Contact the Duddon Valley Local History Group
Email: pat@duddonhistory.org.uk
Frith Hall in the beautiful Duddon Valley. A rugged and unspoiled part of the Lake District National Park.
Formed in early 1999 to provide talks and information on local history aimed at encouraging and increasing knowledge of the area.
Meetings are held monthly at 7.30pm on the 4th Tuesday of the month in Seathwaite Parish Room (excepting December).
This is an almost unique collaboration between the professional archaeologists of the Lake District National Park and the trained volunteers of the Duddon Valley Local History Group, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
In the three years from 2006 to 2008, this partnership surveyed most of the Duddon Valley in southwest Cumbria for archaeological remains, and carried out an excavation of a large Bronze Age ring cairn.
Though our ‘official’ R2R survey activity ended some 12 months ago, we continue to meet as a team most Tuesdays and visit sites of archaeological interest.
Sites have included the Bronze Age settlement at Barnscar, Sampsom’s Bratful and the various tumuli on Stockdale Moor, ring monuments at Stickle Tarn above Langdale, the extensive Romano-British settlement near Kirkby Lonsdale and in Greenburn, Little Langdale – discovery of a previously unrecorded cairnfield.
We've "Walked in the footsteps of Mary Fair" in Eskdale and even ventured underground in a copper mine.
New finds recorded and reported to the LDNPA Archaeology team have included an excellent example of a Penannular Ring Monument at Brantrake Crag on Birker Fell and the ruins of a Pill Box manufactory at Greenholme Beck, near Water Yeat.
Most recently in the Prior Park area near Conishead Priory we followed on the ground an ancient track/roadway, seen from an aerial photo and regarded by Antiquarians (Thomas West amongst others) as a Roman Road from the coast inland to Dalton in Furness. We did not find a hoard of Roman coins, but nearby we did discover this rare example of a horse gin used to pump water from a well.
Further afield we are now planning a walk along Hadrian's Wall Trail from Segedunum (Wallsend) to Luguvalium (Carlisle) in June next year.
'Time Team' and particularly the R2R Project have done so much to whet our appetites for archaeology which has now become insatiable!
