Healaugh Romano-British settlement

Description

Healaugh Romano-British settlement MYD36682 (c) YDNPA, 2023

Part of a Romano-British settlement was excavated at Healaugh in Swaledale between 1988 and 1990. The settlement consisted of a group of six or seven building platforms, partly scooped into the hillside. The excavation of one of these platforms revealed a sequence of roughly circular buildings. The earliest house was circular. It was built of upright timber planks set in a ring groove with a drain running round the back of the house covered with slabs. This house was succeeded by another circular house, this time with stone walls and a stone paved interior. Outside was a carefully cobbled working area.

These phases seem to date to the very late Iron Age. The next, probably early Roman, phase saw a dramatic change, with the traditional round house being partly demolished and an ovoid structure being built measuring 9.3 metres by 5.1 metres and covering almost the whole of the platform. The interior of this new building was floored with paving slabs, some left in situ from the older house. The door stood at the east end and probably swivelled in a shallow rebate found in the surface of a paving slab. The walls were constructed of squarish slabs of rock set on end alternated with panels of dry stone walling. The same construction technique was used for the preceding circular stone hut. Pottery on the site dates the Romano-British period of occupation continuing into the 2nd century AD and possibly later.

Source:

Fleming, Andrew (1998) Swaledale. Valley of the Wild River. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

White, Robert (2002) The Yorkshire Dales. A Landscape Through Time. Ilkley: Great Northern Books