More information : (SE 96090318) Romano British Settlement (NR) (Site of) (1)
Major Romano-British settlement straddling Ermine Street at Staniwells, Hibaldstow. Pottery and 1st to 4th century coins have come from sites over a wide area, and buildings are reported at: (SE 95780294; 95820309; 96550331; 96780334; 96630300; and areas 95810264; 96310285).
There were foundations at the well known "Castle Hill" site (shown as a depression on OS 6" map at SE 9604 0286). (Area SE 9628 0325). Slight indications of the fosse and agger of the northern and southern limits of an entrenched camp. The western boundary is discernible for a distance of 400 yards, that on the east has gone. (5)
North of the settlement, inhumation and cremation burials have been unearthed at: (SE 9597 0351; 9606 0351; 9620 0354; 9629 0355; 9635 0356; and area 9677 0356).
Some of the finds are in Scunthorpe Museum. (2-8)
All the fields containing these indicated sites are arable. No traces of earthworks were noted. Both Scunthorpe and Lincoln Museums hold finds from these sites and perambulation produced finds of building material and fragments of coarse pottery. (9)
Cremation cemetery. Anglian pots on five sites in the Roman site on Ermine Street. Neither Lincoln nor Scunthorpe Museum have any information of any Anglo Saxon finds from this site. The identification may be in error for Roman material. (10-12)
Hibaldstow is known only from an abundance of surface finds. The site was known to early travellers, and the walls of buildings were still visible in the 18th century although whether these belonged to the Roman settlement one cannot now be sure. Nothing has been revealed by air photography. (13)
Knowledge of the settlement's extent is derived from the incidence of surface finds and a geophysical survey. It would seem that the settlement extended for at least 750m along both sides of Ermine Street where it crosses the Staniwells spring valley. (14-18)
The settlement was partly excavated between 1975-9 under threat of dualling of the modern road aligned on Ermine Street. Building remains to the west of the road are confined to an approximately 50m wide strip, demarcated by a ditch which runs parallel with the road. Plough damage to the remains here has been shown to be minimal over substantial areas. (19-22)
The construction of Ermine street seems to have dammed the Staniwells spring, creating a pond behind in the valley bottom. This was subsequently drained, but may account for the alignment of some of the buildings other than perpendicular to the road. It contained pottery of the second half of the 1st century whilst environmental samples suggest the contemporary landscape was open grassland. The excavation of area 1 was designed to test the maximum extent of settlement and to be the total excavation of a single building plot. However, this was where ploughing had been most damaging, removing all layers above the natural. Five inhumation burials discovered towards the rear of the enclosure, however, may form part of a cemetery, and perhaps indicate a change in land use.
Occupation of the settlement would seem to begin as early as the late 1st century - the date of the earliest property boundaries in area 3 and lasts through to the 3rd and 4th centuries. Buildings are rectangular in plan and may have combined agricultural and industrial usage with domestic accommodation. Of particular interest is a building sequence in which a rectangular aisled-building was replaced by a winged-corridor house. It comprised a verandah or corridor fronting a range of three equal-sized rooms, with a single projecting corner room at either end. However, it was smaller than either its predecessor or the other strip buildings excavated.
A possible bow-sided building was constructed late in the site's history, and a late Roman bronze zoomorphic buckle came from a rubble floor overlying building C. (Area of excavations extends from circa SE 9590 0275 to SE 9585 0325 on west side of Ermine Street - sited from diagram). (23)
SE 960 030. Romano-British settlement near Staniwells, Hibaldstow. Scheduled. (24)
Centred SE 960 030. Area of Romano British and possibly Iron Age settlement. Surface finds are distributed over half a square mile, but the greatest concentration is centred at SE 958031 either side of Ermine Street. Part of this area is scheduled. Finds include worked flints (see SE 90 SE 6) a few Iron Age sherds, quern fragments and much Roman pottery, glass, metalwork, coins slag and building debris. This material is in Scunthorpe Museum, acc. codes HB AA-AI, and in private possession. Column-on-vase and twist-on-vase balusters with round knops, fielded. A small excavation was undertaken in the central area near Ermine Street in 1939. Finds in Lincoln Museum, acc. no 28.39. SE 963 028. Small excavation and field survey, 1951, in an area of concentrated building rubble near to the railway embankment, revealed limestone walling. SE 968 033. Tesselated pavement found when the railway was built. Centred SE 963 032.
Linear cropmarks - field boundaries? - and possible enclosure in the field north of Manton Lane.
SE 961 034. "Traces of wall and bastion?" were recorded by O G S Crawford from the air in 1930, possibly at this NGR. The site corresponds to that of a rectilinear cropmark feature observed in 1975. Areas SE 965 035 and SE 967 033. Inhumations and urned cremations. Areas SE 960 025 and SE 959 039. Urns reported. (25)
Additional reference. (26)
The foundations of eight Roman buildings were recorded. They represent the excavated remains of the fourth century roadside settlement to the west of Ermine Street described by authorities 14 to 23. The buildings were drawn from aerial photographs taken at the time of the excavations. Details of the excavation can be found in Smith R "Hibaldstow" in Current Archaeology 77 May 1981, pp 168-171. (Morph Nos. LI.614.9.1 - 9.7)
This description is based on data from the RCHME MORPH2 database. (27)
HU 6 Listed as the possible site of a Roman villa. (28)
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