THE EARLY HISTORY OF BARLICK (10)
Posted: 25 Mar 2026, 02:27
THE EARLY HISTORY OF BARLICK (10)
3 December 2001
Before I start into the history of Barlick this week I’d like to draw your attention to two items which have come to my notice lately. Both of them illustrate my point that our understanding of history never stands still, research always modifies the conclusions.
On November 8th there was an article in the Guardian about a magnificent mosaic floor which has been discovered near the village of Lopen in Somerset. This must have been associated with a very high status house and is one of the best examples of Romano-British mosaic ever found in Britain. Remember what I was saying earlier about Roman veterans settling at Ribchester? There is every probability that this floor was part of such a house or even an important Briton who had adopted the Roman culture. Remember that Somerset was under Civil Rule and so there was a greater chance of this happening. Ribchester, like Barlick, was under military rule but even so, there was Roman settlement.
Another item I came across is some research which has been done into finds at a dig near Southampton. These haven’t been accurately dated yet but the first conclusions are that what has been found is evidence of organised steel-making in blacksmith’s hearths in approximately the second century AD. Steel is a refined alloy of iron and carbon which is much harder and stronger than pure iron and is ideal for making cutting edges. The significance of this find is that whilst we knew that there was ‘accidental steel’ produced occasionally when making ordinary wrought iron we have never found any evidence in this country that suggested that steel could be made deliberately and of a consistent quality until the seventeenth century. What convinced the archaeologists was the fact that when they analysed the samples from many hearths they were surprised to find that the carbon content didn't vary, it seems the smiths knew exactly what they were doing.
The Romans knew about steel, they called it ‘Seric Iron’ and supposed it to be Chinese. Actually it was made in Southern India and reached Rome via Abyssinia. This was ‘Wootz’, a high carbon crucible steel made in small cakes a few inches in diameter which could be worked into strips and fire-welded onto the edge of an iron sword to make it much tougher and sharper. It looks as though the ‘barbaric Britons’ had seen this material and by the second century AD had found out how to make it themselves.
So, allowing for Barlick’s relative poverty and unimportance we can probably bring the starting date for steel edged tools in Barlick back from the seventeenth century to about 400AD! Only a small thing but it gives us one more possibility for our Old Barlickers.
There is a possibility that Barlick had a bad time starting around 115AD because the Northern Tribes in Caledonia rose up and attacked the Romans. For seven years they looted and pillaged and whilst we are not sure how far south they raided it is possible they reached Barlick. The Emperor Hadrian arrived in Britain in 122AD and ordered a wall to be built from Carlisle to Wallsend on the East Coast and this was manned by troops to keep the Northern Tribes back. Hadrian died in 138AD and his adopted son, Antoninus Pius took over as emperor. He came to Britain and built an earth wall from the Forth to the Clyde but it was soon realised that this was too far north to be practical. The legions retreated to Hadrian’s Wall, rebuilt it in stone and this became the northern boundary of the Roman empire. The lands of the Brigantes lay to the south of the wall and extended down to below York (Eboracum) in the east and Chester (Deva) in the west. This was often referred to by the Romans as ‘Britannia Secunda’ and was always recognised as a frontier region. It was overseen from the wall in the north, Chester in the west and York in the east and eventually became the kingdom of Northumbria. (The land 'North of the Humber')
Though no longer a totally independent tribe, the Brigantes were still an administrative unit. The tribal capital was at Aldborough (N Yorks) or Isurium as the Romans called it (Some archaeologists argue for Ingleborough but this is tenuous, more likely to be a defended refuge.). The Romans recorded that at this time some of the constituent tribes were the Setantii (Barlick was probably in this tribe), Lopocares, Gabrantovices, Tectovari and Carvetii. (The latter were the ‘Deer People’ and inhabited what we now call Cumbria. By 200/300AD they had established Luguvallium, Carlisle.) All these names are the Latinate forms of the tribal names but as these were never written down we don’t know what the originals were.
For fifty years after the re-building of the Wall there was an uneasy peace in the Brigante lands with only occasional border raids but in 196AD the Picts overran the Wall and raided deep into Britannia. The Romans were driven back to York and this could have been another bad period for Barlick. We have no reason to suppose that the Northern Tribes did anything but rape, pillage and destroy in these raids. All the Old Barlickers could do in these circumstances would be to run south as fast as they could if attacked.
We have now come to the point where we have to have a look at another great influence, the arrival of Christianity in Barlick. Of course, we can’t put a date on it, we shall have to look at the evidence and do a bit of intelligent guessing as usual!
