Mellor hill fort is a prehistoric site in North West England, that dates from the British Iron Age—about 800 BC to 100 AD. Situated on a hill in Mellor, Greater Manchester, on the western edge of the Peak District, the hill fort overlooks the Cheshire Plain. Although the settlement was founded during the Iron Age, evidence exists of activity on the site as far back as 8,000 BC; during the Bronze Age the hill may have been an area where funerary practices were performed. Artefacts such as a Bronze Age amber necklace indicate the site was high status and that its residents took part in long-distance trade. The settlement was occupied into the Roman period. After the site was abandoned, probably in the 4th century, it was forgotten until its rediscovery in the 1990s.
Location
Mellor lies on the western edge of the Peak District in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport. At , the known site of the Iron Age settlement in Mellor is partially under St Thomas Church and extends into the gardens of several nearby houses. It is on a spur about above sea level, between two valleys which drop steeply away and run west where the two small streams in the valleys meet the River Goyt, approximately above sea level. The site commands views of the Cheshire Plain and Alderley Edge to the south and the range of hills to the north. Although there are higher points locally, the site has access to a water supply and the river valleys, and there is flat land to the west which could have been used agriculturally.
Background
Until the 19th century little was known about hill forts; none had been excavated and their original purpose had long been forgotten. In the medieval period their origin was ascribed to various iconic figures such as Julius Caesar, King Arthur, King Alfred, the Danes, and even giants. By the 18th century it was thought that hill forts were Roman in origin. Opinion changed again in the 19th century following a large scale investigation by Augustus Pitt-Rivers, who concluded that hill forts were built during the Iron Age.
The study of hill forts was popular in the 19th century, with a revival in the 20th century due to excavations at Danebury. However it was not until the 1990s that the settlement at Mellor was discovered; the site had a lack of tell-tale earthworks, such as a circular ditch (which would indicate ancient activity). Excavations began in 1998 where unusual marks had been noted in 1995 during a drought. Instead of the medieval ditch the marks were thought to denote, the ditch of an Iron Age hill fort was revealed. As of 2009 the excavations are ongoing. Before these excavations began, relatively little was known about the prehistory of the Stockport area before about 1,200 BC. It was generally thought that the areas of Marple and Mellor had been mostly untouched by prehistoric human activity, including during the Romano-British period. Little is known about Iron Age activity in North West England as pottery is rare on the sites excavated in the region, and there is a dearth of settlement sites. Of the more than 1,300 hill forts found in England relatively few are in the northwest. The paucity of known sites led archaeologist Colin Haselgrove to describe the region as a "black hole" for the Iron Age. Mellor is the only hill fort in Greater Manchester, and one of four known Iron Age settlement sites in the county.
History
There is evidence of human activity on the site pre-dating the Iron Age, as far back as 8,000–6,000 BC. During this period Mellor may have been a knap site where flint tools were produced, and also may have been a seasonal camp. Over 200 lithics have been recovered and range from the early to the late Mesolithic. A high proportion of the flints are bladed tools, indicating that the people who produced them were hunter gatherers. Bronze Age artefacts are rare on the site, and there is no definitive indication of habitation in this period. Despite this, it is likely that the long-term habitation of the site had its roots in the late Bronze Age.