THE EARLY HISTORY OF BARLICK (6)
Posted: 21 Mar 2026, 02:25
THE EARLY HISTORY OF BARLICK (6)
17 October 2001
This week we are looking at Barlick during the first millennium BC. Anytime after 1,000BC. During the whole of this period there are some trends we can identify which were happening all over the Isles. We’ll have a look at these and then try to understand how they would affect Barlick.
From 1,000BC onwards the great monuments and ceremonial sites were abandoned. You might well ask how we can be sure of this seeing as we have no records of ceremony and ritual. Quite easily actually because we see sites where monuments have been literally destroyed, levelled out and turned into cultivated land. We can date the start of cultivation from the archaeology and so we know it happened soon after 1,000BC. Again, we see field boundaries being set in place that cut right through features on the landscape that we know were once regarded as sacred and these can be accurately dated. The question is, what can we learn from this?
It seems clear that whatever the culture or ritual associated with these sites was, it had been devalued and possibly abandoned altogether. One of the things that we know about the social structure of the Celts was that druids out-ranked kings and so it was common for the king to assume the title of chief druid. This was also true of the Romans and was the reason why all Caesars took the title of Pontifex Maximus, the title of the chief priest of Rome. Incidentally, the Pope is still called this to this day so it’s a very old tradition that has survived. So, if the king or chief of the tribe was the chief priest and it was a fairly large tribe it would make sense if the main rituals and ceremonies were conducted at his headquarters. It may be that it was a good political move to reduce the importance of the relatively isolated monuments and concentrate the spiritual power in the capital, in our case Stanwick Hill. Whether this is true or not, the structure of the rituals changed and the monuments were redundant.
A possible result of this might have been the strengthening of ceremonial at a local level. From what the archaeology tells us it seems clear that individual families had their own idols and minor deities. The Romans certainly did the same thing. Local features like rivers and wells became a focus of ritual and we even know some of the deities associated with them. The Romans recorded that the deity connected with the Ribble was Belisima and the Wharfe had Verbeia. These are the Romanised versions of the names but the originals would be something like that in the local language. Regular readers may remember that I found the name Elsehay or Elesagh on an old map and it seemed to refer to Lister Well on Occupation Road. This looks like a very old name to me and I can’t help wondering whether this is the original name for a sacred spring on the hill which we now call Lister Well. I know this is speculation but it is triggered by evidence and personally I think there is a connection here, I’ve talked to old Barlickers who still believe it has healing properties.
The archaeology, countrywide, gives us another clue as to what was going on. We begin to see evidence of armoured warriors, swords and long hafted spears. By this date at the latest the horse had reached the Isles. It was high status and would only have been used by the top people for riding or pulling chariots. Any carts or sledges were pulled by oxen. The advent of the horse and the chariot coupled with armour, swords and spears means that warfare was modernised. Anyone who had possession of these things had power and could impose their will. We can be pretty certain that the first use would be to subdue smaller, poorer tribes and extend territory and control.
The archaeology helps us again here. Defended sites become common, often in one corner of what we used to describe as ‘hill forts’. It may be that we were wrong in this assumption and that these sites were formerly gathering places, festival sites and trading locations. What we now know is that from the early part of the first millennium we have identified over 3,000 defended sites mostly in southern parts and what is now south Wales. Each of these is about 12.5 acres in extent and controls about 100 to 150 square miles, no doubt there are many more we know nothing about. The overall picture is of uneasy times, tribal warfare and consolidation of control over larger territories. By the time the Romans first arrived in The Isles some of these sites have grown large enough to be described as ‘oppida’ or towns by the contemporary writers.
