Monument record 15375 - Excavated Medieval Shelter, East of Hulme Barns Farm, Bucklow Hill

<1> Wessex Archaeology, 2017, A556 Knutsford to Bowdon Improvement, Cheshire: Archaeological Strip Map and Excavation & Post Excavation Assessment, R3920 (Client Report). SCH8111.

A feature defined by a partially surviving penannular gully (feature 638) was excavated in 2014-15 on Bucklow Hill. It had a central hearth and has been interpreted as a shelter/windbreak. It was located some 200 m to the south-east of a ring ditch/barrow and BA burials (CHER 15367 and 15369), also just to the east of an enclosure and field system (CHER 15374), which were also excavated in 2014-15.

The gully/ditch had a visible length of 7 m; its eastern terminal was well defined, its western terminal had been erased by a post-medieval field boundary. Had the gully been fully circular, it would have measured 5-6 m in diameter. The gully ditch was 100% excavated, and found to measure 0.71m-0.75 m wide by 0.12 m-0.25 m deep. It contained a single fill of mid-to dark greyish brown loamy sand. No datable finds were recovered, although some charcoal, potboilers and fragments of fired clay were encountered. The central fire pit (feature 536) lay in the centre of the area enclosed by the gully. It was approximately 0.7 m in diameter and 0.07 m deep, containing a single fill of dark brown grey loamy sand with abundant charcoal, fired clay and fist-sized potboilers.

High numbers of charred plant remains were recovered from the gully and fire pit, cereals represented barley, free-threshing wheat and rye, along with weed seeds and hazelnut shell fragments. A hazelnut shell fragment and a rye grain recovered from the surviving terminal of the gully produced a radiocarbon date dating to the thirteenth century: cal AD 1200–1270 and cal AD 1220–1280.

<2> Patrick Daniel, 2021, “What are the dead for?” Bronze Age burials in a multi-period landscape at Bucklow Hill, Cheshire, Archaeological Journal, 2021, p.1-82 (Article in Journal). SCH9099.

Article discussing the excavated remains at Bucklow Hill and the programme of radiocarbon dating which has resulted in the first high-resolution radiocarbon chronology for a prehistoric funerary site in the county. Given the paucity of excavation at such sites in Cheshire in recent decades, the opportunity to examine and date this site is regionally important. The time-depth of the exposed landscape is also significant, with indications of a human presence prior to the Bronze Age and more plentiful evidence for subsequent periods. Probable early medieval inhumations were focused upon the earlier burial sites, and these together with the remains of agriculture and iron smithing represent regionally rare glimpses of the early medieval period. They show the continued importance of this part of the landscape to local people and highlight the ‘connective’ role of funerary monuments in allowing such inter-relationships between different communities across time.

Although numerous charred plant remains were found in the samples from feature 638, the nature of the assemblage is not typical for crop-drying (see below), and so the feature probably does not represent a ‘crop dryer’ or similar, and a small and rudimentary shelter such as a wind-break is the favoured interpretation.