“A little lowly hermitage it was,Down in a dale, hard by a forest’s side;Far from resort of people that did passIn travel to and fro; a little wideThere was an holy chapel edified,Wherein the hermit duly wont to sayHis holy things each morn and eventide;Thereby a crystal stream did gently play,Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway.”
“A little lowly hermitage it was,Down in a dale, hard by a forest’s side;Far from resort of people that did passIn travel to and fro; a little wideThere was an holy chapel edified,Wherein the hermit duly wont to sayHis holy things each morn and eventide;Thereby a crystal stream did gently play,Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway.”
“A little lowly hermitage it was,
Down in a dale, hard by a forest’s side;
Far from resort of people that did pass
In travel to and fro; a little wide
There was an holy chapel edified,
Wherein the hermit duly wont to say
His holy things each morn and eventide;
Thereby a crystal stream did gently play,
Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway.”
Except as regards the little stream and the sacred fountain this is accurately descriptive of the hermitage at Warkworth. The Coquet is here a tolerably broad river indeed, so that to reach the lowly hermit’s cell one must make employment of the boatman’s art. A little church hewn out of rock, and with a certain architectural skill—that is the famous hermitage of Warkworth. A wood grows high above it; there is a pleasant walk by the riverside below; and above the cave there are some steps by which the hermit is supposed to have ascended to his garden ground. The Hermitage is, as Bishop Percy says—
“Deep hewn within a craggy cliff,And overhung with wood.”
“Deep hewn within a craggy cliff,And overhung with wood.”
“Deep hewn within a craggy cliff,
And overhung with wood.”
Never did hermit choose a lovelier spot for his orisons; but this hermit of Warkworth was a man of industry and taste. He used the hammer and the chisel well. He made for himself a chapel, a confessional, and a dormitory, and none of these did he leave without ornament. There is a groined roof, and there is a rood above the doorway, and there is the recumbent figure of a lady with upraised hands. Whosoever chooses to weave legends about the hermitage of Warkworth is at liberty to do so, for nothing is certainly known of the hermit. The received tradition is to be found in Percy’s “Reliques,” where a member of the family of Bertram by mistake slays his sweetheart and his brother, and expiates his double crime by isolating himself from his kind. The Coquet is very beautiful here, with a mile walk through woods and meadow lands. After the Hermitage a sweet bend of the river brings Warkworth Castle in sight. It stands high up on the summit of grassy slopes, which have a few shrubs scattered about them. Here it was that, according to Shakespeare’s narrative of events, Henry Hotspur read the letter of “a pagan rascal—an infidel,” who would not join him in his designs against the Crown. The next scene is in the Boar’s Head Tavern, Eastcheap, with Poins and Prince Hal. Shakespeare was so far adherent to fact that Hotspur actually lived at Warkworth Castle. Edward III. had conferred it on the second Lord Percy, and until the middle of the fifteenth century the Percies preferred Warkworth to Alnwick. The Castle is one of the most beautiful and perfect ruins in England. It is not only finely situated, but is unique in design, suggesting less of strength than of taste in constructing a palace which must also be a stronghold. A living novelist, the best of our story tellers, has made Warkworth the starting-point of one of his Christmas tales, and has most admirably conveyed to the reader the feeling of the place. Whom should I mean but Mr. Walter Besant? The church where his hero did penance, and where his heroine bravely stood beside her lover, is at the foot of the village street, which slopes upward to the height on which the Castle stands. Just beyond the church is the great stone archway through which the town must be entered, standing at the inner side of the bridge over the Coquet stream. Altogether, the village does not amount to much. It has a few good inns, and a few old-fashioned cottages. But it is as sweet a place as is to be found in all thecountryside, and is therefore much in favour with persons in search of a brief, quiet holiday.
In Warkworth, small as it is, one feels everywhere the influence of the past. History seems to keep guard over it as an important part of its story. In 737 it was conferred by King Ceowulph on the monastery of Lindisfarne. The town was burnt in 1174 by the army of William the Lion, who was something of a poltroon. King John visited the place in the thirteenth century, and did much mischief farther up the river. General Forster and his Jacobites were here in 1715. That very Mr. Patten who is a principal figure in Mr. Besant’s “Dorothy Forster” writes:—“It may be observed that this was the first place where the Pretender was so avowedly pray’d for and proclaimed as King of these realmes.”