Gildas Bandonicus, a Celtic monk writing in about 940 on ‘The Ruin of Britain’ tells us that Christianity first entered The Isles during the reign of the emperor Tiberius who died in 37AD. This sounds early but when we consider that the early evangelists travelled via the Phoenician trade routes which had reached Britain thousands of years before we can’t totally discount his evidence. There is also a legend that in 63AD Joseph of Aramathea was sent to Britain by Saint Philip and founded a church at Glastonbury, this is almost certainly false but persists in modern thinking. William of Malmsbury writing in 1126 was convinced that Glastonbury was the first church in England but didn’t support the ‘Joseph’ legend.
We are on firmer ground with the writings of Tertillian who was presbyter of the church in Carthage and lived from 160 to 220. In 200 he wrote that ‘Christianity had spread beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire’. As the Picts had overrun the Wall at this time, this was almost certainly true. What concerns us here is that if Christianity had reached north of the Wall and had started in the south west of England, there is a good chance that word of it had reached Barlick, think of the number of clues we have had as to how fast news could travel, even in those days.
What we must clearly recognise is that the Christianity we are talking about here is nothing to do with Rome and the Papacy. The first Christian Emperor was Constantine in 312AD, at the time Tertillian was referring to the church in Europe was under persecution by Rome and so what we are talking about is the Celtic Christian church. The rule of the Pope wasn’t to reach Britain for another 400 years.
As I have said before, the Roman invaders didn’t impose their religion and culture, they were just as likely to adopt the local gods, what they sought was co-operation with the Britons. In Gaul it was different, Christians were persecuted at this time and we have evidence of Celts from Armorica (Brittany) migrating to Glastonbury at this time and quite possibly bringing the new religion with them. All the evidence points to Tertillian being correct and I think we can safely assume that by about 200AD word of this new religion had reached Barlick. All we know for certain on this subject is what Hugh, Abbot of Kirkstall said almost a thousand years later, he says that in 1147 when the monks first came to Barlick from Fountains Abbey there was ‘an ancient church founded long before’, however this was to be a long way in the future. Nazarene Christianity was the earliest evangelisation followed later by the missions of St Paul. It was simply travellers recounting the stories they had heard in the Middle East. These new ideas would spread slowly and gradually they were taken up. The old Pagan beliefs were still predominant and it isn’t hard to imagine early Christian images and beliefs being incorporated into the Old Religion almost as a sort of alternative deity. What is certain is that conversion was not sudden but a long, slow process, we shall come back to this subject later.
What was the relationship between the Old Barlickers and the Romans? On the whole, the evidence suggests that the Romans treated them with contempt and mistrust. Round about 100AD the Briton’s reputation for intransigence had certainly reached Rome, the Roman poet Juvenal mentioned that soldiers ‘blooded’ themselves in battle with the Brigantes. This was in a satire intended for audiences in Rome and must indicate that we had a certain reputation even then! We have another written reference in which the Britons are described as ‘Britunculi’ (‘Nasty little Britons’). We have plenty of evidence to show that the Britons were good farmers, skilled workers in stone and metal and obviously very good fighting men. The Romans took advantage of these virtues, they needed the resources the country could produce. They even took some Britons into their legions but they always regarded the country as ‘barbarous’ and treated the tribes, especially those in the north, accordingly.
I think we can make the assumption that the Old Barlickers would come into contact with the Romans as traders on a small scale. A cohort marching East on the old road at Brogden might barter for a few chickens or a pig as they passed through on their way to the way-station at Elslack. I can’t believe that the Romans didn’t have some sort of intelligence gathering system which would involve occasional visits to settlements simply to keep an eye on what was going on, sometimes these contacts would become personal and lead to relationships. We have no evidence of this in Barlick but from the archaeological evidence we suspect it may have happened at Ilkley and Ribchester.
So, Barlick in the third century hadn’t changed much. The settlement at Townhead and the surrounding out-settlements carried on much as usual. Apart from the occasional raid from the north they led a peaceful life, farming their fields and raising stock. The living wasn’t easy but the chances are that in good years they produced a surplus and would be able to trade. Young men would go off to travel and look for their fortune, the old people kept the traditions alive. There would be regular rituals to placate the old gods and perhaps one or two paid homage to a strange new deity, Jesus. Whilst we can’t be sure of when this happened we can be certain that it did occur eventually and that it was a very gradual transition.
However, once more there is change on the horizon. Roman rule which had looked permanent was about to be affected by events elsewhere in the empire and this was to lead to sudden and far-reaching consequences.
