Oldest House in Britain: 11,500 Years Old

Birch tree at site where Stone Age house has been found, dated at 8,500 BCE. Photo: UNP

The Telegraph and the blog The Poor Mouth have picked up on an August 10 story from the University of Manchester (here) about an archaeological dig that has unearthed the oldest home in Britain.  The house is so old that when it was built at the edge of a Stone Age lake, in what is now North Yorkshire, Britain was still attached by a land bridge to the continent of Europe. 

The structure is round and traces of wooden remains indicate Europe's first samples of carpentry.  The Telegraph article confirms that the dwelling would have been inhabited by hunter-gatherers just at the end of the Ice Age: "They migrated from an area now under the North Sea, hunting animals including deer, wild boar, elk and enormous wild cattle known as auroch." Leading archaeologists at the Star Carr site where the dig is taking place are Dr. Chantal Conneller and Barry Taylor from the University of Manchester and Dr. Nicky Milner from the University of York.