From the turrets of Warkworth Castle one looks over a wide expanse of land and sea. The coast line is visible for great distances, beyond Alnmouth and Dunstanborough on the one hand, and almost to Tynemouth on the other. The great towers of Alnwick are in sight, and mile on mile of the most fertile land in Northumberland, and mile on mile of rabbit-haunted sandhills by the sea. Just beyond the Castle the land slopes downward, past a cottage or two, and a little wood, and a great clump of whin-bushes, to the Coquetside, and then the river flows through flat marsh-land until the small seaport town of Amble is reached. I have never seen those Essex salt marshes in which Mr. Baring-Gould lays the scene of his powerful “Mehalah,” but whenever I read the book I am reminded of the country from Warkworth to the sea. Amble has grown up on a steep above the river; but there are flat spaces all round about it, and the river seems to stagnate where barges and schooners lie grounded in the mud, and beyond the harbour there are great level fields between “the bents” and the sea. Not a cheery place, by any means. Amble is one of the smaller outlets of the Northumberland coal trade. In very early days the Romans had some sort of encampment here, and in the Middle Ages Amble had its Benedictine monastery. It is now an exceedingly prosaic little town, with a harbour quite out of proportion to its size, and with an evident intention of “getting on.”
HUNTING ON COQUETSIDE.HUNTING ON COQUETSIDE.(From the Picture by Colonel Lutyens, by Permission of Major Browne, Doxford Hall, Northumberland.)
HUNTING ON COQUETSIDE.
(From the Picture by Colonel Lutyens, by Permission of Major Browne, Doxford Hall, Northumberland.)
“The bents” are the grass-covered sandhills which time and the winds have piled up between the ancient landmarks and the present limits of the tide. They rise to very considerable heights, and stretch, in great undulations, along many a mile of shore. The Coquet flows down between them to a wide waste of sand when the sea is out, and one may trace its waters, should they be discoloured by flood, on either side of the Coquet Island, which the river must have worn from the mainland very long ago. The island is a low, level strip, containing some sixteen acres of ground. It has a peculiar history of its own. There was a monastery upon it in the seventh century, and here the Abbess of Whitby is said to have met St. Cuthbert, who, for this occasion, had overcome his generally invincible dislike to women. St. Cuthbert’s own island is in sight from the Coquet, and if the Farnes were not in the way one’s range of vision might extend to Lindisfarne. Inlater times than those in which Cuthbert taught religion to a rude people the hermit of Warkworth had a rival hermit in the recluse of Coquet Isle; a far more dismal place to reside in, for all around it rage the terrible winter storms of the North Sea. Persons interested in the art of “smashing” may be interested to hear that Coquet Island was resorted to by the makers of false coins—“hard hedds” they were called in those days—so early as 1567. The place was taken by the Scots during the Civil Wars, and there its history ends, except so far as it is continued by shipwreck and disaster at sea. On Coquet Island a lighthouse now stands, tall and white, so that its walls may be seen far away over the sea in the daytime, and its lamps for many a rood at night. Gulls and terns and puffins and guillemots play around it and make their nests amid its sandy turf; and there comes “the dunter,” as the fishermen call it, the porpoise as it is called in more ordinary speech, to devour the bull trout as it is making towards the comparative safety of the Coquet waters. All this may be changed a few years hence, for Amble is developing its trade, and hereafter masts of assembled shipping, and a black prospect of “coal-shoots,” may be the characteristic features of Coquet mouth.
Aaron Watson.
KEILDER MOORS (WITH PEEL FELL TO THE RIGHT).KEILDER MOORS (WITH PEEL FELL TO THE RIGHT).
KEILDER MOORS (WITH PEEL FELL TO THE RIGHT).
Peel Fell—Deadwater Bog—Keilder Castle and the Keilder Moors—The Border Peel—Border Feuds and Friendships—The Charltons—Bellingham—The Reed—Tyne Salmon—The Village of Wark—Chipchase Castle—Haughton Castle and the Swinburnes—Chollerford and the Roman Wall—The Meeting of the Waters.
