The North East Yorkshire Mesolithic Project

The Mesolithic period lasted for over 6000 years from around 10,000 BC to around 4000 BC.

Although the period was long we know relatively little about it.

The North York Moors National Park and Tees Archaeology have teamed up to find out more and have set up a project with funding from English Heritage.

A Bronze Age Cemetery at Windmill Fields, Ingleby Barwick

When police found human remains at a Stockton building site foul play was suspected.

However the bodies turned out to be over 4000 years old and are an almost unique example of an Early Bronze Age cemetery with an unparalleled wealth of metalwork and grave goods.

In the early 1980s a major archaeological research project was carried out on an Iron Age Settlement site at Thorpe Thewles on the outskirts of Stockton.

The excavations revealed the story of a small native farming settlement on the fringes of the Roman Empire.

To the north of Ingleby Barwick, several hundred metres from the River Tees, archaeologists uncovered a large Romano-British villa complex of buildings and field enclosures in advance of a housing development. 

This is possibly the most northerly surviving villa in the Roman Empire and produced some remarkable finds and structures.

1300 years ago Hartlepool was amongst the most important religious sites of the North. It was established shortly after Lindisfarne and before Whitby .

Hartlepool is one of the most extensively excavated of the Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon monasteries. Significant finds include the ‘namestone’ cemetery discovered in 1833 and moulds from high quality metalworking found at Church Close in 1984.

In the summer of 1982 local children discovered the shallow grave of a young woman.  This turned out to be an important archaeological discovery and led to the excavation of a major Anglo-Saxon cemetery containing over one hundred burials.

The cemetery is one of the most significant of its period in the region.

The village of Elwick, on the outskirts of Hartlepool, is an excellent example of a planned Norman settlement with a picturesque green.  The Elwick Village Atlas projects is part of the Limestone Landscapes Partnership and is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

In 2013 a project was established by local people to research the heritage of the settlement including excavating several trial trenches.

The town walls at Hartlepool were an imposing feature of the thriving medieval port.

The surviving section along the Fish Sands including the Sandwell Gate is now protected as a Scheduled Monument and Grade I Listed Building and still acts as a sea defence.

Stockton was an important medieval town on the banks of the River Tees.  The town was under the control of the Bishop of Durham who had a large residence there, referred to as Stockton Castle. 

The town developed into a major port in the 17th and 18th centuries and this prosperity continued with industrialisation in the 19th century and commercial development in the 20th century.

Hart is a historic village on the western outskirts of Hartlepool . Its history can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon period when it was the administrative centre of the estate of Hartness. The layout of the present village dates to just after the Norman Conquest when the area was presented to Robert De Brus.

The Heritage of Hart Project was established in 2009 to work with local people to research and record the archaeology and history of the settlement.