The Defra-funded Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL) programme supports farming and land management activities in England’s Protected Landscapes that make improvements for nature, climate, people and place. The programme blends national, regional and local priorities and devolves decision making to local experts. It fills gaps not met by other farming support available, especially for smaller landholders. Contributions to nature recovery and climate resilience, sustainable businesses, social wellbeing and community building, heritage conservation and better access for people to enjoy our nation’s landscapes all feature in programme delivery, coming together to make much more resilient rural places.

Crop-marks on aerial photographs of High Tarns Farm near Silloth in Cumbria led archaeologists from Grampus Heritage to suspect that the remains of a large building might be hiding underneath the farm’s fields.

Solway Coast National Landscape’s FiPL panel, consisting of specialist staff from the National Landscape team and local farmers and landowners approved a £15,000 grant to enable the Grampus Heritage team to carry out a geophysical survey and then to excavate three trenches to explore further. The dig took place over six weeks during summer 2024, staffed by local volunteers trained in archaeological techniques.

Initially, the team suspected that the site was connected to the nearby Cistercian monastery of Holme Cultram, but, excitingly, carbon dating carried out as part of the excavation revealed a much older structure. Samples from a posthole, a charcoal production pit and the bottom of an oat drying chamber revealed a date for the building of late 10th / early 11th century.  

The date allowed the team to interpret the building as a large Hall of the late Viking Age. As if that wasn’t exciting enough, it makes the site the largest Viking Age building to be discovered and excavated in Britain.

Mark Graham of Grampus Heritage said: “The significance of this discovery in shedding light on the early medieval period and social structure in rural Cumbria and more widely is hard to overstate.”

While there is clear evidence of Viking Age heritage in Cumbria, through Scandinavian placenames, dialect, Viking burials and sculpture from the period in older church sites, there is an absence of buildings from the period. It’s likely that later buildings were built on top of settlement sites. This makes the finding of the whole footprint of a building from the late Viking Age at High Tarns hugely significant.