Before the middle of the First Millennium The Isles had entered the Iron Age. This led to further advances in means of warfare, iron swords, daggers and spear heads. Even though the weather had been worsening due to climate change since 1,400BC, by 700BC it was improving again and we suspect that the natives were coping well because there is evidence that the population was rising, particularly in the south of the Isle. We start to see evidence of coastal salt pans where sea water was evaporated to produce salt, an essential for life as it was used for preserving fish and meat for the winter. Some areas of the country like Cheshire had natural salt springs and these had been sufficient up to now but rising numbers were putting pressure on resources. There were other ways of ensuring supplies of food in the winter. Fish ponds ('Vivaries', Vivary Mill at Colne was named because there used to be a fish pond in the area.) which were stocked with netted fish during the summer were one source of protein and dove cotes, or as the Romans called them ‘columbariums’ were another. You simply killed the food before you ate it.
Another piece of evidence from archaeology that indicates a more violent and precarious existence is the appearance around 350BC of ‘crannogs’. These were brilliant structures formed by making a large raft, floating it out into the middle of a shallow lake or mere and sinking it by piling stones and earth on it. Once it was above high water level you could start a stone foundation and build huts on it, if you needed more room you added another raft. Communication to the dry land was by a raised footway that was easily defended. A good example was at Glastonbury and grew to over two and a half acres in size and had a causeway wide enough to drive a cart over. These were used until well into Roman times.
You will have noticed that the word Roman has started to creep into the story, we aren’t going to be able to ignore them for much longer! Actually, Mediterranean influence was felt in The Isles long before any ‘Roman Invasion’. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC called The Isles the ‘Nesoi Kassiterides’ or the ‘Tin Islands’. He was vague as to where they were but the crucial point is that he knew about them. The most likely source of his knowledge would be Carthaginian or Phoenician traders who had been there. Thanks to Barry Cunliffe who synthesised the research we have an account written by a trader called Pytheas of Massilia (present day Marseilles) describing a voyage he made to the south west of the Isle to barter for tin in 325BC. His name for The Isles as a whole was ‘Pretanike’, the main isle was Nesos Albionon and the western isle was Ierne. These are his spellings but we can assume that these were his version of the names the Celts used and are translated by the Romans to Britannica, Albionum and Hibernia. The original roots look close to the Welsh Prydain, the Celtic Albion and Eire or Erin. He described how the natives brought the tin down to the shore on carts on the shore of an island called Ictis which we think may be St Michael’s Mount.
The point about all this is that we know these things because the Greeks and the Romans were writing things down, we are entering the era where written history exists. Don’t start cheering too soon, a lot of it has been copied and altered by early Christian monks who were often guilty of putting their own spin on their account of history, Pagans were always bad Christians always good. However, with care, we can pick out some sources that seem reasonably safe and Herodotus and Pytheas look alright.
So how does all this translate to Barlick? We have to start guessing again. One thing seems fairly certain, Barlick wasn’t very prosperous or important. The inhabitants were too weak to fight anyone and so I think would escape the worst effects of the tribal wars of consolidation. This would explain why there are no obvious remains of forts or defensive works apart from Middop, and we are not sure about that. Climate change would have hit them as hard as anyone and Barlick would be a pretty cold and miserable spot. The population might even have fallen during the first half of the millennium. Being poor, they wouldn’t have horses and probably not even iron tools, they had no local resources and couldn’t afford to trade for any. In short, a pretty backward lot.
This sounds a bit grim but it could have its advantages as we shall see, in later years they were probably left alone to get on with survival as best they could. It would be hard but compared with more attractive parts of the country, peaceful. The trade routes would still be working across the Weets and it’s possible there was another one coming from the East at Salterforth. This looks like a corruption of Salters Ford and could indicate that the salt trade had reached the town (there is no local resource). Of course this could be much later but if it was you would expect the trade to have followed the later Roman Road to the north of Barlick which was well paved and policed by the Romans. On the whole, I think the odds are that if there was a salt route it was there before the Romans came. The Barlickers hadn’t any great monuments to abandon so whatever their belief system was it would be left undisturbed. They would perform their rituals and magic in the same places, venerate the same objects and perhaps go up to the well on Weets every now and again for a cooling drink and a ceremony.
We’ll leave our Old Barlickers struggling to survive but on the whole making a decent job of it. After a low point round about 700BC the weather was warming up a bit so prospects would be looking better. Next week we will get serious about the Romans and you might be in for a few surprises!
