Listing
Search the List

What is Listing?

Listing Guidance

Apply for Listing

Missing Pieces Project

Blue Plaque Scheme
Listing

Find out about listed buildings and other protected sites, and search the National Heritage List for England (NHLE).

Find out about listing

Terracotta tiles on the roof of Saintoft Lodge, Newton-on-Rawcliffe, Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Grade II listed © Historic England Archive DP371715
Advice
Climate Change

Heritage at Risk

Your Home

Technical Guidance

Planning

Caring for Heritage

Constructive Conservation
Advice

Our expert advice to help you care for and protect historic places.

Get our advice

A contractor cutting bricks for the wall of the partially-restored wild and natural walled garden at Warley Place, Brentwood. Explore our technical advice section © Historic England Archive DP313199
Research
Our Research Strategy and Agenda

Research Governance

Latest Research

Research Methods

Current Research

Research Results

Support & Collaboration

Inclusive Heritage

Heritage Counts
Research

Discover and use our high-quality applied research to support the protection and management of the historic environment.

Discover our research

Archaeologist Dr David Neal discussing his illustration of the mosaic being excavated at Rutland Roman Villa with members of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services team View image DP264265 © Historic England
Images & Books
Find Photos

Search All Publications

Buy Books

The Historic England Archive
Images & Books

Historic England holds an extensive range of publications and historic collections in its public archive covering the historic environment.

Browse our collections

Crowds flock around the Skylon and Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain South Bank Site on 12 May 1951. Both structures were dismantled at the end of the Festival in 1952. Photographer: Aerofilms Ltd, Image reference: Source: Historic England Archive EAW035702
Services & Skills
Education

Grants

Our Planning Services

Training & Skills

Archive Services

Heritage Action Zones

Levelling Up Places Service
Services & Skills

Find out about services offered by Historic England for funding, planning, education and research, as well as training and skill development.

Learn about our services

Heritage Apprentices in a training session on the Researching The Historic Environment module and training in Architectural Photography. Find out more about Heritage Apprenticeships © Historic England Archive DP347660
What's New
News

In Your Area

Historic England Blog

Latest Research

Heritage Online Debate

Statements

Stay up to Date
What's New

Read about our current news, projects and campaigns nationally and in your area.

Catch up with what's new

Two horsemen reading The Sportsman, 30 Oct 1902, Farnborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. Part of the Alfred Newton and Sons collection. Source Historic England Archive. BB98/02592
About Us
What We Do

Who We Are

How We Are Funded

Contact Us

Careers

Volunteer with Historic England
About Us

Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England's spectacular historic environment.

Find out more

Mountbatten House (formerly Gateway House), Basing View, Basingstoke, the former headquarters for the paper merchants Wiggins Teape by Arup Associates. Listed at Grade II. © Historic England
Sign in
Manage my account

Sign out

Spades Mire linear earthwork and section of rig and furrow

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1015521
Date first listed:: 27-Mar-1949

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places.

Add your contribution

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1015521
Date first listed:: 27-Mar-1949
Date of most recent amendment:: 06-Apr-1997

Location

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:: Northumberland (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Berwick-upon-Tweed
National Grid Reference:: NT 99711 53657, NU 00062 53631

Reasons for Designation

Before the formal development of town defences in the later middle ages a number of ad hoc arrangements have been identified that provided a measure of defence for important commercial, frontier and bridgehead settlements. The substantial linear boundary feature known as Spades Mire has been identified as an early attempt to define the territory associated with the early settlement of Berwick upon Tweed. It survives as an earthwork and as a buried feature visible on aerial photographs. It consists of a ditch flanked by a single internal bank. Limited excavation has shown that it was in use by the 13th century but without further excavation it is difficult to determine whether this represents the reuse of an earlier feature. The boundary enclosed an area larger than that contained by the later stone walls of the Edwardian period and considerably larger than that defined by the Elizabethan artilery defences. Its function was, however, broadly similar to these later circuits, namely to isolate the promontory, already afforded natural defence on three sides, upon which the early settlement of Berwick upon Tweed stood.

Spades Mire is well preserved and retains significant archaeological and environmental deposits. As the earliest defensive feature known at Berwick upon Tweed it is of considerable importance for study of the origins of the town and it will add greatly to our understanding of its development, which it is known from documentary evidence was a place of considerable importance.

Details

The monument includes a linear earthwork of medieval date contained within two areas. The earthwork, which is oriented east to west ran from the now infilled Tapee Loch, immediately north east of Berwick castle, to the sea where it effectively cut off the peninsula upon which the town of Berwick upon Tweed stands. Evidence suggests that the earthwork is earlier than the late 13th and early 14th century Edwardian defences of Berwick upon Tweed. It therefore represents the earliest surviving defensive feature at Berwick upon Tweed, and it is considered to be related to the town which is known to have been in existence since the 11th century. The earthwork survives as a pronounced linear ditch 672m long ranging from 10m to 25m wide and from 0.9 to 3m deep. It is cut into two sections by an original off set entrance. The south side of the ditch is steeply scarped while the northern side is considerably shallower suggesting that the earthwork faced north and defended the land to the south contained by it. Situated on the south side of the ditch are traces of an accompanying rampart, now much spread and up to 13m wide.

The western section of the monument, which is contained within the first area, includes a length of ditch 300m long ranging in width from 12m to 25m and up to a maximum of 3m deep. Its most westerly part survives beneath the surface of the modern road as an infilled buried feature. Immediately south of the ditch, excavation in 1961-2 revealed the presence of an earthen rampart buried beneath the make up of the school playing field. This survived to a height of 0.9m and it was at least 6m wide, although it extended beyond the limit of the excavation. The eastern section of the monument is contained within the second area and includes a length of ditch 372m long and on average 10m wide and up to 1m deep. Flanking the ditch to the south of this section are the spread remains of the internal rampart. This has been incorporated into the later medieval field system and is partly obscured by rig and furrow cultivation running parallel to it.

A small excavation across the monument in 1961 and 1962 as well as uncovering remains of the southern rampart, revealed that the ditch was constructed before the medieval rig and furrow cultivation which lies adjacent to it. It also showed that the ditch had been deliberately filled subsequent to its construction. Several pieces of pottery and fragments of clay pipe were recovered ranging in date from the 13th century to the present day.

All school buildings including sheds and temporary classrooms, all walls, fences, the metalled surfaces of roads and pavements and all street furniture are excluded from the scheduling, although the ground beneath all of these features is included.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 28534
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Beresford, M W, St Joseph, J K S, Medieval England: An Aerial Survey, (1979), 194
Colvin, H M, The History of the King's Works, (1963), 563
Ellison, M, 'Archaeology in the North' in An Archaeological Survey of Berwick upon Tweed, (1976), 152,162
White, K G, 'Proc Soc Antiq Scot' in The Spades Mire, Berwick upon Tweed, , Vol. 96, (1964), 355-60
Other
Title: Berwick upon Tweed Source Date: 1988 Author: Publisher: Surveyor: 1:1250

Legal

This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 as amended as it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance. This entry is a copy, the original is held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.