Holystone : Romano-British Period

From the later 1st century AD, Coquetdale along with the rest of the Northumbrian uplands fell under the control of expanding Roman empire. The principal bases of Roman power lay to the west, at the forts of High Rochester (Bremenium) and Risingham (Habitancum) along Dere Street, the main road into Scotland. The most tangible impact of the Roman occupation on the district of Holystone, itself, was the construction of a road linking High Rochester with Low Learchild (Alauna) on the Devil's Causeway, the route which led north from Corbridge towards Berwick (cf. MacLauchlan 1864a; 1864b).

The link road passed to the north and west of Holystone, crossing the Coquet only 600m north of the present village site. No permanent forts have been identified along the line of this road or indeed anywhere in Coquetdale, although temporary camps have been revealed near North Yardhope (Welfare & Swann 1995; Charlton 1996, 34-5), to the west of Holystone. This lack of military sites is conventionally explained by arguing that the local tribe, the Votadini, were pro-Roman, a somewhat circular historical rational. However it is very unusual for such military roads to be entirely devoid of regularly spaced forts and it would be no great surprise if future aerial photographic work were to reveal the remains of at least one timber fort between High Rochester and Low Learchild, associated with the initial occupation of the area.

Although constructed to serve the military requirements of a distant imperial power rather than the needs of the local farming communities, once built it created a passable east-west route across the moors separating Redesdale and Coquetdale which may have continued to influence settlement and communications patterns and remained a feature in the landscape long after the Roman troops had departed. During the later period of Roman occupation, following the abandonment of any posts along the Devil's Causeway, it would still have served military patrols from High Rochester, and may have been travelled by devotees visiting the small shrine, perhaps dedicated to Cocidius, south east of Yardhope (Charlton & Mitcheson 1983).

Coccuveda : Coquet

The name of the River Coquet is recorded for the first time as Coccuveda in a late 7th century document known as the Ravenna Cosmography, a geographical compilation of much earlier Roman maps and other sources (cf. Rivet & Smith 1981, 311). The Cosmographer's source for northern Britain is considered to have been a military map first drawn up in the late 1st century AD from information gathered during the campaigns of Agricola and later extensively revised, probably for the Scottish campaigns of the emperor Severus in AD 208-11 (Rivet & Smith 1981, 193-7).

Coccuveda closely resembles the earliest medieval reference, Cocwud(a), in 1050 which is followed by Cocqued in 1104 (Beckinsall 1992, 26), indicating that the river's present name derives, as so often in the case of rivers, directly from its Celtic Britthonic antecedent. It is thought to signify 'red-appearance', referring to the red porphyritic detritus brought down by these waters from the Cheviots. Thus it can be shown that the communities along its banks have known the River Coquet by something like its present name for almost 2000 years. Moreover there is every likelihood that the name is even older still, stretching back into the Iron Age and perhaps beyond.