Evidence of Prehistoric Activity in the Seale Area
That people were living in and crossing over this area in prehistory can no longer be in doubt, the various scatters of worked flint from at least the Neolithic period is evidence of this, along with crop marks and other finds, including pot sherds, axe and spear heads. This discussion is focussed more on how place names and landscape features might give a clue to the building of barrow mounds in the ancient past, and in some cases how these acted as territorial boundary markers that have lasted into modern times.
Figure 1. Microlith (worked flint scraper or knife) found by the author on a field walk in Overseal, May 2020. Author's photograph.
Seal Brook Burnt Mound.
That people in the Bronze Age and earlier pushed along the rivers and their tributaries is well attested and there are a number of pieces of evidence for this locally. Perhaps the most ancient is the burnt mound by the Seal Brook, although without carbon dating it is not possible to accurately ascertain its age. Burnt mounds are something of an enigma in that their purpose is largely conjectural, with the most likely purpose on current understanding being a steam lodge. In 2005 Derbyshire Archaeological Society (DAS) excavated the mound near the Seal Brook, which ‘was found to be somewhat typical at around twelve to fifteen metres in diameter, with the material consisting of much charcoal and heat affected stones’. Although a very wide date band is possible, those across Britain and Ireland that have been radiocarbon tested for age fall mostly into a band between the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, or 7,000 to 3,000 years ago, in line with the dates for the Catholme Ceremonial Complex. The use of steam lodges in the ancient past is well known, with very many burnt mounds across the country, but their specific use is not entirely certain. It seems possible, probable even, that they were the sacred space where rituals concerned with the spirit world were enacted. They are thought to have represented ‘safe’ places associated with cleansing and healing. Whatever their use in prehistory, they are markers used by archaeologists for identifying nearby settlements. They are almost always found next to a watercourse and are ‘considered indicators of the distribution, location and density of otherwise elusive contemporary settlements’. Such settlements would be expected to be found nearby but on slightly higher and drier ground than the burnt mound itself. ‘Stream-walking’ might provide the opportunity of locating further burnt mounds in the area, although some specialist knowledge of what to look for is required.
Birchington House Burial Mound (formerly Seal House).
Very near to the Seal Brook burnt mound is the probable site of a former burial mound. The Derbyshire Heritage Environment Record (HER) contains a record for this potential burial mound near to the burnt mound site, again adjacent to the Seal Brook. Monument record MDR7146 is described in the HER as ‘Potential cropmark barrow of Bronze Age date, seen as a subcircular enclosure, defined by ditch, diameter 8m. Centred at SK 2610 1298. Mapped using good quality aerial photographs’. If it was a burial mound, like any others in the local area it is entirely gone, eroded by time and ploughed out over the centuries, remaining only as a crop mark visible in aerial photographs and not apparent either on the ground or on the LiDAR map. The association between this mound and the burnt mound must be seen as significant and is a strong indicator of a nearby settlement. The opportunity for field walking on the higher ground near to Sandy Lane and the junction with Clifton Road may prove fruitful in locating any former potential settlement.
Cadborough Hill.
Between Overseal and Netherseal lies Cadborough Hill, at one time considered “An Ancient British station, probably in connexion with that of Seckington […] on the south side of the hill is a valley, called Dead-Dane Bottom; and in an adjoining field is a tumulus, where human bones have been turned up by the plough”. The assumption that the burial mound was related to a battle between Saxon and Dane seems to have been made in the early nineteenth century, which, presumably, is why White associates Cadborough with Seckington. The name Dead-Dane Bottom does not occur in the written records prior to this period and it may be that the ploughing up of the tumulus, or barrow, and the discovery of human bones, led antiquarians or enthusiastic locals to invent the name Dead-Dane Bottom and imagine the battle that took place on or below the hill itself, for which, again, there is no other source. The hill name Cadborough may come from a personal name Cada, with the borough place name attached to the end. The name Cada is common as a place name across England and may have a special connection with hilltops (Cadbury Castle in Somerset is a prime example, along Cadbury Castle in Devon and with Cadborough Hill and Cadley Hill locally) and is in fact so frequent as to lead to the suggestion that Cada may have been a mythical or folkloric figure now lost to us. The confluence of the Kesbrook and Stockbook is at the foot of the hill.
Figure 2. The Seale Bronze Age Axe Head discovered in September 2013.
