Jacob's Well

Jacob’s Well, Black Hill: A Bronze Age Water Shrine on Woodbury Common
A note on the 1938-9 excavations of George Carter and recent radiocarbon dates for Bronze Age sites on the Pebblebed Heathlands of East Devon
Christopher Tilley

Jacob’s well is situated at the foot of the western escarpment of the East Devon Pebblebed heathlands. It is the site of a spring, a water pool and bog marked in prehistoric times by a large mound of fire-cracked pebbles. The site was excavated by George Carter during 1938-9. In his archive there are numerous photographs, a plan and line drawing of the mound, a plan of his excavation trench and some reconstruction diagrams. He did not write up the results of the excavations presumably because they were undertaken just before the outbreak of World War II. The mound still exists today cut through by Carter’s excavation trench that he did not back fill. It is situated in a mature pine plantation on flat land 50 m to the east of the B 3180 road below the summit of Black Hill one of the highest points on the Pebblebed heathlands. Immediately to the east the land rises steeply up the scarp slope limiting views in this direction to a few hundred metres. To the north-east Woodbury Castle is visible on the horizon some 2 km distant. To the north-west there are extensive views to the Raddon Hills. To the west and south-west there are fine views across the Exe estuary to the Haldon Hills with the high peaks of Dartmoor just visible beyond. The ground around the mound is still very boggy today, especially to the south and the nearby road is still wet with the spring water even during dry periods (Fig 1).

Figure 1. The location of Jacob’s Well and other places mentioned in the text on the East Devon Pebblebed heathlands.

The Mound

The mound, as planned by Carter, is a somewhat irregular oval  with a west-east long axis of up to 23 m and a north-south short axis of  up to 13 m. The mound is approximately 1.8 m maximum height. The profile is markedly asymmetrical being considerably higher on the northern side with what may be an extension on the southern side (Fig 2.)

Figure 2. Carter’s plan of the Jacob’s Well mound.

Carter’s section drawing shows a ditch at the eastern end of the mound. The north, south and western sides were surrounded by what he marks as a pebble ‘pavement’ which was about 2 m wide. In his section drawing (unfortunately without a scale) he distinguishes three main layers as follows:
1 (uppermost) A thick layer of fire cracked pebbles about 1.2m thick. This contained much charcoal. Samples sent by Carter to Kew ‘from within but on the outer edge of the mound’ were identified as being of alder (Alnus glutinoss L.)
2 An approximately 0.3 m thick layer of peat. In a letter addressed to the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, dated 18/8/39 Carter writes ‘the peat stratum was about one foot thick. Just below the surface was a thin layer, very extensive, of well preserved wood, or what appears to be wood. One large piece has an area of about two square feet, and was penetrated, when the mound was built, by a hole, square in plan, with two sides measuring 18” in length. The surface of this exposure is gently corrugated with even ripples. If this was the bark of a tree peeled off, it would have to be a large tree to give the area now visible. It may represent the only portion of a large recumbent log which has not decayed. It may represent, say, thin objects like a shield or two of bark.,.The large portion is being preserved in situ pending this examination’. Smaller pieces were identified at Kew gardens as probably being oak.

Fig 3. Carter’s section drawing of Jacob’s Well.

3 A 0. 3m thick pebble floor overlying a ‘raft’ of pebbles on the surface of the bog. This bottom layer Carter also describes as being ‘a great mattress of pebbles allowing water to percolate freely under the mound’ (hand written note) (Figs. 4 and 5).

Figure 4. Carter’s photo showing the cross section through the mound on the eastern side of the trench.

Figure 5. The ‘mattress’ or pavement of pebbles under the mound (Carter 1938).

Carter excavated one trench which was about 12 m long and 2 m wide. This extended north from the southern edge cutting through the centre of the mound (Figs. 6 & 7).

Figure 6. View of Carter’s trench through the Jacob’s Well mound seen from the south. Remains of clay ‘altar’ in foreground, remains of oak post in situ marked by trowel. Stone mattress or pavement under mound: background.

Figure 7. Carter’s plan of his excavation trench.

