Britain’s MOST Overlooked PREHISTORIC WONDER

Hello, once again we're putting an incredible and overlooked northern antiquity on camera and exploring its fascinating history because at Bleasdale we have a unique arrangement of bronze age timber circles set in a stunning natural arena and there are towers even up to the current day suggesting that pagan stuff is being practiced at the circle. We'll hike to this remote site to see what it looks like today plus we'll leave our comfort zone and venture into the big city to see what was found there. And I've got a problem. It's a big problem in fact with another YouTube historian who has made some claims about the Bleasdale circle linking it to the Urnfield culture and I disagree with that. In this video then I'm going to show you how this is not a place where the Urnfield culture folk from the Danube came and settled in what we now call northern England. It is in fact a place where a far more ancient people held on to their customs and their way of life. It's about putting right careless internet mistakes, reclaiming locally respected history that is more widely ignored. Forget about Woodhenge just for a moment and marvel at prehistory in the north where we have concrete posts too. Well look at this I've picked a fine day to have a conflict with another YouTube antiquarian. Please do not worry it's not going to be an argumentative video it's just an excuse basically to show you something pretty amazing. Out there in this private land is what is possibly Lancashire's most important and little known least known bronze age site. Now although out there there are tarmac roads if you look at the map they just show us footpaths and there are private signs you cannot drive out there so I'm gonna have to hike in. I can see the church which is in the middle of this private estate and our Woodhenge of the north lays way out over the other side of that. Now in terms of thinking about why they built the monument here I don't know if you can sort of make out that it is surrounded on three sides by these high bowland fells. It's sort of it is sitting in a sort of a bowl in a way. We believe that it was all forested here there are still remnants although it's a very open landscape down here there are still remnants of ancient forest in little nooks and crannies here you can sense that the forest was here and Bleasdale circle was built when the forest was still there the timber posts that we're going to be talking about came from the trees that grew here. Look at that isn't it great when you can see that oldie worldie lettering on the ordnance survey map Bleasdale circle. So what I'm going to do in this video I'm going to use the long hike in to tell you about the discovery the excavation of the Bleasdale circle plus we'll do an interlude to go and have a look at some museums and sort of talk finds what came out of the site and then by the time we've done all of that hopefully we I will have made it to the circle and we can take a look to see what it looks like today. Hi now you may have noticed that I am not wearing my big coat and it appears that I have been fooled by a fall's spring so sunny and pleasant in fact the temperature was about 10 degrees according to the car but now I'm here there's an air that kills there's definitely an air that kills today it's freezing but hopefully I'll warm up as we get closer to our objective. One of the many things that I love about Bleasdale circle is the huge gap that we seem to have between it being in use we think between sort of 2200 BC up to about 1700 1600 BC we don't then really hear of anything at Bleasdale until you get sort of past the Norman conquest the only intimation of any sort of activity there's nothing Roman here in between is the name Bleasdale probably Norse blease blaze patch of light possibly on the fells so basically then what we've got at the Bleasdale circle is we've got an inner circle which was found to comprise of 11 significant large chunky posts with space of smaller spacer posts in between a ditch lined also with timber in the center of the inner circle there was a small mound in that they found two collared bronze age early collared bronze age burial urns there was sign of cremation and material textile found in those and in one of them in the mouth of one of them a smaller sort of incense cup highly decorated on the bottom as if that was meant to be on show there was an entrance to this inner circle a gap marked by two further posts that was out to the eastern side and then around that an even larger circle a palisade if you like with large posts and smaller spacer posts in between those as well there was an entrance in the southwestern corner of that larger palisaded circle and there was some sign of potentially that there may have been some burnt down huts in that palisaded area at some stage it was between 1898 and 1900 that the 76 year old Shadrach Jackson normally known for finding Lancashire's lost Roman roads working with the farmer Thomas Kelsall that they excavated the site and the 11 large timbers from the inner circle they removed those from the sockets left the sockets exposed and laid those timbers next to them and that is how it was left sadly you can imagine what happened to them that was what was so exceptional about Bleasdale circle the fact they had these bronze age timbers they planted trees and rhododendrons or is that rhododendron dry I never know that's one for all you pedants out there stood out in that field discussing it standing out in that field you'll have to decide that as well anyhow because of the decay the post rotting away in the 1930s Varley came in and did another excavation of the site and that seems like an opportune moment for us to jump to another one of my timelines because the other day I went out to some museums to see if I could have a look at any of the artifacts any of the things that came out of Bleasdale