Berwick-Upon-Tweed Northumberland Extensive Urban Survey
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Berwick-upon-Tweed Northumberland Extensive Urban Survey The Northumberland Extensive Urban Survey Project was carried out between 1995 and 2008 by Northumberland County Council with the support of English Heritage. © Northumberland County Council and English Heritage 2009 Produced by John Marlow 1997 Revised by Alan Williams 2007-8 Strategic Summary by Karen Derham 2008 Planning policies revised 2010 All the mapping contained in this report is based upon the Ordnance Survey mapping with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationary Office. © Crown copyright. All rights reserved 100049048 (2009) All historic mapping contained in this report is reproduced courtesy of the Northumberland Collections Service unless otherwise stated. Northumberland Conservation Development & Delivery Planning Economy & Housing Northumberland County Council County Hall Morpeth NE61 2EF Tel: 01670 620305 Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/archaeology Berwick-upon-Tweed 1 CONTENTS PART ONE: THE STORY OF BERWICK-UPON-TWEED 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Framework 1.2 Location, Topography, Geology 1.3 Documentary and Secondary Sources 1.4 Cartographic Sources 1.5 Archaeological Evidence 1.6 Protected Sites 2 PRE-URBAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE 2.1 The Prehistoric to Roman Period 3 THE EARLY MEDIEVAL TOWN 3.1 Placename Evidence 3.2 Settlement 3.3 Early Routeways 3.4 A Village Green? 3.5 Parish Church 4 THE MEDIEVAL TOWN 4.1 Background 4.2 The Street Pattern and Burgage Properties 4.3 Archaeological Evidence for the Late Medieval Town 4.4 Archaeological Themes 4.5 Berwick Castle 4.6 Other Medieval Fortifications 4.7 Religious Houses 4.8 The Religious Houses: Hospitals 4.9 The Churches 4.10 The Port of Berwick and its Quayside 4.11 The Bridges 4.12 Trades and Occupations 5 POST-MEDIEVAL AND EARLY 19TH CENTURY TOWN 5.1 Background 5.2 The Street Layout and Pattern of Development 5.3 Berwick’s Quayside 5.4 The Tollbooth, or ‘Berfreyt’ 5.5 Town Hall (HER 2464) 5.6 Governor’s House (HER 2476) 5.7 Bridge Street and its Environs 5.8 Hide Hill and Silver Street 5.9 Church Street and the Parade 5.10 The Later Bridges 5.11 Holy Trinity Church, 1650-1652 (HER 4132) 5.12 Other Churches and Chapels 5.13 The Rebuilding of Berwick 5.14 Extra-mural housing development 5.15 Mid Nineteenth Century Berwick 5.16 Summary Berwick-upon-Tweed 2 PART TWO: ARCHAEOLOGICAL POTENTIAL OF BERWICK-UPON-TWEED 6 RESEARCH FRAMEWORK 6.1 Prehistoric and Roman Potential 6.2 Medieval Potential 6.3 Post-Medieval and Nineteenth Century Potential PART THREE: ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE PLANNING PROCESS 7 THE EXISTING FRAMEWORK 7.1 Planning Policy Statement 5: Planning for the Historic Environment (PPS5) 7.2 Scheduled Ancient Monuments 7.3 Listed Buildings 7.4 Conservation Areas 7.5 Archaeological Sites without Statutory Designation 7.6 Development Plan Policies 7.7 Pre-Application Discussion 7.8 Archaeological Planning Conditions 7.9 Unexpected Discoveries 8 SOURCES Bibliography Other Publications Consulted APPENDIX 1: LISTED BUILDINGS APPENDIX 2: ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVENTS APPENDIX 3: HISTORIC MAPS APPENDIX 4: STRATEGIC SUMMARY FIGURES Figure 1: Location Figure 2: Study Area and Designations Figure 3: 12th Century Town Figure 4: Later Medieval Town Figure 5: Post Medieval Town Figure 6: Armstrong’s map of Northumberland, Berwick plan (1769) Figure 7: Tithe Award plan, 31st December 1850 Figure 8: Second Edition 25-inch Ordnance Survey, c.1897 Figure 9: Third Edition 25-inch Ordnance Survey, c.1920 Figure 10: Archaeological Potential of Berwick-upon-Tweed Berwick-upon-Tweed 3 Figure 1: Location Berwick-upon-Tweed 4 PART ONE: BERWICK’S STORY 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Project Background Towns and villages have been the focus of settlement in this country for many hundreds of years. Beneath our workplaces, beneath our houses, our gardens, streets and shops - beneath our feet - there lie archaeological remains which can tell us how these settlements were once organised and how people went about their lives. Awareness and appreciation of this resource can enhance our sense of place and identity and help us understand how the past has directly shaped our present and how we may use it to shape our future. To ensure that evidence for our urban past is not needlessly lost during development local and national government have put in place a range of statutory designations and policies to make sure that valuable remains are protected, preserved and understood. In 1992, English Heritage published a national policy to help planners and developers deal with urban archaeology and any issues that might arise during the planning process (Managing the Urban Archaeological Resource). This led to the Extensive Urban Survey programme, where funds were made available to individual