three sons. This provoked rebellion in the army in Britain and permanently split the Roman Empire into the Eastern and Western empires. In 355 emperor Constantius appointed his cousin Julian as Western Caesar and he evidently saw Britannica as a good supply base for the legions in Europe who were fighting to re-establish the German frontier but around 360 the Picts and Scotti rose and caused further problems.
In 382 Maximus came to Britannica and did much to bring the country under control and drive the northern tribes back into Caledonia. He united Britannica and Gaul but in 388 removed many troops to shore up his authority on the continent. We suspect that this made it possible for the northern tribes to raid south again in about 398. A Vandal general, Stilicho, was sent over by Honorius in Rome to bring order to the country, he seems to have succeeded but when he went back to Europe he took a legion with him. For the next ten years there was some tenuous contact with Rome but the supply of money to pay the troops dried up and in effect this was the end of the Roman Occupation of Britain.
What difference did it make? The strange thing about Roman Rule was how little effect it had on the basic culture of the country. They left nothing behind them but some buildings and roads and of course some settlers to add to the gene pool. The official language of the country had been Latin but as soon as the Romans left the Britons who had embraced the language reverted to Brythonic.
How about Barlick through all this? Probably the biggest effect was that as Roman power waned, raiding from the north would become more common, I suspect that this was a miserable time in the north of what was to become England. Stock and reserves of produce would be stolen and it isn’t hard to be fairly sure that Barlick went through a very insecure period. If anything, things were to get worse as the removal of Roman authority allowed a struggle for land and power between rival factions. This was to get worse and eventually precipitated the next great change, the arrival of the Saxons.
One nice little story to leave you with. When the Romans departed they left some small contingents guarding the Wall. The last commander of the Wall was called Coel Hen by the Western Britons. It appears that he stayed and carved out a small kingship for himself, we call him Old King Cole.

04 December 2001