Luxurious Bed and Breakfast in Herefordshire
offas dyke walk
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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 7500BC. 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.
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 slow diffusion of culture. 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, few occupation sites have yet been identified but there was a Neolithic settlement 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 probably been practiced continuously here for the last four thousand years. A prehistoric flint tool found in the centre of Hereford. Although the town cannot be dated to earlier than the seventh century, there has always been some sort of human activity on the site.
Some of the earliest evidence of the Bronze Age in the county is in the form of burials in the valley of the Olchen 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 with a single handle - quite like the beer mugs or 'jugs', which are still sometimes used in English pubs.