SCG/17 October 2001
17 October 2001
This week we are looking at Barlick during the first millennium BC. Anytime after 1,000BC. During the whole of this period there are some trends we can identify which were happening all over the Isles. We’ll have a look at these and then try to understand how they would affect Barlick.
From 1,000BC onwards the great monuments and ceremonial sites were abandoned. You might well ask how we can be sure of this seeing as we have no records of ceremony and ritual. Quite easily actually because we see sites where monuments have been literally destroyed, levelled out and turned into cultivated land. We can date the start of cultivation from the archaeology and so we know it happened soon after 1,000BC. Again, we see field boundaries being set in place that cut right through features on the landscape that we know were once regarded as sacred and these can be accurately dated. The question is, what can we learn from this?
It seems clear that whatever the culture or ritual associated with these sites was, it had been devalued and possibly abandoned altogether. One of the things that we know about the social structure of the Celts was that druids out-ranked kings and so it was common for the king to assume the title of chief druid. This was also true of the Romans and was the reason why all Caesars took the title of Pontifex Maximus, the title of the chief priest of Rome. Incidentally, the Pope is still called this to this day so it’s a very old tradition that has survived. So, if the king or chief of the tribe was the chief priest and it was a fairly large tribe it would make sense if the main rituals and ceremonies were conducted at his headquarters. It may be that it was a good political move to reduce the importance of the relatively isolated monuments and concentrate the spiritual power in the capital, in our case Stanwick Hill. Whether this is true or not, the structure of the rituals changed and the monuments were redundant.
A possible result of this might have been the strengthening of ceremonial at a local level. From what the archaeology tells us it seems clear that individual families had their own idols and minor deities. The Romans certainly did the same thing. Local features like rivers and wells became a focus of ritual and we even know some of the deities associated with them. The Romans recorded that the deity connected with the Ribble was Belisima and the Wharfe had Verbeia. These are the Romanised versions of the names but the originals would be something like that in the local language. Regular readers may remember that I found the name Elsehay or Elesagh on an old map and it seemed to refer to Lister Well on Occupation Road. This looks like a very old name to me and I can’t help wondering whether this is the original name for a sacred spring on the hill which we now call Lister Well. I know this is speculation but it is triggered by evidence and personally I think there is a connection here, I’ve talked to old Barlickers who still believe it has healing properties.
The archaeology, countrywide, gives us another clue as to what was going on. We begin to see evidence of armoured warriors, swords and long hafted spears. By this date at the latest the horse had reached the Isles. It was high status and would only have been used by the top people for riding or pulling chariots. Any carts or sledges were pulled by oxen. The advent of the horse and the chariot coupled with armour, swords and spears means that warfare was modernised. Anyone who had possession of these things had power and could impose their will. We can be pretty certain that the first use would be to subdue smaller, poorer tribes and extend territory and control.
The archaeology helps us again here. Defended sites become common, often in one corner of what we used to describe as ‘hill forts’. It may be that we were wrong in this assumption and that these sites were formerly gathering places, festival sites and trading locations. What we now know is that from the early part of the first millennium we have identified over 3,000 defended sites mostly in southern parts and what is now south Wales. Each of these is about 12.5 acres in extent and controls about 100 to 150 square miles, no doubt there are many more we know nothing about. The overall picture is of uneasy times, tribal warfare and consolidation of control over larger territories. By the time the Romans first arrived in The Isles some of these sites have grown large enough to be described as ‘oppida’ or towns by the contemporary writers.
Before the middle of the First Millennium The Isles had entered the Iron Age. This led to further advances in means of warfare, iron swords, daggers and spear heads. Even though the weather had been worsening due to climate change since 1,400BC, by 700BC it was improving again and we suspect that the natives were coping well because there is evidence that the population was rising, particularly in the south of the Isle. We start to see evidence of coastal salt pans where sea water was evaporated to produce salt, an essential for life as it was used for preserving fish and meat for the winter. Some areas of the country like Cheshire had natural salt springs and these had been sufficient up to now but rising numbers were putting pressure on resources. There were other ways of ensuring supplies of food in the winter. Fish ponds ('Vivaries', Vivary Mill at Colne was named because there used to be a fish pond in the area.) which were stocked with netted fish during the summer were one source of protein and dove cotes, or as the Romans called them ‘columbariums’ were another. You simply killed the food before you ate it.