circle so over to that first off I went to the wonderful Ribchester museum providing a welcome opportunity to walk by the Mick Aston Roman columns at the pub there and I'm afraid I couldn't resist disobeying the faded Covid one-way system once I was inside now understandably this museum is focused on Roman history but I was delighted to find a display dedicated to the Bleasdale circle with some very nice illustrations and representative bronze age finds going to show how the importance of this site is definitely understood locally bronze age timber circles are known but this arrangement is unique and nothing else like this has been discovered I have come to Preston which is and that is home to the actual collared urns from Bleasdale so I've come down to take a look to those and there's also some of the actual original timbers from the circle and the ditch I enjoyed my visit to Preston and the museum big cities are such a wonder to me the display on Bleasdale is great and it's crazy that this rare site is not more widely recognized that's William Dawkins who wrote up the 19th century dig and Varley re-excavated the site between 1933 to 1935 we now have these dates from the cremation urns which Varley said had been interred at the same time 2005 carbon dating of the inner circle ditch timbers came back as 2150 to 1950 BC a good century or so before the mound burial Varley had remaining timbers removed for preservation and concrete posts were inserted into the socket holes I loved playing with examining this model of the circles it would be good to see the site re-excavated to see if the early bronze age dating could be extended out either way I may not know much about art but I know absolutely nothing about modern art so I did get a bit confused when I went in there and wandered by accident into an art gallery but once I found the museum area absolutely fantastic totally free there is no chance to go into that museum support it go and have a look and for all of you sort of industrial archaeologists industrial youtuber type people there's all this stuff about mills and all that sort of thing that you would expect ah look parking up this private road next to the very eco-friendly parish hall over there no signs to indicate that that is available for public use but I've just seen some rambling hikers serious ones parking up there and setting off but might relate to the school when I was researching this I came up with the normal sort of sad story from about 2019 I think it was the school here closing because there was only two pupils left but if you're a bit lazy like and you decide to come and look at Blaisdell you might want to park there and save yourself a bit uh-huh look at this more discoveries this is why you have to come out into the field to find these things I found no reference to this in my research at all I am getting the impression that people around here really care about their heritage which is nice to see I had no idea there was this Blaisdell circle sign here now I have to say the dates that they've got on here are younger than my dates and that doesn't really help me in disputing the idea that this is linked to the incoming urn field culture people however my dates are based on the latest carbon dating from the contents of those collared urns so I'm happy about that but it is nice to see this wonderful it's a little bit sad to see all of these uh children beware signs when the school has been shut for so many years I don't know about you though the fact that the image of the mother and the child is the same one that was around when I was a kid makes me feel a bit better about things general not that old not as old as Shadrach ah more public parking on the private road that isn't signed at all so you could get even closer to the circle if you park here I'm not complaining anyhow because I needed the exercise I'm getting to be a little bit of a fat pig but you can park here this is the church and incidentally if you would like to join our membership at the highest level the Institute of Antiquarian level you will see a short film in the near future all about that church but if you don't want to that's fine just won't see that film as YouTube's leading amateur antiquarian I'm all for authentic history on the platform not wishing to sound like the pedants in that field down the lane interpretation is fine outright mistakes not so this is from the video description of the offending piece which I'm not going to name or link and in it you can see the association between our early Bronze Age site here and the Urnfield culture the narrator states that the people who set up the timber circles were descended from the ancient Urnfield culture now that was a central European culture with advanced metalworking and cremation field burials emerging from around 1300 BC and not influencing southern Britain until 1200 to 1000 BC now what is it I think you lot have just listened to a bit about the Urnfield culture and how this YouTube historian has tried to link that to Bleasdale circle I've also not recorded yet a bit about the mumbo jumbo that is attached to this place he gets quite excited about things he finds up there a St Brigid cross a Clutie tree that sort of stuff so we'll have to go and check to see whether any of that is there to be seen we're not far now oh and I better turn that way because of the sun it's pretty bright today isn't it the rumors of my conversion to mumbo jumbo by the way are massively overstated well they're completely not true I haven't converted to mumbo jumbo at all despite what some of you have been saying in the comments so I hope we're not going to find too much of the Clutie tree nonsense to me it's litter in the countryside but that's just my personal opinion we're nearly there now I just want to do an experiment can you see the high ground the fells over there now if we follow that round and then just at a point over