Events beginning in 2010 resulted in a reconsideration of Cadborough Hill and archaeological and historical scrutiny there. During the course of that year, the National Forest Company (NFC) purchased part of the hill and announced plans to overplant their part of the top of the hill in a picturesque style, breaking up the regularly shaped wooded covert on the hilltop, which had been planted during the 1930s. The NFC were alerted to the possibility of the remains of a barrow mound on their newly acquired land. Finds by the Bloxwich Metal Detecting club in 2012 in a nearby field revealed a small number of Roman coins and brooches, indicating that the area had been under cultivation at least as early as the Romano-British period. The club returned the following year and discovered, amongst a number of finds dating from Roman to Victorian periods, a Bronze Age socketed axe head. Axe heads of this type date to around 1000BCE.
The axe head find was important as it lent support to the likelihood of the barrow being of Bronze Age date, rather than the already unlikely later Viking communal burial mound. It also led me to a discussion with Barbara Forster of the Derbyshire Archaeological Society and Ticknall Archaeological Research Group (TARG). In April 2013 we were conducting a geophysics survey on the top of the NFC owned part of Cadborough Hill, checking that the location of the lost barrow was not under the planned planting area prior to tree planting. Barbara Foster observed that a -borough place name ending may be a corruption of the Anglian dative word barwe, meaning ‘hill’, and a brief discussion on place name evidence is in the report that she and I submitted to Derbyshire HER in 2013. My assumption prior to that discussion was that all -borough place name endings were connected to the burh placename meaning of ‘fortified town’ or ‘defended enclosure’ and once the alternative meaning was there, other places in the local landscape began to become comprehensible. Berrow and Barrow occur regularly as a -barrow (tumulus or burial mound) place name ending. Rowberrow in Somerset can stand here as an example, and more locally, Barrow on Trent has multiple barrow mounds adjacent to the River Trent.
Figure 3. Swarkestone Lowes from the OS 25" to the mile map 1888.
Importantly, Swarkestone Lowes (see figure 3) is another local name that contains a reference to barrow mounds and there are several at that location (the four marked on the map not all visible any longer, but LiDAR has revealed several more at the site), with finds indicating use since at least the Mesolithic period. At least one barrow has beaker pottery beneath it. Old field name spellings from the 1626 Overseal farm survey give Cadborough as Cadboro so it may be that this is a shortening of the -borough place name ending or that the spelling was later ‘corrected’ to -borough. Barrie Cox’s discussion on place name endings relating to Barrowden are relevant here, ‘the hill with burial mounds’ with the name relating to the OE word beorg.Putting the Cada and barrow names together may give us the meaning of ‘burial mound of Cada’ but whether Cada was a real or mythical character we may never know, and as mentioned above, the name appears across the country and is often associated with high places, which may at least indicate that there was an ancient mythical person called Cada who was connected with or celebrated in some way on hill tops or mounds. Cadley Hill has the earlier form of Cadlowsiche dating from 1404 with the specific meaning of ‘Cada’s burial mound by the stream’. Canalised streams run to the West and north of Cadley Hill. The use of the word ‘lowe’ meaning burial mound is discussed further in the post on Fivelowes.
Bramborough.
Bramborough at Donisthorpe occupies a hilltop position and has been proposed as the site of an Iron Age farmstead. No known barrow has occupied the site, although if we allow the -barrow name ending the name would translate as ‘the bramble-strewn burial mound’ from OE bremel, meaning bramble. Again, with no evidence of a ditch and ring fortification for a burgh or borough a barrow name ending is perhaps the most plausible explanation. The 1835 Ordnance Survey map gives the name as Brambro. The brook that rises here was once called the Bramborough Brook and was crossed nearby at the ‘Salter’s Ford’, again evidence of salt routes from the west crossing into the central plain. The brook eventually became known as the Saltersford Brook. The Via Devana Roman road from Colchester to Chester ran close to the position of the modern farm and some field boundaries at Bramborough Farm maintain the alignment. See also the 13th century reference to the “via Ferrata” in Seale, which may be referring to the Roman road.
