EARLY INHABITANTS OF CHESHIRE
A few years ago some workmen digging on the high ground of Alderley Edge
came across a number of flint stones, which from their shape and the
marks of chipping upon them had clearly been fashioned by the hand of
man. Some of the flints were shaped like a knife blade with a sharp edge
on their entire length, and others of a more or less oval shape had a
keen edge on one of their curves. The former were the knives with which
the earliest men of Cheshire cut the flesh of animals for food; the
latter were the scrapers with which they removed the flesh from the
bones or from the hides that provided them with clothing.
Flints, however, are not naturally found in any of the Cheshire rocks;
they must be sought for in the districts where chalk hills abound.
Clearly therefore these men must have brought their tools and weapons
with them when they first came into Cheshire from the east or from the
south. Afterwards, no doubt, they bargained for them, giving skins and
furs in exchange.
Men first made their homes in Cheshire when the glaciers of the Great
Ice Age retreated northwards and the climate became more suitable for
human habitation. A flint arrow-head found during some excavations at
Clulow Cross near Wincle, tells us that men lived then by hunting,
depending for their food on the flesh of wild beasts. They lived in
caves or in holes dug in the ground. The roughly-chipped stone axe in
the Grosvenor Museum was made by these men.
The Flint men, or men of the Old Stone Age, probably came originally
from the mainland of Europe to which Britain at that time was joined,
the North Sea and English Channel being then dry land. The reindeer,
the mammoth, the wild ox, and packs of hungry wolves and hyenas roamed
over Cheshire in those days.
These Flint men were succeeded by other races of New Stone men who found
that they could manufacture their necessary tools out of the boulders
embedded in the drift and boulder-clay. The men who dug up the knives
and scrapers of Alderley found near Mottram Common a heap of small
boulders carefully placed in a pit dug in the ground and clearly
selected for some useful purpose. For out of these stones were to be cut
and shaped stone hammer-heads with which they learned to crush copper
ore and axe-heads to cut down trees. Some of the hammer-heads themselves
have been found in this locality, and they are made of a stone similar
to that of the unbroken boulders. The stone 'celt' or axe-head in Vernon
Park Museum shows that they were improving in their skill and
workmanship, for their tools were no longer chipped into their required
shape but ground with hard mill-stones and afterwards smoothed and
polished. Afterwards, as you may see from the specimen in the Grosvenor
Museum, which has a hole cut through it, the New Stone men learned how
to fit handles to their axe-heads.
In the course of time these primitive dwellers learned to tame and train
animals for their service and use. They were protected from attack by
wild beasts by circles of piled stones or raised earth covered with
turf. Traces of these circles have in recent years been found at
Alderley Edge, but they have been mostly levelled for agricultural
purposes.
They also taught themselves the art of pottery, making rough jars and
urns of sun-dried clay and sand, jars wherein to store their water, and
urns in which to place the remains of their dead. One of these urns, dug
up at Stretton, may be seen in the Warrington Museum.
The Stone men were succeeded by tribes of an entirely different race
called Celts. The Celts drove out the earlier inhabitants from their
Cheshire homes, compelling them to seek refuge in Wales and Ireland.
They came not all at once but in successive waves, the earliest arrivals
being the Goidelic or Gaelic Celts, who in their turn were ousted by
the Brythonic Celts, from whom the name of Briton is derived. These are
the ancestors of the Welsh nation.
The Brythons, or Britons as we may now call them, were a more
intelligent and civilized race than any that had hitherto dwelt in the
land. They were a pastoral people, and brought with them great herds of
cattle, as well as horses and dogs. They could spin and sew, making
their spindles and needles of bone or horn, and grew corn, which they
ground with hand-mills.
But the Britons must have been continually fighting against fresh
incoming tribes, for on some of the hill-tops of Cheshire you may see
the camps and earthworks which they made for their defence and refuge in
time of war. Suitable positions were chosen, with one side guarded by
precipitous cliffs if possible, the whole being enclosed except on the
steep side by a raised rampart of earth and a ditch. These earthworks
are circular or oval with gaps on either side for entrances. At Bucton
Castle, high above Mossley and the Tame Valley, at Kelsborrow Castle in
Delamere Forest, and Maiden Castle in the Broxton Hills, British
encampments may still be seen.
The Britons were very particular about the burial of their dead. Over
the graves of their chiefs they erected great round 'barrows'. Many of
these barrows, or, to give them their Latin name, 'tumuli,' may be seen
to-day, and several of them have been opened and examined. In a field
near Oakmere, not far from the high-road that passes through Delamere
Forest, is a cluster of barrows called the 'Seven Lows' which clearly
mark an early settlement of considerable importance. They vary in size
from fifteen to thirty yards in diameter. One of them, when opened, was
found to contain an urn with charred human remains within it. The urn
was inverted, the better to support the weight of soil above it, and was
set in the middle of a floored space over which was a thin layer of
charcoal. This seems to show that a funeral pyre was erected on which
the body was first burnt, the remains being then gathered and placed in
the urn. The barrow was erected over the urn by piling stones and
covering them with soil and turf. Burial urns have been found at Castle
Hill Cob and Glead Hill Cob in Delamere Forest, and at Twemlow where
there is a group of five tumuli.
In the hilly district of East Cheshire, where rocks are plentiful, the
burial grounds were marked by circles of upright stones. There are some
remains of such circles on the moorland near Clulow Cross. Among the
burnt bones in a barrow at this spot were found a flint[1] knife and
arrow-head, for it was believed that the dead man would require his
tools and weapons after death just as in his lifetime. For the same
reason often the wives and slaves of a chief were sacrificed or cremated
at his death to serve and wait upon him in another world. The barrows
were also used by the tribes as a place of assembly for their religious
rites, when prayers and human victims were offered to their gods and to
the spirits of their dead leaders, who, as they believed, would continue
to watch over them and help them in battle.
[1] Flint weapons no doubt continued to be used, especially in
remote and hilly districts, even after the arrival of the Celts.
The Brythonic Celts came to Britain between 1,000 B.C. and 500 B.C., and
were acquainted with the use and manufacture of bronze implements. Hence
the period during which they arrived and lived in Britain is called the
Bronze Age. The bronze 'celt' in the Grosvenor Museum was found in the
camp at Kelsborrow, and when the railway was cut at Wilmslow an urn
containing bones and a bronze dagger was dug up. The urn and dagger are
now in the museum at Peel Park, Salford.
The river valleys and the lowlands of Cheshire were in those days swampy
and unhealthy, so the Britons lived as much as possible in the higher
parts, which were also more suitable for agricultural pursuits. On the
crests or slopes of hills were tracks or ridgeways for pack-horses,
leading from one settlement to another. On Werneth Low, Eddisbury Hill,
and Alderley Edge, these ancient ridgeways may still be traced. When men
went down to the rivers to fish they carried on their backs light
coracles of plaited reeds covered with skin, such as the fishermen
still use on the Dee between Farndon and Bangor where the water is too
rapid or shallow for boats.
Roman writers have left us descriptions of the Britons who lived in the
centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ; from them we learn
that, although the British tribes were mainly occupied in fighting
against one another, a certain amount of trade was carried on with
travellers and merchants from other lands, and that they dwelt in
'towns' or collections of wattled huts surrounded by a stockade and
ditch. From the numerous fragments of British pottery that have been
unearthed in the neighbourhood of Chester, we gather that there was a
British town of considerable importance on the site of the later city,
and traders from the Mediterranean, who visited this country, may well
have moored their vessels in the tidal waters of the Dee.