Beyond the paved mound perimeter he discovered a geometric arrangement of pebbles which he interpreted as resembling somewhat a human face. Just to the north of this was an unburnt area of clay. This was approximately rectangular in shape and measured 90 cm x 1m. On it he recovered an unusually shaped flaked pebble, struck at the pointed end. Its surface is covered with fire cracks. Because of the find context Carter interpreted this as an ‘idol’ or magic stone (Fig. 8). It was found together with much charcoal and three pebble flakes with white quartz veins, struck from the same pebble (Fig. 9).

Figure 8. The flaked ‘idol’ or magic stone.

 

Figure 9. The three pebble flakes found together with the ‘idol’ stone.

The four corners of the clay area were marked by sharpened and pointed oak stakes the basal parts of which were preserved in the bog water (Fig 10). Carter refers to this as being an altar. Under it there was a flint flake. Just over a meter to the north of he found the remains of what may have been a dividing wall or, alternatively a small cairn of pebbles. Four meters to the north of this structure he recovered the decaying remains of a wooden post or pillar, originally perhaps up to 3 m long. This lay along the north-south axis of the bottom of his trench (see Fig. 7). Next to it was the post hole about 0.4 m deep with wooden remains in situ. The wood was identified as being oak, probably Quercus Robur L., the common English species (letter from Catherine Hill, then Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew dated 6/09/39). Carter estimated that the post was not less than 6 inches (15 cm) in diameter. Beside it, on the western side, there was a ‘nest of blue stones’. These are unusual and rare quartzite blue-grey pebbles recognized by Carter as having symbolic significance (see discussion of blue stones in www.pebblebedsproject.org.uk). At the northern end of the trench he found a cut water channel leading away from a well or basin. The well was about 30 cm in diameter and 30 cm in depth. It had a birch bark surround and was cut into peat. From it a water channel or runnel, its centre marked by blue-stones. ran away towards the north-east under the mound. There were no other finds of flint and no pottery in the excavation trench.

Carter's interpretations

Carter mentions Jacob’s Well in one of his numerous unpublished manuscripts To Rome from the East: A Study in Comparative Religion. He writes: ‘The mound proper was apparently the scene for centuries of ceremonial fire (or steam) raising, since it could only have been constructed by a gradual process involving the bringing of pebbles, the making of a localised fire, the dowsing of the fire by water. Thus the stones became cracked and the fine charcoal washed down into the crevices. The ceremonial rites were performed for so long a period that ultimately well and altar were covered by debris- but local residents still go here to ‘wish’. In the bottom or peat layer were found the broken remains of a beam of wood originally about 10/12 feet long. Of which the purpose can only be surmised. Here we seem to have the locale of rain-making magic, of which remarkable literary expression will be found in the Celtic tale of the Lady of the Fountain’ (Carter n.d. 88-9). Carter’s reconstruction diagram of the ‘altar’ shows the four oak stakes supporting a roofed structure over it (Fig. 11).

Figure 10. The four oak stakes recovered by Carter at the corners of the ‘altar’. The two to the right have been radiocarbon dated.

Carter firmly believed that the mound was of Iron Age date in common with the mounds and pebble platforms that he had excavated earlier on Woodbury and Aylesbeare Commons (Carter 1936; 1938). Two of the wooden stakes found on the corners of the clay ‘altar’ were identified by Dr. Eleni Asouti (University of Liverpool) as being of deciduous oak, again probably of the common English variety. Radiocarbon dating of the two oak stakes have revealed that in fact they are of early Bronze Age date (Table 1).
In view of the fact that bogs, rivers and springs were regularly used as places for votive depositions during the Bronze Age (Bradley 1990; 2000), Carter’s interpretation of the mound as covering a shrine with offerings seems entirely plausible. The long post may represent a totem pole associated with it on the site. Given its location in a bog and water pool with a spring with good organic preservation there may be much else to be discovered here under parts of the mound that Carter did not excavate provided that environmental conditions have not changed since his day, and excavations at the site by the East Devon Pebblebeds Project are planned for 2010.

Figure 11. Carter’s reconstruction diagram of the wooden shrine. Re-drawn by Wayne Bennett.

