The Archaeology of Burton Point: The Heritage Open Day at Burton Mere RSPB
Prof Howard MR Williams writes: Burton Point is a promontory on the south-west side of the Wirral peninsula overlooking the Dee Estuary. On it, there is the fragment of a prehistoric (and possibly early medieval) promontory fort.
On Wednesday 14th September 2022 I was delighted to help the reserve’s heritage volunteer Gina Couch in giving talks and tours of the promontory fort within the Burton Mere RSPB nature reserve as part of their Heritage Open Day.
Gary Crawford-Coupe published a useful survey of Burton Point in 2005, appearing in volume 80 of the Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society. Read it HERE.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/details.xhtml?recordId=3205290
I approached the site from two perspectives, drawing up on Gary’s inferences based on contour survey and geophysical survey as well as his summary of the antiquarian accounts and stray finds.
First, from a landscape perspective, I talked about how Burton Point was an important landmark on the Dee Estuary which was accessible from the estuary until the canalised Dee in the early 18th century took away the river. As such, I considered it an important and persistent place through prehistoric and historical periods for estuarine communities.
Second, I talked about the specific aspects of the archaeology from the Point and how little we know about the detail of the story. These include:
Neolithic stone tools; the bank-and-ditch which is most likely date to the pre-Roman Iron Age and represent a small defended settlement; among many possible interpretations of the ‘skeletons’ reportedly found on the Point in the 19th century is that the promontory had the focus of an early medieval ecclesiastical site.
Other early medieval sites in proximity include Neston, Hilbre Island, West Kirby, Irby (and on the Welsh side) Basingwerk and Holywell were discussed; the medieval and post-medieval quarrying of the Point which is interesting in itself as well as explains how we have so little of the archaeology surviving from earlier periods. There’s so much more to learn about Burton Point. In that regard, I was happy to raise with visitors the many unanswered questions about the site and its landscape context through time.
Here’s my TikTok video from the day:
https://www.tiktok.com/@archaeodeath/video/7143348317425126661
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road