At the Brenkley Lane surface mine archaeologists are unearthing a five hectare settlement.

It is centred on four roundhouses within a double rectangular enclosure.

The remains relate to a period of occupation during the Iron Age.

I think Bedlington with our Iron and Coal deposits must have similar areas waiting to be discovered.

This would surely be the case if populations were anywhere near where they are today, but the fact is that historically the UK was very sparsely populated and heavily forested.

 

For every one thousand people in the UK today estimates put the 5,000BC population at only a single person (around 60 thousand in total). Even around 0BC the UK population was only about 1.5M.  It's also a fair conclusion that the South of England would have been more heavily populated than the North.  Ancients would have clustered a lot more tightly than we do today; not to do so would have invited extinction.

 

There was no means of wreaking any sort of a living from the most of the landmass, so successful tribes would have cherry-picked the best locations and stuck with them over long periods. They would have had next to no awareness of where most coal and iron deposits were, and only stumbled on them by accidents of nature.

There were Bronze Age remains discovered during the building of Millfield, Maggie, but no indications of Iron Age settlers exist.

Our town and surrounding area are the very best location.

Higher ground for Defence, Running Water (transport and worship), Fuel (wood and coal), Iron deposits.

If a Bedesman is someone who prays for a person then surely our town could be :-

Bede Ling Ton

A town to pray.

No one knows for sure.