The archaeological context of Jacob's Well

While ceremonial activities at Jacob’s Well began in the early Bronze Age for how long this site remained in use for fire burning ceremonies remains uncertain but given that the mound is composed of  many cubic metres of burnt and cracked pebbles and charcoal this must have been lengthy. Carter himself records the small bog besides it still being used as a wishing well by locals in 1938 at the time of his excavations as it was, no doubt, in his childhood. He was born and brought up in Exmouth only a few miles distant: ‘people came to drop offerings in the then open hole in the swamp about two or three feet from the aboriginal well’ (Carter unpublished note). Today Jacob’s Well is forgotten and unvisited. The only person who knows and remembers the site is Mrs Priscilla Hull, George Carter’s daughter, who took part (check) in the excavations.
On the basis of Carter’s excavation there appear to be four main components of the shrine: (1) A spring source defined and lined by birch bark with a runnel carrying water away; (2) An oak totem pole; (3) A raised structure supported by four oak stakes, with offering stones, perhaps roofed ; (4) geometric (?) arrangements of pebbles and blue stones. This was covered, in the passage of time, as a result of repeated ceremonies at this sacred location, by a large oval mound of fire cracked pebbles containing much alder charcoal. Alder grows in wet conditions and the wood is likely to have been collected in the immediate vicinity. The presence of both birch and oak at Jacob’s Well is of great interest in view of the fact that these two tree species are also represented at the early Bronze Age Tor Barrow pebble cairn on Colaton Raleigh Common (see below). It would be hard to find two different tree species that contrast so greatly in terms appearance, longevity, type of bark, the hardness and other characteristics of the wood:
Long-lived          Short-lived
Dark wood          Light wood
Hard wood          Soft wood
Rough bark        Smooth bark that peels
Tall                     Short
OAK                    BIRCH
They would provide a ready-made contrastive source of material metaphors (see Tilley 1999) for thinking through and understanding the world and the role of people within it, ‘naturally’ leading to reflection on themes such as life and death and the regeneration of life, growth and longevity, endurance and fragility. It is interesting to note in respect of this that birch has a life-span little more than that of a human being and grows vigorously. By contrast oak grows slowly and may survive for a thousand years or more (for numerous ethnographic examples of the social and symbolic significance of tree symbolism see Rival (ed.) (1998). At Jacob’s Well it is the outer part of the birch (the bark or ‘skin’ of the tree and its living part) that is used to line the spring, while it is the inner parts of oak wood (the ‘bone’ or the dead part of the tree ) that are used to construct a shrine next to it. 
There are a number of other springs and wells on the Pebblebed heathlands of sacred and symbolic significance (see Fig. 1). The Soldier’s Well is located at the western end of the cross-ridge dyke to the north of Woodbury Castle hillfort. The lower part of its ditch runs down a natural erosion gully terminating at this water filled hole (Miles 1975: 183; Fletcher 2000: 169). The fact that the dyke ends down the slope at the site of this stone lined spring is unlikely to be coincidental. In the vicinity of the Golden Well, the site of another spring on East Budleigh Common, Carter collected a number of flints including Mesolithic material. He himself partly excavated a round mound with a ditch around it on Aylesbeare Common situated in a bog over a spring finding layers of ‘ashy material’ in it (Carter 1938: 94). The mound 5.7 m in diameter and 1m high still exists with Carter’s 0.8 x 0.8 m trench cut in its centre. On Woodbury Common Carter excavated another small pebble mound. He reports that ‘here it was found that a spring had been carefully paved with pebbles, that a cairn had been erected over it and the whole enclosed in a large mound up which a path led. In the cairn and above the water level was found a flint flake (offered for luck); below it, on the pavement, was a beautiful sacramental flint’ (Carter 1936: 291). The reconstructed mound still exists. On Bicton Common two barrows with surrounding ditches are located in a boggy area in the bottom of a valley near to a spring while other barrows across the Pebblebed heathlands are typically located near to springs and sources of streams at the heads of valleys (Tilley 2009).