3 December 2001
3 December 2001
Before I start into the history of Barlick this week I’d like to draw your attention to two items which have come to my notice lately. Both of them illustrate my point that our understanding of history never stands still, research always modifies the conclusions.
On November 8th there was an article in the Guardian about a magnificent mosaic floor which has been discovered near the village of Lopen in Somerset. This must have been associated with a very high status house and is one of the best examples of Romano-British mosaic ever found in Britain. Remember what I was saying earlier about Roman veterans settling at Ribchester? There is every probability that this floor was part of such a house or even an important Briton who had adopted the Roman culture. Remember that Somerset was under Civil Rule and so there was a greater chance of this happening. Ribchester, like Barlick, was under military rule but even so, there was Roman settlement.
Another item I came across is some research which has been done into finds at a dig near Southampton. These haven’t been accurately dated yet but the first conclusions are that what has been found is evidence of organised steel-making in blacksmith’s hearths in approximately the second century AD. Steel is a refined alloy of iron and carbon which is much harder and stronger than pure iron and is ideal for making cutting edges. The significance of this find is that whilst we knew that there was ‘accidental steel’ produced occasionally when making ordinary wrought iron we have never found any evidence in this country that suggested that steel could be made deliberately and of a consistent quality until the seventeenth century. What convinced the archaeologists was the fact that when they analysed the samples from many hearths they were surprised to find that the carbon content didn't vary, it seems the smiths knew exactly what they were doing.
The Romans knew about steel, they called it ‘Seric Iron’ and supposed it to be Chinese. Actually it was made in Southern India and reached Rome via Abyssinia. This was ‘Wootz’, a high carbon crucible steel made in small cakes a few inches in diameter which could be worked into strips and fire-welded onto the edge of an iron sword to make it much tougher and sharper. It looks as though the ‘barbaric Britons’ had seen this material and by the second century AD had found out how to make it themselves.
So, allowing for Barlick’s relative poverty and unimportance we can probably bring the starting date for steel edged tools in Barlick back from the seventeenth century to about 400AD! Only a small thing but it gives us one more possibility for our Old Barlickers.
There is a possibility that Barlick had a bad time starting around 115AD because the Northern Tribes in Caledonia rose up and attacked the Romans. For seven years they looted and pillaged and whilst we are not sure how far south they raided it is possible they reached Barlick. The Emperor Hadrian arrived in Britain in 122AD and ordered a wall to be built from Carlisle to Wallsend on the East Coast and this was manned by troops to keep the Northern Tribes back. Hadrian died in 138AD and his adopted son, Antoninus Pius took over as emperor. He came to Britain and built an earth wall from the Forth to the Clyde but it was soon realised that this was too far north to be practical. The legions retreated to Hadrian’s Wall, rebuilt it in stone and this became the northern boundary of the Roman empire. The lands of the Brigantes lay to the south of the wall and extended down to below York (Eboracum) in the east and Chester (Deva) in the west. This was often referred to by the Romans as ‘Britannia Secunda’ and was always recognised as a frontier region. It was overseen from the wall in the north, Chester in the west and York in the east and eventually became the kingdom of Northumbria. (The land 'North of the Humber')
Though no longer a totally independent tribe, the Brigantes were still an administrative unit. The tribal capital was at Aldborough (N Yorks) or Isurium as the Romans called it (Some archaeologists argue for Ingleborough but this is tenuous, more likely to be a defended refuge.). The Romans recorded that at this time some of the constituent tribes were the Setantii (Barlick was probably in this tribe), Lopocares, Gabrantovices, Tectovari and Carvetii. (The latter were the ‘Deer People’ and inhabited what we now call Cumbria. By 200/300AD they had established Luguvallium, Carlisle.) All these names are the Latinate forms of the tribal names but as these were never written down we don’t know what the originals were.
For fifty years after the re-building of the Wall there was an uneasy peace in the Brigante lands with only occasional border raids but in 196AD the Picts overran the Wall and raided deep into Britannia. The Romans were driven back to York and this could have been another bad period for Barlick. We have no reason to suppose that the Northern Tribes did anything but rape, pillage and destroy in these raids. All the Old Barlickers could do in these circumstances would be to run south as fast as they could if attacked.
We have now come to the point where we have to have a look at another great influence, the arrival of Christianity in Barlick. Of course, we can’t put a date on it, we shall have to look at the evidence and do a bit of intelligent guessing as usual!
