Bygone Burnley: Castercliffe, with historian Roger Frost MBE 28-4-25
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00:00We're here at Castercliffe today, and Castercliffe is above Cone and Nelson and Briacliff, and it's a very ancient site. It's probably the most ancient site that we will visit in our tour around northeast Lancashire.
00:18It is marked on maps as a Roman camp, but in actual fact it predates the Romans and was built in the Iron Age between 700 BC and the time when the Romans actually came into the country in the early 4th century.
00:37So that's about 800 years, the best part of a millennium. We don't know exactly when it was built. We know about its dimensions. We know how it's constructed.
00:49There have been several digs here, but very unfortunately the digs have proved to be inconclusive. There's very little evidence of the place ever being used.
01:01But it's a massive site, and it would have taken an absolutely enormous amount of energy and manpower to build it.
01:14The structure is an encampment. It could have been a fort. It could have been a small town, a village.
01:27It could have been here that the production of various things were made. It could have been a place where the local population retired too when they were under threat of invasion from somewhere else.
01:46Would you know who built it though? Not the individual, but we know the tribe.
01:51The tribe was the Brigantes. The Romans gave them the name because they were sort of a lawless, very tough tribe, and the Romans had great difficulty in controlling them.
02:09And it comes from the Latin word for a brigand. The Romans regarded the Brigantes as lawless and difficult to manage.
02:19They lived in the areas in which we are now, the upper, hilly, forested areas of the past that were difficult to control.
02:31But the Romans, we do think, did occupy the fort for a short period of time.
02:37We don't know how long. We don't know how long. It might have only been when the fort at Rinchester was destroyed and they decided temporarily to resuscitate this fort and make it a centre of operations for a short period of time.
03:00Castercliff.
03:01Castercliff has got phenomenal views around the whole area. In this direction we've got Briarcliff and from Briarcliff you get directly into Yorkshire over Widiop and that is a very ancient route.
03:18So that might have been available to people who lived here and around Castercliff in prehistoric and Roman times.
03:29Then coming round we've got Nelson, which is obviously a new town. There wouldn't be anything at all there very much when the Romans were there.
03:40And Pendle Hill here is very prominent from where we are on the top of Trastercliff and we come round to Colm but in between the two there, or sorry, close to them is long distance views of Engleborough and Wernside.
04:02It's a bit misty today, but the Yorkshire Dales are over there and if we were a little bit high we'd see a little bit more of the Yorkshire Dales directly ahead of us.
04:14We're coming round, we come back into Troden and to the area on the way to Hebden Bridge.
04:23So you've got, it's a wonderful view, wonderful sight. The problem is, as I indicated before, we're not sure what it was really used for.
04:36What we can tell you is that the sight, it commands several long distance views from the Lancashire coast or perhaps even Bridchester towards Yorkshire.
04:55And in the Iron Age, before the Romans arrived, it probably commanded a route from Ireland into what is now Yorkshire.
05:07So that is one of the reasons it was placed here. But we just don't know.
05:13However, what really should happen, as far as I'm concerned, is that the local council, and maybe the county council as well, should recognise what we've got here.
05:24We've got one of the largest historic monuments in the whole of North East Lancashire and nobody from any of the councils have had the common sense to tell people, look what we've got.
05:40We've got an Iron Age fort in a magnificent position. There's no information about it. There's no directions.
05:48We've just been on a little footpath that leads us to here. And there is a sign, but it's a sign for a planning application.
05:58It doesn't tell us anything about the fort. And it's very remiss of all the councils involved.
06:07Let's walk through a section of the rampart of the fort. The rampart is not completely intact because over the years it's been used for agriculture, farmers have doubtless plied it.
06:22And we know also that mining has taken place on the top of the fort. So features are not as clear as they could be.
06:35Look, a good scheme could restore this to something that people would want to see and would want to visit.
06:44And I'd like to see that done, particularly by the councils we mentioned before.
06:51But the whole structure needs sort of signposting, if I put it that way. It needs explaining by the archaeologists and the historians involved.
07:05And it would be a very good environmental and heritage scheme for the whole of this area if it was undertaken.