Little is known about Yeavering in the later Middle Ages (1000-1550). This period of the site’s history seems to be squeezed between the better understood early medieval archaeology and the sweeping post-medieval and modern pastoral landscapes which we see today. In part this is because Domesday Book does not extend so far north, so the detail we have for other parts of the UK is lacking here, but fortunately there are other clues to help reconstruct the general picture.

The later medieval economy of the area was dominated by livestock rearing, though in a form that is much less familiar today across the uplands of the UK. Common pasture, for example, was more customary and the movement of animals from lowlands to higher ground along droving roads a usual sight. Effectively, land was not understood conceptually as a form of property but as a resource, over which many people could have different rights without conflict. Here at Yeavering, as elsewhere, the exploitation of common resources would have been seasonal. It included peat extraction, the gathering of furze and wood for fuel and fodder, as well as gathering foodstuffs to supplement the table, and rights to summer pastures. In our region, the earthworks of ‘shielings’ are the physical remains of seasonal livestock movement in summertime from lowland pasture, where meadows could be left to grow the hay which was so essential for winter fodder, up to rough communal hillside pastures.

At the start of autumn stock were driven down again and overwintered in the fields to increase their soil fertility before the ground was sown again. This tradition is called ‘transhumance’ and it is this practice which provided the essential link between the lowland valley pastures around Yeavering and the steeper slopes visible from the site. In the Middle Ages, lowland and upland were integrated, at least in an economic and territorial sense.

The sheilings themselves are simply constructed of drystone walling and turf, making use of local materials. Most dated examples are later medieval but place-names suggest earlier origins in some regions. Like the Yeavering area, many shielings are associated with sites of earlier periods but have few diagnostic finds to help date them. Stock enclosures or ‘pounds’ are often found nearby and survive as banks or drystone walls while ridge-and-furrow higher on the Cheviots suggests that crops were sometimes grown and brought back with the livestock, probably along with peat supplies. Agricultural terraces have been identified around Ingram, the north slope of Yeavering Bell (Ainsworth et al. 2016) and West Hill. At least some of these earthworks may reflect an increase in upland cereal cultivation and settlement prior to the 14th century (Dixon 1985), but the picture is likely to be more complex with cycles of seasonal, temporary and more permanent settlement with investment in and abandonment of surrounding fieldscapes. Not far away, excavations at the upland village of Alnhamsheles suggest exactly this, with a planned settlement replacing a seasonally occupied shieling. So far, little work has been done in the immediate vicinity of Yeavering on sheilings and their associated earthworks beyond detailed measured survey (Ramm et al. 1970; Charlton and Day 1979; Ainsworth et al 2016, Topping 1981a; 1991; 2000; Gates 2000), and some documentary and place-name research (Dixon 1985; Frodsham 2004, 85– 86). Although the earthworks of folds and droves are usually assigned post-medieval dates, at least some may be later medieval in Glendale and the College Valley, while Tim Gates’ aerial survey of the College Valley has highlighted a number of possible later medieval turbaries (2000).

The important local centre for Yeavering in the later Middle Ages was Wooler, which had its own market from 1199, and a short-lived keep atop a probable natural mound, potentially a successor to the nearby ring motte known as Green Castle (Constable 2003). All the evidence suggests that nearby Kirknewton was also an important and enduring ecclesiastical and administrative focus, perhaps delivering pastoral care during the Middle Ages through chapels-of-ease across a wide territory. Many of the townships near Yeavering (e.g. Akeld, Hethpool, Lanton) and further afield (e.g. Fenton, Kilham and St Ethelrede’s chapel, Yetholm Mains) have either documentary evidence for or place-names indicative of chapels.

Perhaps reflecting an earlier pattern of territories, one 12th century grant records tithes from Hethpool, West Newton, Akeld, Yeavering, Coupland and Lanton being taken to support a vicarage at Kirknewton. This is both an early indication of active settlements in Glendale and also one of the earliest references to Yeavering as a township. At present, however, very little work has been done on the archaeology of later medieval settlement in the Yeavering area, although deserted and shrunken settlements have significant potential.

One of these settlements is represented by a late 16th-century bastle known as ‘Old Yeavering’ or ‘King Edwin’s Palace’. Defended farmhouses like this one reflect the chronic low-level conflict of the borderlands conducted by clans and communities sometimes known as the Border Reivers. Perhaps as a result, the settlement at Yeavering was always modest, 13th century documents indicate only a handful of inhabitants with some indications of Scottish disruptions in 1415 at ‘Geteryne’ (Hamilton Wylie 1914, 520). Nevertheless, the earthwork evidence near the bastle is intriguing and has not so far been investigated archaeologically.