STANDING high on Cockfield Fell, with the wind tearing at your face, you feel on top of the world. All central Durham is laid out before you. At your feet lies the history of the entire county, for the face of the fell has been pitted and pock-marked by the past.

Because Cockfield Fell has so many historical stories buried within it - from the primitives of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago, right through to the industrialists less than a couple of hundred years ago - it is listed as the largest Ancient Monument in the county.

The tale begins when the ice retreated in about 10,000BC. Plants colonised the bare earth; animals, such as reindeer, moved in to eat the plants; other animals, including wolves, bears and humans, moved in to eat the animals that had moved in to eat the plants.

Flint arrowheads dating from about 8,000BC have been found further up the fell, at Woodland, showing that the humans were hunters, probably seasonal, following the reindeer about the countryside.

About 4,000BC the weather was warm - roughly four degrees warmer than today - and wet: ideal growing conditions for trees such as oak and elm.

About 2,000BC, the humans began to domesticate. They cleared the trees so they could keep sheep, goats and cattle.

On a fell such as Cockfield, the rain and lack of trees meant that much of the top soil was slowly washed away, so by about 800BC the fell looked much as it does today: rough grassland and no trees.

But there were people living up there then. The outlines of at least three Iron Age farmsteads can be clearly seen, and they are in such close proximity that this must have been a popular place to live. The farmsteads were circular, surrounded by ditches and earth banks, which kept out the neighbours who were inclined to make off with anything edible.

The centuries came and went. The birth of Christ came and went. But not much bothered the families in the farmsteads of Cockfield Fell, beyond the usual trials and tribulations of life and death.

Even the arrival of the Romans on the south coast in AD43 went unremarked by the Brigantes tribe who lived in the North-East, with their capital at Stanwick St John, near the River Tees.

But not for long. Soon, the deposed king of southern England, Caractacus, arrived breathless in their patch with the Romans hot on his heels.

Cartimandua, the queen of the sexually non-discriminating Brigantes, had a decision to make: support Caractacus or throw her lot in with the Romans.

She decided on the latter and handed Caractacus over to the invaders. They took him back to Rome where, in AD51, he was paraded in chains before the Emperor, who decided he liked his pluck and allowed him to live free in the city.

Not all of the Brigantes supported Cartimandua's decision. Her husband, Venutius, was particularly unimpressed, so she divorced him and took up with her lover, Vellocatus.

Civil war ensued. It ebbed and flowed for 25 years: sometimes Cartimandua, backed by the Romans, was in charge; other times her ex-husband, Venutius, and his rebels had the upper hand.

In AD79, the Romans had had enough and soundly thrashed the rebels at the Battle of Stanwick. The North-East came under their control and they began driving their roads through and building forts.

It was then that the simple farming people of Cockfield Fell had their first sight of their new masters, as the road from Bowes to Binchester, via Barnard Castle, Staindrop and West Auckland, was built nearby.

A couple of Roman coins have been found on the fell and, intriguingly, local legend has it that Roman soldiers are buried up there.

Five "burial mounds" exist, each with about ten "graves". These have not been excavated, but archaeologists believe they are more likely to be pillow mounds, which were built in medieval times by rabbit farmers. They are probably artificial warrens, ensuring that rabbits were always close at hand when hunger struck.

Having built Hadrian's Wall, the Romans departed in AD410 and England fell into the Dark Ages.

An enterprising fellow on the fell tried to step into the power vacuum and built himself a fortified farm - the outline of which can be seen from the air. It is rectangular, with rounded corners. In its south-west corner is a pile of stones and it has a single entrance on the east side (one entrance means it was not a fully fledged fort, because these have two entrances).

This was his stronghold - his people and cattle protected by a stone rampart and possibly a mysterious trench.

The trench is to the north of the settlement and no one understands the reason for its existence.

However, protection from the north was a good idea, because soon the Picts from Scotland came raiding; Jutes, Angles and Saxons came invading from Germany and Scandinavia.

