The purpose of this lecture summary is to share with members of the Medieval Section news of the discovery in Manchester Museum collection of an important group of human skeletons dating from the time of King Aethelfrith of Northumbria, early in the 7th century AD. They were excavated at Heronbridge, near Chester, in 1930-1 (Petch 1933). David Mason of Durham Archaeology has already made a good case for them being the remains of men who were killed at the Battle of Chester (c.AD 616), which is described in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Mason 2005). As the bodies are likely to have been buried on or very close to the battlefield, it seems likely that Heronbridge was the site of the battle. If this is the case, then this will be the earliest battlefield located in the UK, pre-dating Maldon by some 300 years. This summary is based in part on a paper submitted to the Society of Museum Archaeologists Newsletter in spring 2012 but adds new information about the injuries suffered by the men who lost their lives in the battle.
Bryan Sitch, who is Hon. Secretary of the Medieval section, was careful to explain the justification for attributing the remains in Manchester Museum to Bede’s battle of Chester. The story of the collection dates back to the early 1930s when the Chester Archaeology Society was excavating the site of Heronbridge, to the south of Chester. When the skeletons were found it was assumed they were of Roman date because significant quantities of Roman material were also discovered on the site. Dr Elwyn Davies, who wrote the bone report appended to the site report, suggested that the trauma were inflicted by Roman cavalry swords or spathae:
‘Nine crania show signs of injury. Long cuts traverse the vaults of the skulls and their clean –cut nature suggest they were inflicted with a sharp-edged instrument of long leverage… some form of long sword or the spatha… it is of interest to note that these cuts are mostly along the vaults of the skull, which suggest that they might possibly have been inflicted by cavalry. If these injuries were received during life, and there is every appearance that this is the case, the individuals met with a violent death.’ (Davies 1933: 47)
The 1933 report stated that the remains would be deposited at the Manchester Museum and a detailed report lodged with the university library. On the basis of this published statement a number of people had enquired at Manchester Museum and the university library but neither the bones, nor Davies’ detailed bone report, could be located. Nor was there any evidence on paper, such as old index cards, museum minutes, acquisitions lists or annual reports to show that they had ever entered the Manchester Museum collections. It was only a chance re-reading of the 1933 skeletal report that enabled Bryan, who is Curator of Archaeology at Manchester Museum, to identify the bones in the collection. In a table appended to Elwyn Davies’ bone report, the various skeletons were listed and biometric data given in a number of columns. The number of each skeleton provided a heading at the top of each column of data. However, Bryan noticed that half way across the table the numbering of the skeletons suddenly changed and a dual numbering system was adopted. The second number was a letter from the Greek alphabet.
This turned out to be the key that solved the puzzle because during earlier surveys of the human remains collection Bryan had noticed a number of bones which had distinctive labels with Greek letters written on them. This suggested that the bones were from Heronbridge. This hypothesis was tested to see if the bones had the cuts and slices on them described by Elwyn Davies in his 1933 report. They did. Further confirmation was provided by the discovery of an impacted fracture on one of the skulls that was described in considerable detail by Davies in his report, and the fact that the dimensions of some of the bones matched those given in the published table of biometric data. There could be little doubt that the group of un-provenanced human bones did indeed come from Heronbridge, near Chester and had been excavated in the early 1930s.
One of the researchers who enquired about the Heronbridge bones was David Mason of Durham Archaeology. David directed the excavations on the Heronbridge site that were reported in Current Archaeology (Mason 2005: 517). Two male skeletons were lifted during this work and examined by palaeo-pathologist Malin Holst. The evidence of trauma, especially on the men’s skulls, as before, showed that they died under extremely violent circumstances (see Current Archaeology no.202, pp.520-521 for photographs of injuries to the skulls). The number of dead and the burial context, with the bodies laid out side-by-side in pits, suggested these were casualties that had been ‘tidied up’ following a significant engagement. The two skeletons lifted in 2004 were radiocarbon-dated with a 95% chance of probability of being within the range AD 430-640, or 59% probability within the range AD 530-620, and with 95% probability of being within the range AD 530-660, or 51% probability within range AD 595-645. These results are consistent with a calendar date in the early 7th century AD. As Manchester Museum’s skeletons were recovered from the same burial pits at Heronbridge, all things considered, they must also date from the same time and relate to the same historical event. However, this assumption needs to be tested by radiocarbon-dating.