Gildas Bandonicus, a Celtic monk writing in about 940 on ‘The Ruin of Britain’ tells us that Christianity first entered The Isles during the reign of the emperor Tiberius who died in 37AD. This sounds early but when we consider that the early evangelists travelled via the Phoenician trade routes which had reached Britain thousands of years before we can’t totally discount his evidence. There is also a legend that in 63AD Joseph of Aramathea was sent to Britain by Saint Philip and founded a church at Glastonbury, this is almost certainly false but persists in modern thinking. William of Malmsbury writing in 1126 was convinced that Glastonbury was the first church in England but didn’t support the ‘Joseph’ legend.
We are on firmer ground with the writings of Tertillian who was presbyter of the church in Carthage and lived from 160 to 220. In 200 he wrote that ‘Christianity had spread beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire’. As the Picts had overrun the Wall at this time, this was almost certainly true. What concerns us here is that if Christianity had reached north of the Wall and had started in the south west of England, there is a good chance that word of it had reached Barlick, think of the number of clues we have had as to how fast news could travel, even in those days.
What we must clearly recognise is that the Christianity we are talking about here is nothing to do with Rome and the Papacy. The first Christian Emperor was Constantine in 312AD, at the time Tertillian was referring to the church in Europe was under persecution by Rome and so what we are talking about is the Celtic Christian church. The rule of the Pope wasn’t to reach Britain for another 400 years.
As I have said before, the Roman invaders didn’t impose their religion and culture, they were just as likely to adopt the local gods, what they sought was co-operation with the Britons. In Gaul it was different, Christians were persecuted at this time and we have evidence of Celts from Armorica (Brittany) migrating to Glastonbury at this time and quite possibly bringing the new religion with them. All the evidence points to Tertillian being correct and I think we can safely assume that by about 200AD word of this new religion had reached Barlick. All we know for certain on this subject is what Hugh, Abbot of Kirkstall said almost a thousand years later, he says that in 1147 when the monks first came to Barlick from Fountains Abbey there was ‘an ancient church founded long before’, however this was to be a long way in the future. Nazarene Christianity was the earliest evangelisation followed later by the missions of St Paul. It was simply travellers recounting the stories they had heard in the Middle East. These new ideas would spread slowly and gradually they were taken up. The old Pagan beliefs were still predominant and it isn’t hard to imagine early Christian images and beliefs being incorporated into the Old Religion almost as a sort of alternative deity. What is certain is that conversion was not sudden but a long, slow process, we shall come back to this subject later.
What was the relationship between the Old Barlickers and the Romans? On the whole, the evidence suggests that the Romans treated them with contempt and mistrust. Round about 100AD the Briton’s reputation for intransigence had certainly reached Rome, the Roman poet Juvenal mentioned that soldiers ‘blooded’ themselves in battle with the Brigantes. This was in a satire intended for audiences in Rome and must indicate that we had a certain reputation even then! We have another written reference in which the Britons are described as ‘Britunculi’ (‘Nasty little Britons’). We have plenty of evidence to show that the Britons were good farmers, skilled workers in stone and metal and obviously very good fighting men. The Romans took advantage of these virtues, they needed the resources the country could produce. They even took some Britons into their legions but they always regarded the country as ‘barbarous’ and treated the tribes, especially those in the north, accordingly.
I think we can make the assumption that the Old Barlickers would come into contact with the Romans as traders on a small scale. A cohort marching East on the old road at Brogden might barter for a few chickens or a pig as they passed through on their way to the way-station at Elslack. I can’t believe that the Romans didn’t have some sort of intelligence gathering system which would involve occasional visits to settlements simply to keep an eye on what was going on, sometimes these contacts would become personal and lead to relationships. We have no evidence of this in Barlick but from the archaeological evidence we suspect it may have happened at Ilkley and Ribchester.
So, Barlick in the third century hadn’t changed much. The settlement at Townhead and the surrounding out-settlements carried on much as usual. Apart from the occasional raid from the north they led a peaceful life, farming their fields and raising stock. The living wasn’t easy but the chances are that in good years they produced a surplus and would be able to trade. Young men would go off to travel and look for their fortune, the old people kept the traditions alive. There would be regular rituals to placate the old gods and perhaps one or two paid homage to a strange new deity, Jesus. Whilst we can’t be sure of when this happened we can be certain that it did occur eventually and that it was a very gradual transition.
However, once more there is change on the horizon. Roman rule which had looked permanent was about to be affected by events elsewhere in the empire and this was to lead to sudden and far-reaching consequences.
3 December 2001