| More information : [NY 8130 9858] British settlement [OE] (1).
Type H. On the farm of Birdhope is a large settlement or hill village. It has been somewhat destroyed by long houses, probably of early medieval date, and by a still later croft. It comprises a group of at least 5 enclosures, some sharing boundary walls, and each containing one or two huts which straddle across the area, dividing it into front and rearward courts. The enclosure and hut walls are of rubble between two lines of upright slabs. No fields are associated with the settlement (nor with its neighbour c.300.0m to the SE). The boundary walls belong to the later long houses. Each enclosure represents a family group, and the whole settlement is an "agglomeration of kinsfolk". These may be the homes of pastoral folk, probably shepherds, though, as some querns were found, some cereals were grown. The settlement is comparable with similar sites in Westmorland (a) (article suggests a pre-Roman date to the Westmorland settlement sites) (2).
Birdhope Village (approx 2 1/2 acres in area) (Listed under native sites) (3).
Birdhope - listed under RB enclosed stone built settlements. Generally as described by the N C H, the remains represent a good example of the local type of RB stone-built settlement. Of the medieval and later occupation of the site seven building foundations remain, one of which measuring 44.0m. overall, probably was a long-house (4).
Resurveyed at 1:2500 (5).
Scheduling [List Entry 24680] and excavations in 1975-77 (6a-6e).
The remains of the enclosed settlement complex of Birdhope, with phases dating to the Iron Age / Roman and medieval periods, are visible as ruined structures and earthworks on historic aerial photography and lidar imagery and remain extant on the latest 2016 aerial imagery. The site was mapped from aerial imagery as part of a PhD project at the University of York, in collaboration with the Historic England aerial investigation and mapping team.
The site is located atop a ridge scarp 300m south of modern Burdhope Farm, overlooking the valley of the River Rede to the north. It comprises a mixture of ruined stone buildings and structures and earthworks where turf has grown over the stone footings. The earlier Iron Age / Roman phase of the settlement is shown by six circular earthworks 5.0-7.5m in diameter, likely the footings of stone-built roundhouses and with entrances generally to the east or south-east. Associated with these are a series of rectilinear and curvilinear stone-built enclosures, likely yard areas forming a complex settlement different in form to that c.190m to the south-east at Woolaw, which is a single ‘farmstead’ enclosure. The proposed Iron Age/Roman phase of the settlement is largely concentrated in central and western parts of the wider settlement complex.
Reoccupation (or on-going occupation) of the settlement into the medieval period is proposed due to the seven or eight longer rectangular buildings dotted around the enclosures, most 10-15m in length but one in the north-eastern quarter of the complex measuring 44m long and thought to be the remains of a timber longhouse (the other structures thus forming ancillary buildings). Several of the enclosures surviving as ruined structures and/or earthworks are not definitively tied to the Iron Age / Roman phase’s layout, and may be contemporary with this medieval occupation (though with potential for earlier origins). The Scheduling of the monument refers to documents recording the destruction of ‘Birdhup’ by the Scots in 1584, and it is possible that this record refers to the site in question (7-9).
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