Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

Huntcliff, Saltburn

A dramatic farewell for Cleveland Way walkers as they begin their descent into Saltburn and turn west inland. Huntcliff rises 110 metres above the North Sea. Ironstone and sandstone strata form the upper shear cliff with softer mudstones lower down, all laid down in the Jurassic geological time period. The cliffs are losing a constant battle with the sea with frequent rock falls. The Romans had a signalling station on the promontory to watch for raiding parties of the barbarians of Denmark and Germany. This would have been to the right of the small bush in the photo. When the site was excavated in the early 1910s just half of the fort remained, but even this has now succumbed to the ravishes of the North Sea, in total probably of the order of 40 metres of cliff. During the excavation, the skeletons of fourteen men, women and children were found to have been thrown into a well. It is thought that after the Romans left Britain, the fort was occupied by local Britons but was eventually overrun by Anglo-Saxon raiders.




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