Whitborough
The former site of a post-enclosure period farm on the Woulds, Whitborough has no known burial mound, the suggestion of that possibility here is speculative and entirely through the possibility of the name ending. The alternative spelling Whitborrow is given in the enclosure award of 1807. It is located near to the ruins of Norris Hill Hall, near to where Moira, Boothorpe and Blackfordby meet, and above the former site of Whitborough Farm, which stood in the lee of the hill. An unnamed stream runs at the foot of the hill. The hill above the farm lent its name to the dwelling and may have meant the ‘white barrow’ or possibly the ‘wight barrow’ although there are no known folklore tales attached to it. Wights might sat first seem an unlikely option but it is known that prior to the massive exploitation of the Woulds for mineral deposits and widescale opencast mining for coal, clay and ironstone, as well as deep mining, that marsh lights were to be seen on the Woulds. In popular folklore, these Jack o’ Lanterns or Will o’ the Wisps were believed to be marsh spirits, sent to guide the unwary benighted traveller into the marsh to be sucked into the mud and drowned. Locally, these marsh spirits were known as Meg, and left their name in field names such as Megg’s Garden in Overseal when the Woulds were enclosed and drained in the eighteenth century. Similarly, the name Meg o’ the Hill occurs on the outskirts of Appleby Parva, next to Salt Street and not far from Tatborough. The Woulds were a chancy place after dark and one can only imaging looking out across the Woulds from Overseal or Donisthorpe at the mist rising and seeing the ghostly lights flaring in the dark from time to time.
Figure 4. Megg's Garden from the proposed 'lost' 1755 enclosure map of Overseal, now held in Stafford Record Office. Megg’s Garden is immediately adjecent to the Woulds and the still marshy area next to the Hooborough Brook, which forms the modern county and parish boundary. Author's photo.
Tatborough.
This site lies on an important crossing of ancient trackways to the west of Appleby Magna. These are the north-south route that is now the A.444 from Nuneaton to Burton on Trent, and Salt Street, a known prehistoric trackway and salt route from the salterns of the Droitwich area into the east midlands. Salt Street is directly south of Seale and connects to an ancient network of overland routes at No Man’s Heath, some of which have been adopted as modern roads, others have become byways or public footpaths. The name Tatborough is remembered on the OS 1902 map close to the junction of these trackways as Tatborough Spinney. Its proximity to the ancient Anglo-Saxon moot-place for West Goscote is also significant here, and it may be that the local moot was held on the mound itself. The place-name element Tat is a corruption of tot, meaning a lookout position and may also be found in the placename Tutbury. Toot or tot is also sometimes used for a burial mound, so the name may be here applied twice, tot-barrow, perhaps meaning mound-mound, when the old meaning has been forgotten. Salt Street is significant as the overland route connecting Tatborough to Seale.
Billa Barra
Further afield but included here for the same reasons as the mention of Barrow-on-Trent, it demonstrates further support to the proposal for the borough/ barrow place name endings, is Billa-Barra at Bardon. Billa-Barra is near to Coalville and marked on the 1902 Ordnance Survey map as Billa Barrow, but on earlier OS maps as Bilborough. The Borough Council’s brief entry for the history of the site states that ‘The name of the hill is thought to be a corruption of the word "barrow," meaning burial ground. This is thought to be linked to stories of a Saxon battle on the adjacent land with the dead buried on the hill. However, any physical evidence would have been destroyed at the on-set of quarrying’. As with Cadborough, the more likely explanation is of a prehistoric burial mound occupying the prominent site. An unnamed stream runs to the south of the hill.
Drakelowe
Drakelowe is mentioned here for three reasons; its placename meaning, the barrow that once stood there, and the possible correspondence with Whitborough. There is no known specific prehistoric connection between Seale and Drakelowe other than that they are within a few miles of each other, and the people would have been part of the same broader clan. That a barrow stood next to the River Trent at Drakelowe in the past is known from the placename. Drakelowe is Old English for Dragon Hill or Dragon Mound. In early English world imagery, the dragon is the guardian or watcher, warding a buried treasure or golden hoard and acting as gatekeeper to the land of the dead. The association of the dragon with gold, or treasure, is an ancient one and the word itself, dragon, has its roots in the Indo-European word *derk, meaning to see clearly. The village of Drakelowe was abandoned at the end of the 11th century, the reason given at the time was a haunting by vampires but in all likelihood an attack of plague. The lords of the manor, the Gresley family, maintained a seat there until the 19th century. The site of the deserted village is given in the Derbyshire HER along with the earliest known recorded mention of the name ‘Dracan Llawen’ in the written records, 942CE.In 1300, Geoffrey de Gresley claimed right of gallows there and it is likely that the gallows stood atop the barrow mound itself. Historic England point out that as barrows were known to have ancient connections, their ‘association with pagan myths and traditions meant that gibbets were sometimes constructed on them and criminals buried in them’. The connection between a guardian in the barrow and perhaps hauntings from the unquiet dead executed on the gallows and buried in unsanctified ground (perhaps at the crossroads) lends some credence to the possibility that the name meaning of Whitborough is associated with wights or malevolent spirits rather than the colour of the hill.
