Investigations at the Deserted Medieval Settlement of Linbrig
May Meeting Report
On Monday 11th May David Jones from the Coquetdale Community Archaeology group gave a most entertaining talk on the group’s investigations into the Medieval Settlement of Linbrig.
The site, on the banks of the River Coquet near Alwinton, is described as a settlement rather than a village due to the random scattering of buildings. Its existence was first recognised in the C16th and in 1820 John Hodgson drew a plan of the settlement in his notebook. James Nichol visited the site in 1903 part of which was excavated in 1967. In 2005 a survey carried out for the Ministry of Defence showed the presence of 24 structures. But it was not until 2018 that a more thorough excavation began.
David and his team, with the support of a professional archaeologist, have executed what our chairman aptly described as a feat of forensic archaeology. Their close examination of the construction of the buildings showed that the site had been developed and re-purposed over a number of different phases. Artefacts such as smoking pipes showing the maker’s mark dated them to the C17th. There was evidence of doorways which had been blocked or built over, but most interestingly there were signs that some of the stones built into the foundations seemed to be from an ecclesiastical building, and were completely out of place in these humble, poorly constructed hovels. They included an impost block from an ecclesistical archway and a stone with an elaborate dogtooth pattern associated with ecclesiastical buildings from the C13th. Pieces of coloured glass dating from the C13th were of such skilled workmanship that they must have been imported, not British. Once more an ecclesiastical source was suggested.
David and his team began looking for a possible source of these incongruous materials.
Eventually they came across the medieval Cheviot Manor of Aldensheles within whose grounds the remains of a chapel were discovered in 2022. This was a building of high quality, abandoned in the C15th. It is now believed that this chapel was the source of the stone blocks which were taken and repurposed at Linbrig in one of its many phases of development.
David’s talk was well illustrated with photographs of the site during its excavation. Further digs are planned and it is hoped that even more evidence from the past can be uncovered to add to our understanding of the way our ancestors once lived.
Report by Kathryn McLachlan