Extraordinary Explorations at Corbridge
In 1906, five weeks of excavations were planned at the Roman site of Corbridge. Little did the archaeologists know they would still be there in 1914, having uncovered 56 acres of stunning remains.
Over the nine years of excavations it is estimated that at least 100 men worked on the site, helping move the tons of earth which had buried it for 1,600 years. Until recently they have remained anonymous. Eleven have since been identified, and their stories uncovered.
The Photographs
The excavations were recorded in photographs taken by JP Gibson (1838–1912) which have become an invaluable record of the work on site. Gibson was a chemist, photographer and archaeologist based in Hexham, just 4 miles west of Corbridge. He was the official photographer for the excavations from 1906 until his death in 1912.
The images he took are of such high quality that when scanned today they have allowed reinterpretations of the archaeology, and the identification of individuals. The photographs are spread across archives in Northumberland, Swindon and Oxford, and cared for by multiple organisations.
The Men
The men who worked on the excavations were locals, usually working as miners, bricklayers and labourers. Many of these roles would have been based on short-term contracts, with the men almost perpetually seeking employment. The excavations were therefore just another job for them, at least initially.
The weekly wages paid to the men on site are not known. However, in 1907 the average weekly wage for an agricultural labourer was 21 shillings and 2 pence (21s 2d). Once 25% to 30% of their income was used for rent, the rest would not go far to feed, heat and clothe everyone. An average family of seven, not uncommon at the time, would spend 1s 6d on butter, 3s on bread and 1s 3d on coal per week. Even a cheap pair of boots cost 5s and a secondhand coat 3s 6d. It is estimated that at this period, one-third of families lived below the poverty line, and many of the workers at Corbridge would likely have been in this category.
Robert Henry Guy
Robert Henry Guy (1884–1942) was born in Hexham and was adopted by Joseph and Sarah Guy of Corbridge. He worked a variety of jobs from butcher to gardener, from mason’s labourer to ash closet scraper (emptying the outside toilets and taking the waste to be used as fertiliser). He died by drinking poison, which his family believe was to prevent suffering, and the cost of caring for him, as he was very ill. This is a harsh reminder of the situation poor families had to face when medical help was not free.
Surtees Forster
Surtees Forster (1892–1916) left school at the national leaving age of 13. His first job was to work on the excavations. We don’t know very much about his duties on site, though photographs of a similarly aged unnamed boy show him carrying the trugs used to put finds into, and taking water to the labourers. One specific task we know Surtees undertook, as he told his family, was to wash down the Corbridge lion after it was discovered.
Surtees later went on to become a draper before signing up at the outset of the First World War. He became a sergeant in the 1st/4th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers. He was killed in action on 15 September 1916 on the first day of the Battle of Flers–Courcelette, on the Somme; his body was not found until 1937. As his father had died six years earlier in 1931, it was left to Surtees’s mother to arrange and pay for the personal message engraved on his headstone at Longueval cemetery. His family visited his grave on the centenary of his death.
George William Hall
George Hall (1866–1958) was born into a family of publicans who owned the Angel Inn in Corbridge. When it was sold, George bought the Bluebell Inn with his share. He married his wife, Jemima (1871–1932), in 1895 and their son Donald was born a year later. Health concerns within the family caused George and Jemima to move away from the pub trade, leaving George to look for new work. He became the gardener at Corchester School in the village and participated in all nine years of the Corbridge excavations.
The Hoard
In 1908, 48 gold coins dating to the late 4th century were discovered. While the Hexham Courant reported on this discovery and listed the names of the finders, Robert Allan and Matthew Millbury Scott were not pictured.
Matthew was a cartman, living in Wall, Northumberland, with his widowed mother, his brother and sister. His elder brother was a rockman at Black Pasture Quarry. Robert was described as a labourer and lived in Hexham with his wife, four daughters, two sons and a grandson, in a house of just two rooms. Three other children had already died, a not uncommon statistic in this period. Both these men were typical of the team employed on site.
Later, in 1911, a further 160 gold coins dating from AD 64–157 were discovered. This time the finders, plus the gatekeeper and foreman, were featured in the local newspaper and also in some of Gibson’s photographs on site.
John Rutherford, the foreman, was born in 1853 and was a joiner living in Hexham with his wife, son and two boarders in their five-roomed house.
Edward Coxon was born in 1872 in Hexham, where he was living during the excavations. In 1921 he was working in the tanneries on Stepney Bank, Newcastle. He lived with his wife, Mary Jane, and their 12-year-old adopted daughter, Mary Theresa.
Holmes Riley was born in 1876 in Bradley, Yorkshire, and served with the 1st Battalion Durham Light Infantry in the 2nd Boer War (1899–1902). Holmes left for South Africa following a divorce from his wife in 1913. There he married Dora Groenewald and died in 1956 in Krugersdorp, Transvaal.
Joseph Rutherford, born in 1871, grew up at the sawmill in Dilston, just south of Corbridge. He was working as a cartman in 1901 and living with his wife and daughter. The 1911 census shows him listed as a domestic gardener and living with his parents, despite being married with three children.
The Great War and Corbridge
The last year of excavation, 1914, was marked by the beginning of the First World War. Two labourers who went to war have been identified, and neither returned: Surtees Forster and Edward Charlton. Charlton (1889–1917) was working on the excavations at Corbridge in August 1914, when his territorial army regiment was mobilised. He died aged 27 on 26 October 1917, while serving as a private in the 4th Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers. His parents lost three sons – Robert (37), Edward (27) and John (30) – in a six-month period, all in Flanders Fields.
It is not known how many of the other men in these photographs had their lives devastated by war. During the four-year conflict, 232 men from Hexham and 108 from Corbridge died. Around 5% of Corbridge’s population of 2,133 in 1911 did not return from the First World War.