T
Theclouds which are dragging themselves along the summit of Peel Fell were but lately dappling a bleak English landscape with their shadows, and are now being carried by the indifferent winds beyond that border-line over which, at peril of their lives, mail-clad men in earlier and ruder times were wont “to go to Scotland to get a prey.” The last house in England, a lonely but pleasant homestead, with its wide sheep-walks and its patch of cultivated land, stands under the shelter of a ridge where the brown waste rises into high moorlands; and beyond it, the fell looms very darkly, save where a beam of sunlight traverses its purple slope, with such bright decisiveness as if it were Ithuriel’s spear. Up above Alston, in Cumberland, where the South Tyne comes wandering from the mountain slopes, you may findcottages and farmsteads which were built almost as far back as it is safe to carry a noble pedigree; but here, where the North Tyne oozes out of the fells, we are in a country which was constantly raided from both sides of the Border; and so, for many a mile round about, there is nothing ancient but the castle and the peel tower, the Roman road over the moss, and the Roman wall chaining together the windy ridges of the moors. How could there be, indeed, when the Borderer of former times was accustomed to see his house “all in a low,” and was happy and fortunate if he could but drive his cattle in safety to the nearest peel? If a farmhouse dates back a hundred years or so it seems to belong to a venerable past, and if there is in these parts any more noble residence which does not proclaim to the wanderer that it was built for the purposes of defence, it will belong to a day later than that on which James I. crossed the Border to assume the English crown.
Peel Fell is the westernmost spur of the Cheviot range. Beheld from afar it seems to be a hill of gentle and inviting slope; but is, in fact, more craggy and broken than any of its kindred hills, which, of all the uplands of our country, are, except for the presence of the shepherds and their sheep, the most solitary. On the summit one stands 1,975 feet above the level of the sea. In these days a railway crosses the Border near to Peel Fell. It has kept to the winding course of the river from Newcastle upwards, and now it plunges into that Debateable Land which was for so long a period the excuse of Border feud and foray, and which was not definitely assigned either to the Scots or the English until 1552. Along the very path which this railway keeps there went, on many a memorable day,
“Marching o’er the knowes,Five hundred Fenwicks in a flock;”
“Marching o’er the knowes,Five hundred Fenwicks in a flock;”
“Marching o’er the knowes,
Five hundred Fenwicks in a flock;”
for their old enemies the Grahams kept the Border beyond the fells, and there was not among the Montagues and Capulets such wild and deep enmity as existed between the Tynedale and the Liddesdale men. It must have been ill-marching enough, for the route lay over Deadwater Bog, where, in case of misfortune and retreat, the Fenwicks would have an advantage over their pursuers in their superior knowledge of the sounder spots of ground. In this Deadwater Bog, it is maintained, the North Tyne takes its rise, though here, as in so many cases in which great rivers originate otherwise than in well-defined springs, there is division of opinion and of faith. The Deadwater is a curving silvery thread in a black setting of peat-moss. It belongs wholly to the English side of the Border, and after its leisurely circuit of an almost level plain it ripples into a wider channel and fuller light through a mask of weaving reeds. But between the stations of Saughtree in Scotland and Keilder in England there is a wet ditch within a railway enclosure, and here, say some of the people of the district, and here the Ordnance Survey also asseverates, we must look for the actual origin of the North Tyne. I would gladly debate the question with the Ordnance Survey, if only to prove that the Tyne isan English river up to the remotest spot to which it can be traced; but it is “ill fechtin’” with those who are appointed to settle questions of boundaries, and whose decisions are held to be final however much they may be disputed; and as the little Deadwater and the small stream which insists on counting honours along with it eventually join together and form the indisputable North Tyne, it will be the discreeter course to let the Ordnance Surveyors have their will.
THE COURSE OF THE TYNE.THE COURSE OF THE TYNE.
THE COURSE OF THE TYNE.