Historically one contender for an engagement of this date, involving considerable numbers of combatants, would be the Battle of Chester which is described by Bede:
That very powerful king of the English Aethelfrith… collected a great army against Civitas Legionis which is called Legacaestr by the English and more correctly Caerlegion by the Britons, and made a great slaughter of that nation of heretics. When he was about to give battle and saw their priests, who had assembled to pray to God on behalf of the soldiers taking part in the fight, standing apart in a safer place, he asked who they were and for what purpose they had gathered there. Most of them were from the monastery of Bangor… After a three-days’ fast most of these had come to the battle in order to pray for the others. They had a guard named Brocmail whose duty it was to protect them from the swords of the barbarians while they were praying. When Aethelfrith heard why they had come he said “If they are praying to their God against us, they are fighting against us…” He therefore directed his first attack against them, and then destroyed the rest of the accursed army, not without heavy loss to his own forces. It is said that that of the monks who came to pray about 1200 perished in this battle and only 50 escaped by flight. Brocmail and his men took to their heels at the first assault leaving those whom they should have protected unarmed and exposed to the sword strokes of the enemy.
Bede Ecclesiastical History of the English People Book 2, chapter 2 (translated by Leo Sherley-Price for Penguin Classics)
In response to an article about the Heronbridge excavations that appeared in Current Archaeology, readers speculated whether the two skeletons lifted might be those of some of the monks who were slaughtered on the orders of Aethelfrith in Bede’s account of the battle (see above). It seems unlikely, however, that the remains are those of monks. In an article about the monastery of Bangor-is-y-coed, which supposedly provided a contingent of monks to supplement the ranks of the outnumbered British army, Prof. Nick Higham of the University of Manchester Department of Medieval History argued that the account should not be regarded as reliable (Higham 2001). Prof Higham argues that the presence of monks in this account owes more to Bede’s narrative purpose in writing ‘providential history’ than it does military realities on the battlefield.
Even if they are not the remains of the monks, there seems to be good reason to believe that the remains are those of men killed during the Battle of Chester. Dr Robert Stoddart kindly examined the Heronbridge skeletons. Skeleton 3 had suffered large sword injuries, mostly from the front, extending half way back across the calvarium, as well as further sword injuries to the side of the head and through the forehead. In addition there are triangular holes in the skull deficit, that could possibly represent stabs from pointed weapons such as spearheads, which is likely to be the weapon used by most of the rank-and-file at this period.
Skeleton Y (15) suffered even more extensive wounds including a deep, heavy sword or axe blow into the face, penetrating deeply and causing extensive fracturing and loss of internal bones of the skull. The injury appears to reach as far as the circle of Willis, as well as indirect damage to the brain stem and cerebellum. There must have been associated damage to the inferior parts of the frontal lobes and their blood supply. And of course we only know about these wounds because the bones have survived. We do not know about the soft tissue wounds because the flesh rotted away in the ground.Overall the trauma on the bones are similar to those recorded on the skeletons of six individuals excavated in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Eccles, Kent, who met a similarly violent death (Wenham 1989: 123).
In some cases the pattern of fractures of the skull suggest that the individual was wearing a helmet, perhaps similar to that excavated, complete with a boar as a crest, at Benty Grange in Derbyshire by Thomas Bateman in 1848. Iron bans supported plates of horn. The Wollaston Helmet is another 7th-century Anglo-Saxon boar-crested helmet found by archaeologists at a quarry near Wellingborough in Northamptonshire (Marzinzik 2007: 41). Much closer to home is the Coppergate helmet dating from the later 8th century AD.The Sutton Hoo is another high status helmet and fairly close in date to the time of the battle of Heronbridge.
Hollywood may give the impression that an ancient battle was a display of fancy sword-work, a veritable fencing match between the protagonists, but the reality, so far as the Heronbridge bones are telling us, was brutally pragmatic: chop the opponent off at the knees, bring him down and slice and hack at the head to make sure he was dead before stepping over the body to fight the next man. These men didn’t take part in a fencing match but went through a meat mincer! It brings home the callous, almost industrial nature of killing on the battlefield at this period, and fills one with a deep sense of compassion for the men who experienced this level brutality, which is all the more poignant at this time of year, at the time of writing, on Remembrance Day.
We are left with a group of about a dozen incomplete skeletons, many bearing edged weapon trauma, all men and all aged between their late teens and middle age. No women or children are present. This is clearly a biased sample. The burial context, in pits, the dead aligned side-by-side, and the numbers involved, suggests this was a battle of some size, although the numbers of men may not have been very great, up to 5000 in each army perhaps? The fact they were treated respectfully suggests they were buried by the victors, who Bede tells us were the Northumbrians. The British dead presumably were left on the field of battle for wild animals to feast upon until the belated reinforcements arrived. David Mason interprets the 5.7 hectare oval enclosure with bank and ditch beside the River Dee at Heronbridge to the Northumbrian army.
