Handbook

Chapter 3: History

Covers

Prehistory to AD 410

Reading

about 15 min

Quizzes

13 questions

Early Britain: From Stonehenge to Hadrian's Wall

Today, to get from London to Paris you take a boat, a plane, or a train through a tunnel under the sea. But if you had lived more than 10,000 years ago, you could simply have walked east until you reached mainland Europe, without even getting your feet wet.

This chapter starts in that time, when you could walk to Britain, and ends when the Roman army left in AD 410. Along the way you'll meet a village built of stone, a cape made of gold, forts on hilltops, and a queen who set London on fire.

1. Stone AgeHunter-gatherers come and go across a land bridge
2. 8000 BCAbout 10,000 years ago: the sea cuts Britain off from mainland Europe for good
3. 4000 BCAbout 6,000 years ago: the first farmers arrive in Britain
4. 2000 BCAbout 4,000 years ago: the Bronze Age begins as people learn to make bronze
5. Iron AgeIron tools, hill forts and Britain's first coins
6. 55 BCJulius Caesar invades, without success
7. AD 43Emperor Claudius leads an invasion, and the Romans take over most of Britain
8. AD 122Work begins on Hadrian's Wall
9. AD 410The Roman army leaves Britain and never comes back

The Stone Age: walking to Britain

Britain's earliest people were hunter-gatherers. They did not farm. Instead they lived by hunting animals and collecting wild food such as fruit.

For most of the Stone Age, a land bridge joined Britain to mainland Europe. People moved back and forth across it, following the deer and horses they hunted. Around 10,000 years ago the sea rose and covered the land bridge, and Britain became an island.

About 6,000 years ago, the first farmers arrived. Their ancestors probably came from south-east Europe. Farmers built houses, tombs and monuments, and some of these can still be seen today.

Stonehenge: a prehistoric meeting place

On a plain in Wiltshire, in England, stands a ring of huge upright stones: Stonehenge. It is the most famous monument left from the Stone Age. Nobody knows for certain what it was for, but people probably gathered there for ceremonies at certain times of the year. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Whoever built it planned it carefully: the stones line up with the sunrise at midsummer and the sunset at midwinter. They also hauled them a long way. The big sarsens came from about 25 km away, the smaller "bluestones" from the Preseli Hills in Wales, about 240 km away, and in 2024 a study in the journal Nature traced the "Altar Stone" in the middle to north-east Scotland, some 700 km away. Exactly how stones weighing several tonnes were moved that far is still being worked out.

Skara Brae: a village uncovered by a storm

On Orkney, a group of islands off the north coast of Scotland, there is a Stone Age village called Skara Brae. No prehistoric village in northern Europe is better preserved, and it has taught archaeologists a great deal about how people lived at the end of the Stone Age.

People lived there from about 3180 BC to 2500 BC, until drifting sand dunes covered it. It stayed hidden for more than 4,000 years. Then, in the winter of 1850, a great storm stripped the sand from the shore, and local people found the roofless stone houses underneath.

The Bronze Age: skilled metalworkers

About 4,000 years ago, people learned to melt copper and tin together to make a harder metal, bronze. This was the start of the Bronze Age.

People lived in roundhouses, and when they died they were buried in earth mounds called round barrows. If you walk in the British countryside today, you will often still see these small hills, shaped like an upside-down bowl.

Bronze Age people were very skilled metalworkers. They made many beautiful tools, ornaments and weapons from bronze and gold.

The Iron Age: forts on the hilltops

Next, people learned to make tools and weapons from iron. This was the Iron Age. People still lived in roundhouses, but now these were grouped into bigger settlements, sometimes on hilltops protected by banks and ditches. These are called hill forts.

One very impressive hill fort, Maiden Castle in Dorset, England, can still be visited today. Despite its name, it isn't a medieval stone castle. It is made of rings of earth banks and ditches, one inside another.

Most people in the Iron Age were farmers, craft workers or warriors. Their language belonged to the Celtic family of languages. Similar languages were spoken all over Europe at the time. Related languages, such as Welsh and Gaelic, are still spoken in parts of Wales, Scotland and Ireland today.

By now, people had quite an advanced society and economy. Iron Age people made the first coins ever minted in Britain (minted means made by stamping metal), and some of them carry the names of Iron Age kings. Once names were written down, we could know who some of these people were for the first time. That is why this is where British history begins.

One name turns up again and again on these coins: Cunobelinus, who ruled the land just north of today's London and had coins struck at Colchester and St Albans. He was remembered for a long time. About 1,600 years later, Shakespeare made him the hero of his play Cymbeline.

The Romans arrive

Even before Cunobelinus's time, a much bigger power had reached the far side of the Channel: in the 50s BC the armies of Rome were conquering Gaul, roughly today's France. In 55 BC the Roman general Julius Caesar crossed the sea and invaded Britain, but his invasion failed. For almost a hundred years after that, Rome did not rule Britain.

In AD 43 the Roman Emperor Claudius led a new invasion. This time the Romans succeeded, and they took control of almost all of Britain.

Boudicca: the queen who burned London

When the Romans invaded, some tribes fought back. The most famous of their leaders was Boudicca, queen of the Iceni, a tribe from the east of what is now England. People in Britain still remember her: in London, there is a statue of her beside Westminster Bridge, close to the Houses of Parliament.

In AD 60 or 61 she led the Iceni and other tribes in a great revolt. They burned three Roman towns: Colchester, St Albans and London (Londinium), which the Romans had founded only 10 to 15 years before. In the end the Roman governor's army defeated her.

Hadrian's Wall: the northern edge of the Roman Empire

The Romans took over most of Britain, but they never conquered some parts of what is now Scotland. The Picts lived in the north, and they were among the ancestors of the Scottish people. To keep them out, the Emperor Hadrian had a wall built right across the north of England: Hadrian's Wall.

Several forts were built along the wall. Two of them, Housesteads and Vindolanda, can still be seen today. Walkers love the area, and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Vindolanda has given us a rare look at everyday life on the wall. Archaeologists dug up letters written in ink on thin slices of wood, the Vindolanda tablets, which are among the oldest handwritten documents in Britain. The best known, from around AD 100, is a birthday party invitation from Claudia Severa, a commander's wife, to her closest friend. It may be the oldest Latin we have written in a woman's own hand. Another letter shows that soldiers on the wall were sent underpants: northern England really is cold.

What did the Romans leave behind?

The Romans stayed in Britain for about 400 years. During that time, they:

Built roads

Put up public buildings

Set up a system of law

Brought new plants and animals

Christianity also reached Britain during this time. The first Christian communities in Britain appeared in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.

In AD 410, the Roman army left Britain to defend other parts of the empire, and it never came back.

With the Romans gone, Britain's door was open again. The next people to cross the sea were tribes from northern Europe, and the language they spoke would one day become English.

Chapter summary