The Tyne has scarcely become a distinguishable stream when it commences to take toll of its tributaries. First of all it is broadened and deepened by the junction of the Keilder Burn, whereupon it assumes such dimensions that a wooden bridge is thrown over from bank to bank. Keilder is here a name common to some of the chief features of the landscape—Keilder Castle, Keilder Burn, Keilder Moors. The castle is not one of the old Border strongholds, as might be assumed from its situation, but was built in the latter part of the last century by Hugh, last Earl and first Duke of Northumberland. It is approached by a road over the moors, and through a forest of young fir-trees. Its square tower is half hidden in a wood of more ancient date, and it has for background a fair expanse of purple hills. Between the castle and the fells there is a “forest primeval,” as old, it may be, as that which Longfellow describes in the opening of “Evangeline,” and far more strictly preserved; for not even the scant natives of the district are permitted to enter here, lest perchance they might disturb the game.
KEILDER CASTLE.KEILDER CASTLE.
KEILDER CASTLE.
On Keilder Moors, to the North of Tynehead, three miles hence, there is as good sport as anywhere in South Britain. All varieties of moor-fowl wend thither. The heron may be seen rising, like an arrow shot from a bow, from Keilder Burn;sea-birds wander thus far inland from Holy Island and the Farne Isles, and even make their nests and breed their young at this distance from their kind. The frequent hooting of the owl may be heard here in the night-time, and the distressed cry of the plover resounds all day over these heathery solitudes, where, but for such shrill voices, the silence and the utter loneliness might be felt as a burden, and the bare, desolate country, stretching to the bare, desolate hills, might seem too horribly remote from the kindly haunts of men. But wild as this country now is, and far scattered as are its inhabitants, there must, “in the dark backward and abysm of time,” have been a numerous people here, for there are traces of ancient camps on most of the hills, and within two miles’ compass there must have been at least six settlements of the aboriginal inhabitants of these islands, perhaps of those very Picts whose disorderly valour caused the building of the Roman wall.
GREYSTEAD BRIDGE.GREYSTEAD BRIDGE.
GREYSTEAD BRIDGE.
The woods of Keilder are still in sight when the yet inconsiderable “water of Tyne” is swollen by the broader and more impetuous Lewis Burn, which, after a turbulent career through picturesque glens amid the fells, ploughs its way deep among the pebbly soil of the haughs, and then makes a fatal junction with the more distinguished stream.
“There’s wealth o’ kye i’ bonny Braidlees,There’s wealth o’ youses i’ Tine,”
“There’s wealth o’ kye i’ bonny Braidlees,There’s wealth o’ youses i’ Tine,”
“There’s wealth o’ kye i’ bonny Braidlees,
There’s wealth o’ youses i’ Tine,”
says the old ballad. It was the habit of the Borderer to regard other folks’ possessions as his own, as they might be for the taking, and of these “youses” and kye the hardy wooer remarks to her to whom his speech is here addressed, “these shall all be thine.” Here, looking down from the moorlands on the confluence of the Tyne and the Lewis Burn, one sees how this portion of the north country must always have been a rich pastoral land, very alluring indeedto the reivers who lived beyond Peel Fell. The “haughs” are the flat pastures among the hills and by the side of streams. There is a fair, broad prospect of these where the two “waters” come together. Their monotony is here and there broken by dark bands of sheltering trees. Over the sheep and cattle grazing on these lowlands the ancient peel towers kept guard. There were both peels and castles, indeed. The Border peel was a solitary square tower, with stone walls of enormous thickness. Into the lowest of its compartments cattle were driven when there was an alarm of visitors “from over the Border.” To the upper storeys those who fled for shelter and safety ascended by means of a ladder, which they drew up behind them, then defending themselves as best they might until their neighbours could be summoned to the conflict by the fire which on these warlike occasions was always hung from a gable of the roof. It was not only to steal cattle and sheep that the marauders came. There were often deep blood-feuds to avenge. The Robsons, who are declared to have been “honest men, save doing a little shifting for their living,” made a raid on the Grahams of Liddesdale, and brought home sheep which were found to be afflicted with the scab. Their own flocks died in consequence, and the Robsons became very angry therefore, so that they made a second raid into Liddesdale, and brought back seven Grahams as their prisoners, all of whom they incontinently hanged, with the intimation, quite superfluous under such circumstances, that “the neist time gentlemen cam to tak their schepe they were noto be scabbit.” Such acts bred constant retaliation, and in Northumberland to this day there is no very kindly feeling to persons “from the other side of the Border.”