King Ida the Flamethrower, reputedly a descendant of the god Woden, became the first Anglo-Saxon king of the North-East in AD550.

Quite what the people of the fell made of it all, we can only guess. These were bloody times, as Christianity fought to gain a foothold.

In AD605, the Christian king Aethelfrith united Yorkshire with his lands north of the Tees to form the Kingdom of Northumbria. He was succeeded by his pagan eldest son, Eanfrith, who was killed by his Christian brother, Oswald.

These warlike Anglo-Saxons did not leave their mark visibly on the fell, probably because they moved out of their farmsteads and joined up with neighbouring families to form villages.

But they have left their mark in the names of those villages that surround the fell. Cockfield was the field belonging to an Anglo-Saxon called Cocca; Butterknowle was a hill that had rich pasture, so the Anglo-Saxon cows produced good butter. The Anglo-Saxons would have understood the word "ley" meant a clearing, so Copley was the clearing on the peaked hill, Morley was the clearing on the moor, and Etherley was the clearing that belongs to Eadred.

Evenwood was the wood on flat ground, Wackerfield the watch-field and Wham was (and still is) a hamlet.

The river that runs at the foot of the fell, though, had to wait until the next generation of invaders - the Vikings from Denmark - came in the 9th Century to get its name. The Gaunless is believed to be from an Old Norse word "gaghenles", which today we would say as "gormless". It is difficult for a river to be gormless, but it can be useless: the Gaunless is a mean trickle that doesn't sustain fish and doesn't have much of a flood plain which would double as a rich, fertile meadow.

For a couple of hundred years, the Vikings feuded with themselves, the Scots and the English for the right to rule the North-East. In 1066 - September 25, to be precise - a decisive battle appears to have been fought at Stamford Bridge, near York, when Tostig, Earl of Northumbria, and his ally, King Harald Hardrada, of Norway, were killed by King Harold of England.

But on October 14, Harold himself was killed - with an arrow through the eye - by William the Conqueror, at Hastings.

The Northumbrians, though, refused to be easily conquered by the Conqueror. For three years they caused a nuisance and killed his troops until, in December 1069, William had had enough. In "the harrying of the North", he destroyed all farmland and property between Durham and York - even remote Cockfield Fell seems not to have escaped. The people ran to the hills.

So little was left that William did not bother stock-taking in the North-East when he compiled his Domesday Book in 1086.

Cockfield Fell emerges from this dark period about 100 years later, when we learn that a fellow called Robert de Cockfield, probably a knight from Suffolk, had been granted an estate there by the Bishop of Durham.

Robert arrived to find that his manor house was derelict, a victim of Will iam's harrying, and he had to rebuild.

In 1228, he started, channelling a couple of becks on the edge of Cockfield village into an oval-shaped moat. Inside he built his hall - now Hall Farm is on its site, with The Fallows council estate on its meadow.

Robert also thought about life after death: behind his hall he started a church.

In his hall he installed his daughter and heiress, Alice, whom he married off to John le Vavasour, the son and heir of Robert le Vavasour. The Vavasours were important people in Durham, but appear not to have owned any other land.

The descendants of Alice and John were lords of the manor of Cockfield until they sold out to the Neville family, of Raby Castle, in 1410. But the family left one important dent on Cockfield Fell. In 1375, Vavasour's mine became the first inland colliery in the country to be mentioned in documents. All the others were on the coast or close to useful rivers such as the Tyne, so coal could be easily exported.

So, after 2,000 years of being pock-marked by rural farmsteads, the first pitmarks of the industrial era were made - although it would be another 450 years before the giant scars of the railways would be slashed across Cockfield Fell.

* Echo Memories is indebted to numerous sources for this article, principally The Story of the Gaunless Valley by Niall Hammond, and the knowledge of John Hallimond and his mentor, the late Don Wilcock.

Published: 10/07/2002

Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF, e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.