Another piece of evidence from archaeology that indicates a more violent and precarious existence is the appearance around 350BC of ‘crannogs’. These were brilliant structures formed by making a large raft, floating it out into the middle of a shallow lake or mere and sinking it by piling stones and earth on it. Once it was above high water level you could start a stone foundation and build huts on it, if you needed more room you added another raft. Communication to the dry land was by a raised footway that was easily defended. A good example was at Glastonbury and grew to over two and a half acres in size and had a causeway wide enough to drive a cart over. These were used until well into Roman times.
You will have noticed that the word Roman has started to creep into the story, we aren’t going to be able to ignore them for much longer! Actually, Mediterranean influence was felt in The Isles long before any ‘Roman Invasion’. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC called The Isles the ‘Nesoi Kassiterides’ or the ‘Tin Islands’. He was vague as to where they were but the crucial point is that he knew about them. The most likely source of his knowledge would be Carthaginian or Phoenician traders who had been there. Thanks to Barry Cunliffe who synthesised the research we have an account written by a trader called Pytheas of Massilia (present day Marseilles) describing a voyage he made to the south west of the Isle to barter for tin in 325BC. His name for The Isles as a whole was ‘Pretanike’, the main isle was Nesos Albionon and the western isle was Ierne. These are his spellings but we can assume that these were his version of the names the Celts used and are translated by the Romans to Britannica, Albionum and Hibernia. The original roots look close to the Welsh Prydain, the Celtic Albion and Eire or Erin. He described how the natives brought the tin down to the shore on carts on the shore of an island called Ictis which we think may be St Michael’s Mount.
The point about all this is that we know these things because the Greeks and the Romans were writing things down, we are entering the era where written history exists. Don’t start cheering too soon, a lot of it has been copied and altered by early Christian monks who were often guilty of putting their own spin on their account of history, Pagans were always bad Christians always good. However, with care, we can pick out some sources that seem reasonably safe and Herodotus and Pytheas look alright.
So how does all this translate to Barlick? We have to start guessing again. One thing seems fairly certain, Barlick wasn’t very prosperous or important. The inhabitants were too weak to fight anyone and so I think would escape the worst effects of the tribal wars of consolidation. This would explain why there are no obvious remains of forts or defensive works apart from Middop, and we are not sure about that. Climate change would have hit them as hard as anyone and Barlick would be a pretty cold and miserable spot. The population might even have fallen during the first half of the millennium. Being poor, they wouldn’t have horses and probably not even iron tools, they had no local resources and couldn’t afford to trade for any. In short, a pretty backward lot.
This sounds a bit grim but it could have its advantages as we shall see, in later years they were probably left alone to get on with survival as best they could. It would be hard but compared with more attractive parts of the country, peaceful. The trade routes would still be working across the Weets and it’s possible there was another one coming from the East at Salterforth. This looks like a corruption of Salters Ford and could indicate that the salt trade had reached the town (there is no local resource). Of course this could be much later but if it was you would expect the trade to have followed the later Roman Road to the north of Barlick which was well paved and policed by the Romans. On the whole, I think the odds are that if there was a salt route it was there before the Romans came. The Barlickers hadn’t any great monuments to abandon so whatever their belief system was it would be left undisturbed. They would perform their rituals and magic in the same places, venerate the same objects and perhaps go up to the well on Weets every now and again for a cooling drink and a ceremony.
We’ll leave our Old Barlickers struggling to survive but on the whole making a decent job of it. After a low point round about 700BC the weather was warming up a bit so prospects would be looking better. Next week we will get serious about the Romans and you might be in for a few surprises!
SCG/17 October 2001