planning authorities to prepare material to explain how archaeology fits into the planning process and how issues raised can be best resolved. Berwick is one of 20 towns in Northumberland to have been reviewed and this report is divided into three parts: Part 1 summarises the development of Berwick using documentary, cartographic and archaeological sources, and examines the evidence for the survival of archaeological remains in the town. Part 2 assesses the archaeological potential of the town of Berwick and how development could impact on significant archaeological resources which are of both national and local significance. Part 3 looks at the national and local planning process with regard to archaeology and is designed to give the developer, planner, and general public, the framework within which development in an historic town will normally proceed. The area covered by this assessment (fig 2) covers the historic urban core of Berwick and its castle and includes all of the Berwick Conservation Area. Material within this report is accurate only as it went to press in 2008. Information on the Northumberland Historic Environment Record (HER) is constantly being updated and should be used as the primary source for historical and archaeological information. The first part of this report provides an account of the current understanding of the development of the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed built up from archival, structural and archaeological evidence. The picture is, of course, incomplete and there is much work to be done to provide a secure and useful Berwick-upon-Tweed 5 framework which up until fairly recently has relied largely on documentary and archival evidence rather than analysis of historical structures above ground or the archaeological deposits beneath. The reason for the lack of study of standing historic fabric is a simple one and represents one of the fundamental problems for the study of the development of Berwick, especially for the time of its greatest wealth and historical significance, the high medieval period. As noted by Cambridge ‘Few if any other British towns of comparable size and antiquity have suffered such a comprehensive obliteration of the above ground evidence for their medieval past’ (Cambridge et al 2001, 33). The depredations resulting from endemic border conflict from the end of the thirteenth century, and the fact that the town was a major cockpit of these Anglo-Scottish struggles, resulted in the almost complete levelling of the medieval town and its rebuilding, albeit along the same medieval roads and lanes, as a town of ‘sober Georgian elegance’ (ibid, 33). So, it falls especially heavily on archaeology to fill the gaps in our understanding of the development of the town; a sentiment already expressed by Ellison in 1976 ‘Any major increase in our knowledge of Berwick…for the most significant period of its history, must come from excavation’. The first question we can ask of archaeology (set against Ellison’s other stark benchmark of 1976, ‘There has been no excavation of any religious or domestic site in Berwick and only limited excavation of a few points on the Tudor defences and of Spades Mire’), is how has it fared over the last three decades in filling historical gaps in our understanding of the town. This is discussed in part 1 of this report. The second question we must ask of archaeology is how much potential it has, in the form of a properly constructed research framework, to fill remaining gaps in the understanding of the development of the town. This is reviewed in part 2 of this report. 1.2 Location, Topography and Geology Berwick-upon-Tweed, the most northerly town in England, lies on the northern bank of the River Tweed, 48 miles to the south east of Edinburgh, 28 miles to the north of Alnwick and 56 miles from Newcastle upon Tyne. It has a population of just under 12000 and is the seat of the local administration. It also retains its function as a service and market centre to the surrounding region and is well-served by the East Coast main rail line, which runs through the town, and by the A1 which today sweeps around Berwick to the west. The town is spectacularly sited on a coastal peninsula, surrounded by water on three sides and approached across the Tweed by a series of bridges which link the town to England and provide access to Scotland beyond Berwick Bounds – England north of the Tweed. These links belie an earlier and lengthy episode in the history of the town during which it was a contested frontier stronghold, neither accepted as English nor able to be Scottish; it was the most valuable urban centre ever to trouble the thrones of both kingdoms. Berwick-upon-Tweed 6 The peninsula on which the historic core of Berwick lies is prominent to the north but falls rapidly towards the river: At the northern end of town, High and Low Greens lie at about 38m aOD; the Guildhall, at the centre of town, lies at 15m aOD; and Palace Green, within the ancient area of the Ness, lies at only 6m aOD.