It was great to see the Guardian article from yesterday about our local ancient site at Stanwick. It was a bit disappointing that the journalist, Kevin Rushby, didn’t do much research apart from mis-reading the Wikipedia article that I wrote a few years ago. The famous archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler (almost certainly incorrectly) concluded the site had been built not by Queen Cartimandua but by her ex-husband Venutius as a base to fight the Romans. More recent and accurate findings by Professor Colin Haselgrove and colleagues were that it was the seat of Cartimandua and a site of important ritual. Chariot wheels were not found at the site, these iron bands were the wrong size to be chariot wheels and in fact bounded a wooden stave-built vessel that was found outside the site, just north of Melsonby, which probably contained cremated remains from a funeral pyre and the chariot fittings and chain mail which were part of the ‘Stanwick hoard’ and our symbol, the Stanwick horse, was probably fixed to it. Nice photo though.
by Liz