A new perspective on the prehistoric landscape of the Pebblebed heathlands is beginning to emerge from recent fieldwork and excavations undertaken by the East Devon Pebblebeds Project (see www.pebblebedsproject.org.uk). Excavations of a small pebble cairn, named Tor Barrow, (only 6 m in diameter and 0.7 m high) on Colaton Raleigh Common, which started in 2008, recovered charcoal fragments from the old land surface under the cairn. These were identified by Eleni Asouti as being of deciduous oak and birch. Three samples of the birch charcoal have now been dated (see Table 1). They show that the cairn is of very early Bronze Age (Beaker) date. This is perhaps not so surprising as Beaker sherds were recovered from a nearby cairn (Woodbury e) in a similar landscape location excavated by Carter in the 1930s (Carter 1936).
Fieldwork across the heathlands undertaken during 2008 and 2009 has identified other previously unrecorded small cairns and small pebble mounds. These, like the Colaton Raleigh cairn, often occur in groups of three or more and are situated on the sides of spurs overlooking stream valleys. Their small size and their locations mean that they are discrete landscape markers. These contrast markedly with barrows/cairns of presumed Early Bronze Age date which are prominently situated on hill tops and scarp edges and up to 20 m or more in diameter and 2 m high. These are highly visible landscape markers, can be seen from long distances away, and are frequently intervisible (see Tilley 2009). In some cases, as on Aylesbeare Common, smaller cairns are associated with them, often down-slope and in less prominent positions. This appears to be a significant temporal development relating to both the size and the location of the cairns from the Beaker period to the Early Bronze Age. The Jacob’s Well mound is thus contemporary with the period in which much larger and more prominently sited monuments were being constructed. The mound at Jacob’s Well, associated with a spring and a bog and fire burning rituals represents a third class of monuments in special locations not associated with burial but ceremonial practices that may have involved votive offerings to the ancestors associated with water and the underworld. As discussed above there are other sites that potentially fit into this category.
A fourth potentially Bronze Age and unique type of structure are pebble pavements and platforms of the type that Carter excavated on Aylesbeare Common in the 1930s (Carter 1938).  Carter found these down-slope from the summit area crowned by two massive early Bronze Age pebble cairns. Some of these are clearly in the shape of prehistoric axe blades. However the antiquity of those on Aylesbeare Common has always been in doubt since General Simcoe had a temporary encampment of troops in the area between the period 1799 and 1803 at the time of the Napoleonic wars (Hutchinson 1870-81). The exact location of the pebble platforms that Carter excavated is not known but they appear to have been somewhere due north of the summit barrows. Top soil scraping undertaken by the RSPB in 1996 revealed more platforms of similar type down-slope to the north-west of the summit cairns The locations of some of these are known and will repay excavation in the future. In respect of these it is of great interest to note that Carter reports that pebble platforms of a similar kind were found only a few hundred metres from the Jacob’s Well mound, high up above it and to the south running along the escarpment edge of the Pebblebed heathlands. He writes “On the west of the escarpment about 200yds north west of Black Hill House stands a line of pavement altars on the edge of an ancient and partly infilled trench recently revealed by swaling. Though of the same general type as those of Aylesbeare Common they differ in a few respects: (1) They are on a slope facing north-west (2) they are aligned to a north-south line (3) They are generally smaller’ (Carter unpublished hand written manuscript note entitled ‘Appendix: Altars on Black Hill’). He excavated two of these in April 1938 but discovered no artefacts or dateable material but as elsewhere much burnt material and ashy layers. What is possibly significant in relation to this is that there are no records of Simcoe’s troops being in this area although they were encamped in and around Woodbury Castle 2km to the north.