there there's a couple of trees left of the little plantation that's where the circle is if we come around hopefully you can see that the high ground is continuing all the way around to about here so effectively the circle is sat in the sort of middle of a great big c-shaped sort of bowl of high fells protecting it on three sides basically really interesting wow you know the atmosphere of this place is certainly making an impression on me as I get closer to it now I don't think this will come across in the camera but I can see that it is sat on a slightly raised bit of ground so if we imagine the forest all cleared off the top of that then I think the monument up there would have definitely enjoyed a view to the sort of fell line that is circling it on sort of three sides and there are various arguments about solstice alignments there's a couple of quite interesting nicks there and I think possibly a winter solstice alignment potentially with fairsnap fell down that end but you can sort of see how it would work oops I should have come in to the field there came the wrong way but once you get in the field it's pretty clear there's a gate just around there fairly obvious isn't this great that they give you access like this but it isn't advertised and still pretty boggy today ah I told you I was a fat pig note concrete base you probably already know about the concrete from a bit I haven't recorded yet you know we do them out of sequence it's called being professional anyhow the plantation has been well and truly cleared just a handful of trees left there's a really good information board over there I'm impressed with how this unassuming sort of coverage of this place really good anyhow I'm gonna lose my bag and let's go and have a look at the inner circle and its concrete posts excuse the vulgarism but this is freaking brilliant so I'm entering the smaller circle remember the large one isn't visible today there we have the 11 concrete posts marking where they found actual bronze age timbers there's the ridiculous clutey tree in the middle we have very faintly the mound marked by some modern mumbo jumbo and then I'm leaving the circle via a causewayed entrance through the ditch at the southeastern side and outside that we have two further concrete posts marking where they found two external timbers you might not believe me I'm suffering for my art again although it's very sunny it is quite cold and it's very windy now stood here you realize how elevated it is and on the open side you've got an amazing view now down that way on a clearer day than we've got today it's a bit misty they would have absolutely definitely above the treetops seen the sea I wonder what they made of that in their world now the concrete posts are useful for showing us where they found the miraculously well-preserved bronze age posts but they're also useful for launching a drone I did manage to get it up despite the wind and I'm really hoping you got an elevated view I think that will help the place come alive for you in the 1890s two men spotted a circular shadow in the ground here and in effect today we're looking at a reconstruction a dug out ditch and some concrete posts but nonetheless the majesty and the precision remains apparent look at all of this mumbo jumbo isn't it and in my opinion it's actually littering the countryside as well now incidentally when I was stood over there at the causewayed entrance a short way off was an interesting megalithic looking stone that I've not seen mentioned in any of the research I did on this place and it's interesting to think that when I was stood there I was actually very close to that larger outer palisade that ran something like well up to about 40 meters away from this at the furthest point and that had its timbers built into its ditch whereas as we know this outer one that we're looking at here was lined with those beautiful pine strips of timber that we saw in the museum segment we can't see the outer circle today but let's go and take a look to the lidar now see if we can make out anything of it on there I know you want to now I've been having a little bit of a debate with myself about whether I should name that YouTube historian whom I'm disagreeing with in this video I haven't done on the location footage which I filmed first may have had a change of heart in post-production I don't know but I think it's a lazy interpretation I think he's picked up on the urnfield words in the scheduled monument listing and he's just made a mistake because fundamentally what's wrong with it is the dates don't work here we have a site that is in use 2200 BC through to let's say 1700 BC the urnfield culture didn't make it into the southern part of England until 1200 to 1000 BC this site was probably derelict and discontinued by that stage by the time it got here and there's very little evidence of the urnfield culture taking a hold up here in the northern parts of this country as usual you know the summer lockdown they just let the new ones come in and take over and change all their life whereas up here people carried on there are signs of some of the improved technology the better axes the better swords but that's just shrewd sort of trading no doubt going on and although the woodhenge of the north is clearly a ridiculous thing to say I think here you can sense you can see from the evidence that these are an ancient people living in this landscape for a long time going back to the time when the first settlers arrived and started clearing the forests and in it there possibly is that sort of echo of the neolithic henge culture oh my goodness let me tell you there's an awful lot of mumbo-jumbo stuff lying about here but I'm not going to bring the academic tone of this film down by dwelling on it I'm just going to thank you very much for watching and I'll play out with a few atmospheric shots of this very special place see you next week tweed clootie