In the foothills and lower valleys of the Cheviot Hills in Northumberland, northern England, you can still see the remains, fossilised within the later landscape, of stone round houses occupied over two thousand years ago in the Iron Age.
Averaging around 5 metres in diameter, only the lower courses of the stone walls now remain. Elsewhere in these border hills the platforms levelled on the hillsides to take even earlier timber walled houses are still clearly visible. The walls have long since gone, but the circular platforms were snugly made to contain the homes. Bronze Age houses were surrounded by field systems and stood apart from their neighbours while Iron Age and Romano British houses were frequently enclosed within small farmsteads surrounded by substantial stone banks.
Roundhouses first appear in the archaeological record towards the end of the third millennium BC. In Britain they formed the vast majority of dwellings for over two thousand years, while rectangular buildings were the preferred form throughout much of Europe. In a recent study Rachel Pope of Liverpool University reckons that there are now almost 4000 excavated examples from sites in Britain and Ireland, and many more await discovery and exploration. Most of the recently examined houses come from lowland sites discovered by excavation or aerial photography, homes which have long vanished into the landscape, their postholes or palisade trenches existing only as stains in the soil.
At one such site at Corrstown in Northern Ireland archaeologists uncovered a complete Bronze Age village of 52 round houses, all apparently occupied at the same time. The settlement was well ordered and the houses close together, some with annexes. Each appeared to have had a porch.
Life in an Ancient Round House
Roundhouses are sensible dwellings. Topped with a conical roof at an angle of around 45 degrees thatched with straw, they cope well with the vagaries of the British weather. With a fire burning continually inside they would have been warm and snug. Reconstructions and excavation have suggested that most probably stood only a generation, as timber support posts rot in the ground after fifty years or so. A typical roundhouse may have been home to a dozen people, perhaps an extended family. In addition animals may well have been quartered with their owners during the cold days of winter.
The interior was probably neat and tidy, with different parts allocated for different purposes, for example storage, cooking and sleeping space. Communal activities no doubt took place around the hearth. There was probably no chimney, and the smoke had to find its way out through the thatched roof.
Interestingly, timber walled houses could be made larger than their stone walled counterparts. This is because walls of sunken logs can support the large timbers needed to hold up the roof better than drystone structures. As a result of this the later Iron Age and Roman period stone roundhouses are generally smaller, around 5m in diameter.
Sources:
Rachel Pope (2008) Roundhouses - 3000 years of prehistoric design Current Archaeology 222, 14-21
Malachy Conway (2004) Corrstown: A large Middle Bronze Age village Current Archaeology 195, 120-123
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