Parallels

The closest parallel to the Jacob’s Well mound is the site of Burlescombe, near Tiverton, some 25 km north of the Pebblebed heathlands, where two Middle Bronze Age burnt mounds with timber-lined troughs and associated pits have recently been excavated (Gent 2007). One of these was 4 m in diameter and up to 0.3 m thick with two layers of heat shattered pebbles, gravel and charcoal. The other was 14.5 m long, 6 m wide and 1 m deep. No artefacts were found in these mounds (ibid: 37). These mounds, like Jacob’s Well, were both associated with a spring, fire and burning, had wooden structures, and were constructed from pebbles from the Budleigh Salterton Pebblebeds. The calibrated dates of the  stakes from Jacob’s Well overlap with the two dates from Burlescombe but are earlier, especially in relation to the larger of the two Burlescombe mounds suggesting an Early Bronze Age date for Jacob’s Well.
There also appear to be significant differences. The landscape locations, Burlescombe on the western edge of a broad shallow coombe and Jacob’s Well at the foot of a steep scarp edge are very different. Jacob’s Well is a much larger mound than either of those at Burlescombe seemingly associated with a significantly larger bog and water pool. The structures Carter recorded, apart from the possible presence of a trough, have no parallels at Burlescombe. Gent’s functionalist interpretation suggests that the Burlesconbe mounds may have been used for some ‘form of industrial activity, such as the production of textiles’ (ibid: 43). This seems very unlikely at Jacob’s Well which is better interpreted as a place of burning rituals and votive depositions associated with an elemental opposition between fire and water as Carter suggested.

Date Number	Radio-carbon result BP	Calibrated date range (2 sigma: 95% probability)	Material Dated	Site
BETA 257340	3440+/-40 BP	1890-1680 BC	Birch charcoal	Tor Barrow
BETA 257339	3480+/- 40 BP	1920-1730 BC	Birch charcoal	Tor Barrow
BETA 257338	3610+/- 40 BP	2130-2090 BC	Birch charcoal	Tor Barrow
BETA 257337	3410+/- 40 BP	1870 BC-1850 BC to 1780-1620 BC	Oak stake	Jacob’s Well
BETA 257336	3250 +/- 40 BP	1620 BC-1440 BC	Oak stake	Jacob’s Well

Table 1. Radiocarbon dates for Tor Barrow, Colaton Raleigh Common and Jacob’s Well, Woodbury Common, East Devon. These are all AMS dates. Those for Tor Barrow are for material recovered on the old ground surface under the cairn. The Jacob’s well stakes were found by Carter at the base of a mound of fire cracked stones in the centre of the mound.

References

Bradley, R. (1990) The Passage of Arms, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Bradley, R. (2000) An Archaeology of Natural Places, London: Routledge
Carter, G.  (1936) ‘Unreported mounds on Woodbury Common’, Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Exploration Society II: 283-294
Carter, G. (1938) ‘The pebbled mounds of Aylesbeare Common’, Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Exploration Society Vol III, Part 2: 91-97
Fletcher, M. (2000) ‘Woodbury Castle: An Earthwork survey by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England’, Proceedings of the Devon Archaeology Society : 58: 165-71
Gent, T.  (2007) ‘Bronze Age burnt mounds and early Medieval wells at Town Farm quarry, Burlescombe’, Proceedings of the Devon Archaeology Society 65: 35-45
Hutchinson, P. O. (1870-81) A History of Sidmouth in the county of Devon, unpublished manuscript
Miles, H. (1975) ‘Excavations at Woodbury Castle, East Devon, 1971’, Proceedings of the Devon Archaeology Society 33: 183-207
Rival, L.  (ed.) (1998) The Social Life of Trees: Anthropological Perspectives on Tree Symbolism, Oxford: Berg
Tilley, C. (1999) Metaphor and Material Culture, Oxford: Blackwell
Tilley, C. (2009) ‘From cosmological experience to the sensory domain on the East Devon Pebblebeds’ in C. Tilley Interpreting Landscapes, Geologies, Topographies, Identities: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology 3, Walnut Creek, CA.: Left Coast Press (in press)
www.pebblebedsproject.org.uk

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Priscilla Hull for allowing me free access to George Carter’s papers and for a donation to the East Devon Pebblebeds Project providing funding for the radiocarbon dating of the two Jacob’s Well stakes. Devon County Council kindly provided a small grant allowing the dating of the charcoal samples from Tor Barrow found during the 2008 excavations on Colaton Raleigh Common directed by Andy Jones and I.  Dr. Eleni Asouti, Department of Archaeology, University of Liverpool was kind enough to identify the charcoal from Tor Barrow and the Jacob’s Well stakes. Jan Oke provided excellent assistance in fieldwork undertaken to locate pebble mounds across the heathlands. Thanks to Toby Taylor for providing information about the pebble platforms discovered during the 1996 RSPB top soil scraping operations on Aylesbeare Common, and indicating the positions of surviving structures.