Open day at Street House, Loftus, to showcase new finds

Street House, near Loftus on the east Cleveland coast, is the site that keeps on giving, and this year it has yielded up the earliest pottery ever to be found in Britain, and on Sunday, September 15, it will be among items on display at Loftus Town Hall. Visitors will also be able to visit the dig site, where they will see Teesside’s first industry in operation.

Over several decades, Street House has been slowly giving up its secrets. It first hit the headlines about 20 years ago, when a large 7th Century Saxon cemetery, with more than 100 graves, was discovered. The most important grave belonged to “the Saxon princess”, who had been buried surrounded by some of the finest jewellery made in the country in her day.

A Roman villa, from AD370, was discovered and then Teesside’s oldest house, from 3,600BC, and then, a couple of years ago, came news of the discovery of Teesside’s first industry: salt-making.

Dating from 3,800BC, this is the oldest salt-making site in Europe and it takes us back to a fascinating moment in time, when our ancestors stop being nomadic hunter-gatherers and settle down to start farming.

This year’s discoveries add further information to the story of Street House. Here, archaeologist Dr Steve Sherlock tells us about three of the most exciting:

Excavating the 6,000-year-old saltworks at Street House

1. “We’ve found the earliest pottery ever found in Britain, 6,000 years old, and it was made on this site so it is spectacular,” says Steve. The pottery is from a “carinated bowl” – a cooking vessel with a distinctive rounded bottom that enabled it to settle into the ashes of a fire. Street House has also revealed details of how these Neolithic bowls were made.

“People had presumed they were being dried and then fired in small bonfires, but we believe they are being made on site in a furnace we have just excavated, which makes this unique.”

Fragments from carinated bowls, like this complete one, were found at Street House, Loftus

A replica of briquetage vessel with salt crystals in its base

2. The people of Street House were making large quantities of salt in a surprisingly sophisticated operation which used the latest technology of 6,000 years ago. Salt was made from seawater, probably collected from Skinningrove, and carried for its final reduction up to Street House, where there was a fire with a flue on which pans sat with brine in.

“We believe we have a unique type of pottery here that made these briquetage vessels – dishes with a flat bottom that gave them a greater surface area on the heat and this led to the crystallisation of the salt,” said Steve.

‘Briquetage’ is a very coarse pottery, and once the salt had settled on the flat bottom, the vessel was broken to get every valuable crystal out. 3. “This year, we have discovered seven jet beads,” said Steve, “about half-an-inch in diameter, that would have been shaped by flint tools. Some have been drilled out to make jewellery, but others have a recess on the inside as if they are buttons, or sliders, to fasten a cloak. Jet was highly prized as a high status item – remember, Neolithic people don’t have metal jewellery.

“I think the jet would have been collected from the cliffs near Street House – people always refer to it as “Whitby jet”, but there was no Whitby then. If you went 12 miles down the coast, there would just have been an inlet. Street House was the neolithic capital of the north.”

Corn grinding stone and pounder found at Street House

It's not just the discoveries that make Street House important but what they tell us about the state of mankind.

“I estimate they are making one ton of salt a year, and that is spectacular,” says Steve. “Think how much salt you put on your chips, and they didn’t even have chips in those days.

“Salt lasts years, and they are making it on an industrial scale. They cannot use it all personally so they are trading it, and it is a valuable product – it is life changing.

“At this time, there is a change of mentality. People are ceasing to be nomads, ceasing to see an animal and think if I kill it, I can have tea tonight. Instead, they are thinking if I nurture that animal, it will give me milk and provide haulage through the winter, so this is the change from being a hunter-gatherer to being a farmer, settling down and looking after your animals and crops.”

Street House’s part in that change is the salt. For the first time, it allows meat to be preserved, encouraging the hunter-gatherers to think beyond the day-to-day towards a more planned, farmed existence.

“This is a very important site, not just in Yorkshire but across the whole country,” says Steve.

“Next year, we are excavating a stone circle which we have found this year. It is a ditch 15 metres in diameter filled with stones, probably from around 2,000BC. It is probably a ceremonial site, but what was going on in the middle is the enigma, is the question, we have to answer next year.”

• From 1pm to 3pm on Sunday, September 15, the finds are on display in Loftus Town Hall, along with an exhibition put together by Canadian students from Waterloo university in Ontario who have joined this year’s excavation. At 2.15pm, a walking tour will leave the Town Hall for a tour of the site, which will be open until 4.30pm. There will be demonstrations of the salt-making process. Admission is free.