Castle Knob
Castle Knob at Castle Gresley is the site of a mediaeval motte and bailey castle and included here only for its potential reuse of a burial mound. Motte and bailey castles are known to have reused burial mounds as the basis for the bailey mound, certainly in cases where the location was suitable for the requirements of the mediaeval builder. As the location requirements for both was often on a prominent hilltop the later builders sometimes took advantage of the mound already there, enhancing its height and size for their own needs. There is no recorded barrow mound beneath the current castle mound, and it is included here speculatively. See Derbyshire HER monument record MDR2549 for further information. Again, a small stream runs at the base of the hill on which the mound sits. It is mentioned here for it’s possible change of use and as possible evidence of further mounds in the vicinity of the study area.
Conclusion
The purpose of barrows went beyond their role as a place of rest for the dead. It is likely that they also acted as a focal point for the spiritual needs of the community, much as a church might to modern Christians, and it is thought by archaeologists that rituals performed there helped in the structure of life in the community, binding the people together and binding them to the land. They differed from the earlier Neolithic long barrows in that they were not communal burial sites as such and may have contained only the body of a single individual, although other burials, presumably of family group or clan members, were sometimes added later. This shift in burial practice and traditional customs may reflect the change of people as the Neolithic folk gave way to the Beaker people of the Bronze Age. Barrows are located prominently, often on a hilltop, and may also therefore be considered as territorial markers. They are not only a visual marker, this signposting is also done through the act of placing of the ancestors into the mound (presumably a chieftain, shaman or powerful clan leader, or possibly a ritual sacrifice), thus connecting the clan and the land, both physically and metaphysically. The dead therefore become guardians of place in more than one reality or plane of existence. The mound may also be seen as a place of rebirth, resembling a pregnant belly as it does, and by placing the person or persons into the barrow, we might expect them to be reborn, either into this world or the next. We might also consider that by interment in a barrow they are being returned from whence they came, to the earth.
Barrows first began to appear from circa 6,000 years before present and are present in the landscape in a variety of shapes and typologies, although their full function is now lost to us. Round barrows themselves appear in different types and these can fall into a variety of sizes, from just a few metres across to over 40m in diameter. It is thought that in the past almost every parish in the country would have contained at least one barrow, with the majority now lost to the plough. Barrows were used with decreasing frequency into the Roman period and there are a smaller number of Anglo-Saxon barrows recorded, perhaps the most well-known being the Sutton Hoo ship burials in Suffolk.
That the parish of Seale contained several barrows or burial mounds is indicated by the records of the ploughed-out barrow on Cadborough Hill, the HER reference to the Birchington House barrow and the documentary evidence of the field names relating to Fivelowes. The inclusion into this picture of other activities and the wider landscape of the burnt mound sweat lodge and the ceremonial complex where three rivers meet at Catholme indicates that these people were organised and capable of manipulating their surroundings to suit their needs. When placenames are considered, although seemingly speculative at first glance, the corroborating evidence for considerable human activity in the area in prehistory begins to mount. An image of family groups of the local clan scattered across a farmed landscape appears, and our ancestors lives perhaps become less indistinct than they were. If it is the case that the -borough place name endings do indicate the presence of Bronze-Age burial mounds, then our landscape held multiple meanings for them, a true palimpsest and an accretion of layers of meaning. It may also be the case that in setting out their claim to the land, the local clan and family groups also delineated the boundary and boundaries that are still discernible in the old parish boundaries that we see today.
Monument record MDR14914 - Burnt mound, Seal Brook, Netherseal. See here for detail (Accessed 7th February 2021).
Hodder, M. West Midlands Regional Research Framework for Archaeology, Seminar 2: Hodder. Burnt mounds and beyond: the later prehistory of Birmingham and the Black Country. Available here: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Q2sSAD8w_tAJ:https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-artslaw/caha/wmrrfa/2/MikeHodder.doc+&cd=16&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=safari (Accessed 29th April 2021).
Gelling, M. Place Names in the Landscape. Dent London ed 1994 p: 127.
