Pre-History

Geology

The rocks beneath the greater part of the county of Herefordshire are Old Red Sandstone, which gives the characteristic colour to the local soil. These rocks originated in the Palaeozoic period as sediment laid down by rivers crossing a broad flat tropical plain. This material was the product of the gradual erosion of older rocks. The red colour is due to the presence of oxygen during the creation of these rocks — these sandstone layers have been described as the "rust of the earth". Although many millions of years of sedimentation formed newer strata of rocks above the sandstone, including those of the great Chalk Sea which once covered England, all of these have subsequently been eroded away.

The Ice Ages

Much, much more recently, the latest events which have shaped the landscape of the Hereford area are associated with the eight more recent of the periods of glaciation which have been taking place for the last 2½ million years. These glaciations or "Ice Ages" were separated by periods of relatively warmer climate — the interglacials.

About half a million years ago what is now Britain was a peninsula of mainland Europe and human-type creatures were living at Boxgrove in West Sussex. These are the earliest hominids known from Britain and were probably ancestral to both Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. This period is known to archaeologists as the early or "lower" Palaeolithic. The Boxgrove people were Homo Heidlebergensis and are found in both Africa and Europe.

The major river of southern Britain in this period is known as the Bytham. This ran eastwards through the southern midlands and East Anglia and what is now the North Sea but was then dry land. Stone tools found along its course suggest that this was the route that the earliest inhabitants followed into the Midland area.

The Thames followed a slightly more northerly route than it now does and another river, the Mathon, flowed south through Herefordshire.

About 4½ million years ago an Ice Age known as the Anglican glaciation totally obliterated the Mathon and Bytham river and diverted the Thames further south. The Anglican glaciation was followed by the Hoxnian interglacial (425,000–380,000). Although thousands of hand axes and other stone tools have been found in southern Britain suggesting widespread occupation at this time, there is very little evidence from the Midlands.

The most recent interglacial occurred between 128,000 to 118,000 years ago. This was the Ipswichian interglacial and was characterised by extreme variations in temperature, which may have altered by an average of 10°C within twenty, or perhaps even ten, years. Despite global warming, we are fortunate that our present interglacial is so stable.

Later Paleolithic

Caves at Symond's Yat in south Herefordshire have produced evidence of human activity spanning over 25,000 years. In these caves have been found stone and bone tools and the bones of species of giant deer, hyena, woolly rhinoceros and mammoth. These animals roamed a treeless tundra landscape where they became victims of the Paleolithic or "Old Stone Age" hunters who inhabited these caves. The final extent of the last glaciation was a glacier which terminated just to the west of where the city of Hereford now stands. During this period there would have been no humans or any other mammals in the area — there was nothing to eat.

The latest retreat of the ice at the beginning of the present interglacial was quite rapid. The outwash from the melting of this glacier formed the gravel beds on which the centre of Hereford is built. The retreat of the ice left behind a treeless tundra landscape into which grazing animals and their predators, including humans, migrated. There was no sea to cross — present-day Britain was not an island at the time and the Thames was a tributary of the Rhine.

By about 7,500 BC temperatures had risen to an average of several degrees higher than today. The River Wye had established something approaching its modern course and trees began to appear in the central Herefordshire plain. There has been a tendency to over-estimate the density of woodland in this period; it seems likely that the thick forests of popular imagination never existed and that there was always much open grassland.

Mesolithic

In 2001, a small group of Mesolithic flint tools was found during an archaeological excavation in the centre of Hereford. Although no structures were found, these finds may indicate that there was a habitation site in the immediate area. The Mesolithic was the period in which human beings first re-occupied land from which the ice had retreated, moving into the area before Britain was an island. It was these people who would form the population for thousands of years until they were replaced in large parts of what is now England by Germanic invaders in the early Middle Ages.

It used to be thought that Mesolithic people were nomadic, but recent archaeological evidence suggests that in Britain some at least were living in permanent houses by 7500 BC. Any settlement at Hereford would have had access to all the resources it needed to support a relatively comfortable life. The people would have gathered a range of food which grew naturally in the neighbourhood — nuts, roots and fruit. They would also have hunted birds, deer, wild pigs, hares (there were no rabbits) and other mammals. Nearby, fish were available in the River Wye. Not all wildlife was harmless of course: wolves might have posed some risk to small children, and hunting wild boar was certainly dangerous for adults. There were bears in the Mesolithic woods.

Neolithic

Agriculture originated in the Fertile Crescent — Palestine, Syria and Iraq — and gradually spread west into Europe, and this introduction of farming as a way of life defines the beginning of the Neolithic period. It was probably not brought about by a movement of people but rather by a diffusion of culture which changed the diet of the population with surprising rapidity.

There is now evidence that from around 4000 BC Neolithic farmers in Britain were living in villages and storing their grain in large barns. In Herefordshire there are as yet few identified occupation sites of the period but there was early Neolithic occupation within the area of the present City of Hereford at the Causeway Farm site, south-west of the Greyfriars Bridge. Another Neolithic settlement was near Dorstone in the Golden Valley. On Merbach Hill, not far from Dorstone, stands the Arthur's Stone chambered tomb. This was originally covered with earth and would have been used to bury the bones of the community's dead after the flesh had been removed by exposure to natural agencies — a practice known as exhumation.

Some pre-historic field systems have recently been tentatively identified in the county — at Eardisley, Kimbolton and Mansell Gamage. Elsewhere in Britain archaeologists have found field boundaries dating from the Neolithic period. So far no fields as early as this have been found in Herefordshire but it is likely that they existed in the area. Mixed farming has certainly been practiced continuously here for the last four thousand years.

Within the Hereford City area, an enormous circular enclosure dating to the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age period has been found beneath the military site occupied until recently by the SAS Regiment.

Bronze Age

Some of the earliest evidence of the Bronze Age in the county is in the form of burials in the valley of the Olchon Brook, on what is now the Welsh border. One of these is a classic early Bronze Age "Beaker" burial with a crouched human male skeleton accompanied by a handled "beaker". These beakers were pottery vessels often with a single handle — quite like the beer mugs or "jugs", which are still sometimes used in English pubs. They were probably drinking vessels, and analysis of the residues of their contents suggests that they did contain an early beer. Other Beaker burials in Herefordshire include a child near Aymestry in the north-west of the county and an adult at Wellington to the north of Hereford.

Originally a mound or "barrow" would have covered these graves. Later in the Bronze Age cremation became the standard form of disposal of the dead. The mound over them was still the characteristic funerary monument of the period. A few years ago the only known such barrows in Herefordshire tended to be on upland sites. More recently aerial photography has identified barrows in the county's river valleys.

The only settlement site so far identified from this period in Herefordshire is a Beaker period settlement near Staunton-on-Arrow. Elsewhere in the Arrow Valley a Middle Bronze Age dagger has been found. This had been made as a ritual offering and placed in a pond.

As more and more evidence from this period is found, our understanding of prehistoric Herefordshire is undergoing a revolution. Much of the new evidence from the Arrow Valley is the result of an intensive survey of that valley by the staff of Herefordshire Archaeology, Herefordshire Council's archaeological service. This was the first part of an on-going survey of Herefordshire river valleys, which has continued into the valleys of the rivers Frome, Lugg and Wye. In 2004 Herefordshire Archaeology co-operated with the Bromyard Local History Society to survey the Frome Valley.

Currently two more projects are running in this series. Herefordshire Archaeology is running an investigation into the Lugg Valley together with Leominster Local History Society and Archenfield Archaeology is carrying out the archaeological part of the "Landscape History of the Wye Valley" project for the River Wye Preservation Trust.