How did the material from Heronbridge enter the Manchester Museum collection? And why was it not recorded? The 1933 report states clearly that the human remains were deposited at the Museum but there is no mention of this acquisition in the Museum’s annual reports. However, we do know that in the late 1950s William Jones (‘Bill’) Varley (died 1976) deposited boxes of human remains at the Museum where they became the responsibility of the curator James Forde-Johnston. Varley is best known for the excavation of hill forts in the North West, the Midlands and Yorkshire (e.g. Varley 1936, 1948). Varley was a former student of H.J.Fleure (1877-1969), Professor of Geography at the University of Manchester, member of the Manchester Museum Committee, and author of numerous books and articles covering geography, archaeology, anthropology and anthropometrics (Garnett 1970). The Heronbridge excavation took place in 1930-1, i.e. about the time Fleure moved to Manchester from Aberystwyth. Both Varley and Fleure are acknowledged for supporting the excavation in the 1933 report, Varley and his wife in particular are credited with the recovery of the human remains (Davies 1933: 48). Davies, moreover, was a friend of Fleure. What we appear to have is evidence of a circle of people around Fleure who were all involved in the Heronbridge excavation and post-excavation work, and who might well have been encouraged to consider the Manchester Museum as an appropriate home for the material.
Given Fleure’s position on the Museum Committee and his keen academic interest in anthropology and anthropometrics, exemplified by his long-standing survey of the Welsh people, is it possible that Fleure asked for the Heronbridge remains to be sent to the Manchester Museum where he could study them further because he recognised their research significance? If so, he was to be disappointed because archive correspondence held by the Chester Archaeological Society shows that the Museum committee turned down the proposal to acquire the bones during the 1930s. Fleure retired in 1944. Varley must have transferred the human remains to the Museum before he left to teach in Africa in 1957. Former Keeper of Archaeology Prof. John Prag, remembers the Curator of Anthropology at Manchester, James Forde Johnston, telling him that Varley had not passed on records of the finds. Varley for his part may not have felt inclined to share what he knew about the bones, remembering that the Museum had turned down the chance to acquire them 15 years earlier! At present this seems to be the best explanation for how the Heronbridge bones entered the Manchester Museum collections and why it is, lacking supporting information, that they sat unrecognised on the shelves for some 60 years.
The re-discovery of the Heronbridge skeletons throws light on a fascinating period in early Medieval English history, the time of the so-called Dark Ages. Not only are they a historically and archaeologically significant group of material, they are arguably one of the earliest conflict assemblages that can be related to a historical source. In this they will be extremely useful for comparison with more recently excavated and more complete assemblages from the same site. Unfortunately, but perhaps not entirely unexpectedly, there are no associated finds with the skeletons. One would expect them to have been recycled on the battlefield or before burial. If comparable material was needed to complement the skeletons, one has only to think of the incredibly rich discoveries at Sutton Hoo in the 1930s, or the material found in the Staffordshire hoard, though of a somewhat later date. A selection of the remains was displayed in the Ancient Worlds galleries that opened at Manchester Museum last year. The Grosvenor Museum will show some of the remains in a temporary exhibition next year.
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Dr Robert Connelly of the University of Liverpool and Dr Robert Stoddart of the University of Manchester who both very kindly examined the Heronbridge remains; David Mason, Durham County Archaeologist, provided information about the more recent work at Heronbridge in advance of publication; Prof Nick Higham supplied a copy of his paper about the monastery of Bangor-is-y-coed and discussed the passage in Bede; Erik Grigg kindly provided photos of the site; and Adrian Havercoft shared his memories of Bill Varley.
Bibliography
Davies, E. (1933) ‘Appendix 1: report on the human remains’, Journal Chester Archaeological Society (New Series) 30 (1): 46-55
Garnett, Alice. ‘Herbert John Fleure. 1877-1969’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, London: The Royal Society, 1970): 253-278.
Hawkes, S.C. (ed.) 1989. Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph 21
Higham, N.J.(2001) “Bancornaburg: Bangor-is-y-coed Revisited”. In Archaeology of the Roman Empire A Tribute to the Life and Works of Professor Barri Jones, ed. Nicholas J. Higham, British Archaeological Journal International Series 940, 2001 311-318.
Marzinzik, S. (2007) The Sutton Hoo Helmet British Museum Press
Mason, D.J.P. (2005) ‘AD 616: the Battle of Chester’, Current Archaeology 202, 516-524.
Petch, J.A. et al. (1933) ‘Excavations at Heronbridge (1930-31)’. Journal of the Chester and North Wales Architectural Archaeological and Historic Society, New Series Volume 30, Part 1, 30, 5-45
Varley, W.J. (1936) ‘Recent investigations into the Origins of Cheshire Hill Forts’, Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society 51, 51-59.
Varley, W.J. (1948) ‘The Hill forts of the Welsh Marches’, Antiquaries Journal 105, 41-66.
Wenham, S.J. (1989) ‘Anatomical interpretations of Anglo-Saxon weapon injuries’. In Hawkes 1989: 123-139.
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 