About 2,000 years ago, they reckon the Romans first built a timber bridge to carry Dere Street – the main road from York to Hadrian’s Wall – directly over the river.
The Tees, though, is notorious for its floods, and around 180AD it washed that first wooden bridge away.
The Romans rebuilt, this time 180 metres to the east and this time in stone.
From the new booklet: the three crossings of Piercebridge: or is it only two crossings and one dam?However, the tempestuous Tees attacked this bridge around 320AD, washing its central timber section away. The floods also caused the river to alter its course, moving it to the north, which is why the surviving stonework is left high and dry in a field to the south.
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Indeed, this movement – this siltification – was happening in Roman times and, it is argued, after the catastrophic flood, the southern section of the bridge was converted into a causeway – which is why the stonework that survives looks nothing like a visitor would imagine a bridge to look.
Durham University archaeologists in 1977 ponder the massive stonework they’d unearthed at Piercebridge: they said it was bridgeThat stonework was only discovered in 1972, when there weren’t any Romans around to explain what they had been up to, and so the story the archaeologists have since pieced together is based on evidence on the ground, evidence from other locations and also a bit of educated conjecture.
But there are some holes…
No northern abutments have been discovered; no northern approach road has been discovered so how did anyone get across; the causeway appears to be low quality stonework for what was a major road; there don’t appear to have been any parapets on the bridge and no votive offerings have been found on the riverbed beneath it.
In the 1980s, archaeologist Raymond Selkirk put dynamite in those holes and blew the bridge theory apart.
Raymond Selkirk, outside Chester-le-Street churchThis wasn’t a bridge for crossing the river, he said. This was a dam, or a weir, used to control the depth of water in the river so that barges could sail up the Tees to Piercebridge.
Selkirk had long had a belief that the hills on straight Roman roads were alright for centurions to march up and down, but not for heavily laden carts drawn by oxen. Therefore, much Roman equipment had to be moved in another way – and Piercebridge, to his eyes at least, proved that they were using river transport.
English Heritage’s guide to Piercebridge says: “Controversy has surrounded the Piercebridge stone bridge. In the 1980s, the late Raymond Selkirk suggested that it was a dam associated with Roman-period management of the Tees and intended to allow its use for navigation. While his ideas initially received much publicity, they are not generally accepted; other researchers have demonstrated their impracticality and the lack of genuine evidence to support Selkirk’s suppositions.”
The Piercebridge Formula: Fact or Fiction, by Bill Trow and Mark Feeley. The cover features an image by Darin Smith showing what the dam looked likeBut a new booklet has been put together by his supporters in the Northern Archaeology Group (NAG) to keep his theories alive and to provide new evidence to give them credence.
“I want to get the information out to academics and other interested people because it is being completely ignored at the moment because it is so controversial,” says lead author Bill Trow, who has spent more than 10 years verifying Selkirk’s theories.
Roman coins found by divers Bob Middlemass and Rolfe Mitchinson in the river at PiercebridgeFor example, NAG divers have been scouring the bed of the Tees at Piercebridge for years. Beneath the first wooden bridge, they have uncovered masses of votive offerings – brooches, hairpins, bracelets, rings and 1,294 coins – because the Romans loved to throw items into a river when they crossed it as a gesture of thanks to the local gods.
But the divers found absolutely nothing beneath the second bridge – so does this suggest it wasn’t being used as a crossing and had some other purpose?
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Whatismore, some of the finds from the timber bridge are from the 4th Century and yet it was supposed to have been washed away in the 2nd Century – does this suggest the Romans kept on using the timber bridge and so would not have needed a second stone bridge?
Selkirk theorised that the second bridge was in fact a dam, and he said that there would have been a canal to allow barges to sail around it and dock in Piercebridge where there was a harbour.
The Piercebridge weir and canal system, by Darin Smith from the new bookletIn the last decade, NAG members have been investigating the northern bank of the Tees where a natural beck joins a medieval mill race. Together, these channels once powered Carlbury Mill which stood on the riverside beneath the A67 until it burned down in 1889.
The footbridge on the riverside path from High Coniscliffe to Piercebridge going over what could just be a medieval mill race but, with its stonework including a slot for a sluice gate, could it have been a Roman canal?Anyone who has walked on the footpath from High Coniscliffe to Piercebridge will have been intrigued by the stonework that is still on the sides of these channels. It has been shaped as if to take sluice gates, perhaps to make a couple of locks (a massive advance for the Romans), so could this mill race have been a Roman canal?
“The quality of the stonework, the cutting into bed rock to create a channel, and the length and depth of the canal demonstrate that it was not constructed as a medieval mill race,” says the booklet. “Such a vast undertaking would have made the mill unprofitable. The canal’s use as a mill race only makes sense if it already existed in a good state of repair, in which it could be easily utilised by the miller.”
The altar found in 1709 above where the canal/mill race joins to the Tees between High Coniscliffe and Piercebridge. The altar has since been lostIn 1709, above where the canal/mill race/beck joins the River Tees, an 11-inch high Roman altar was found. The inscription on it says it was erected by a surveyor called Attonius Quintianus who dedicated it to a god called Mars Condates, a Celtic god usually associated with the confluence of waters.
“It is tempting to think that Quintianus placed his altar here so that those making an offering on it would be able to view his navigational works in the valley below,” says the book.
Perhaps those people looking down on Quintianus’ canal would have been able to see that it was 3ft deep and had barges – probably propelled by poles – bringing supplies up to the harbour at Piercebridge to keep its fort going and perhaps to be transferred to smaller craft to go upstream to the Roman positions at Bowes and Greta Bridge. By return, barges from Piercebridge would have taken south Durham and North Yorkshire produce, like grain, to larger ships anchored off the mouth of the Tees to feed the empire.
Is it all too far fetched?
“Selkirk was a strong advocate of water-borne transport and, in his opinion, the site at Piercebridge provided the prime example of how the Romans manipulated the rivers of north-east Britain to supply their army,” concludes the book. “The work of NAG shows his theory is still valid today.”
The contentious bridge, or dam, being unearthed in 1972 when the southern bank of the river was quarried for gravelThe Piercebridge Formula: Fact or Fiction by Bill Trow and Mark Feeley is privately published and is being distributed free to libraries and interested groups. To find out more, email williamtrow44@gmail.com
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Archaeologist Peter Scott led the 1970s excavations and was the first to posit the second stone bridge theory