DALLY CASTLE.DALLY CASTLE.
DALLY CASTLE.
The remains of castles and peel towers crowd together somewhat when we have passed the pleasant little village of Falstone, which seems from time immemorial to have been occupied mainly by the Robson clan. At Falstone, where there are two rival but not unfriendly churches nestling among the trees, was discovered, a while ago, a Runic cross raised to the memory of some old Saxon Hrœthbert, from whom, the name being the ancient form of Robert, it is probable enough that the doughty Robsons sprang. There was a peel in the village itself, but this has been long since incorporated with the laird’s house. Another stood a short distance away, on the opposite side of the Tyne, below Greystead—where we reach the first important bridge over the North Tyne; and within a short distance of a point where three valleys unite their streams there stood two castles related to each other by a deadly feud, and two peels made famous by a wild friendship. Dally Castle—there are now but a few low, earth-covered walls remaining—occupies the summit of a hill distant about a mile and a half from the south bank of the Tyne. Tarset Castle—recognisable only as a green mound—stood on the north bank, close to where the river is joined by the Tarset Burn. The popular legends have connected these old Border strongholds by a subterranean passage, which is believed to have been haunted through many generations. Here a vivid superstition has heard carriages rolling underground, and has seen long processions emerge from an opening which no country wit had the skill to find. In Tarset Castle lived that Red Comyn who was slain by Robert Bruce, and of whom one of the Bruce’s friends “made siccar” by thrusting a dagger to his heart when he had been left for dead. Sir Ralph Fenwick occupied Tarset Castle in 1526, but was driven out by the Charltons, though this must then have been one of the strongest places on the Borders. At some other and undetermined period—so the popular legends say—Tarset and Dally Castles were occupied by families which were at feud with each other, but it so fell out that the Lord of Tarset was smitten by the charms of his enemy’s sister, whom he met by stealth in some retired spot on the moorlands. There, one day, he was set upon by the Lord of Dally and killed, and a cross was thereafter set up to his memory—perhaps by the lady for whom he had died—the site of which is pointed out to this day.
Far different from the relations which existed between the lords of Tarset and Dally were those of Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jack, who inhabited neighbouring peels further up the Tarset Burn. Barty awoke one morning to find that all his sheep had been driven over the Border. Straight he repaired to his faithful Corbit Jack, and the two friends set off together over the fells; whence Barty of the Comb returned with a sword wound in his thigh, the dead body of his “fere” on his shoulder, and a flock of the Leathem sheep marching before him. The record of such occurrences is preserved only in the stories of those who rejoice in male prowess, and who relate how Barty “garred a foe’s heid spang alang theheather like an inion;” but that they had a very pathetic side also the touching ballad of “The Border Widow” might help us to understand.
The old feuds were kept up long after all reason for them had ceased to be, and when no more raiders came from the Liddell to the Tyne the men of the neighbouring valleys fought with each other, from lack of more useful employment. It was the wont, for example, of a descendant of this same Barty of the Comb to appear suddenly at Bellingham Fair, with a numerous following of Tarset and Tarret Burn men at his back, and, raising a Border slogan, to behave as if Bellingham had been Donnybrook. This was at the beginning of the present century only, when, according to Sir Walter Scott, the people of North Tynedale were all “quite wild,” a statement which is not borne out by other authorities, though this “muckle Jock” of Tarset Burn can by no means have had such manners as stamp the caste of Vere de Vere.
The home of those Charltons who drove Sir Ralph Fenwick out of Tarset Castle, and even out of Tynedale, “to his great reproache,” observes an old writer, was at Hesleyside, which is nearly two miles from Bellingham northwards. Here a tower was erected in the fourteenth century. There were other powerful Charltons in the immediate neighbourhood—at the Bowere, a mile further up the Tyne, for example, where there lived Hector Charlton, “one of the greatest thieves in those parts,” if old stories tell true. It was Hector who bought off two men that were to be hung, and then let them loose to prey on the King’s lieges, taking for himself, as became a man boastful of his shrewdness, a due share of their spoil. Also it was the lady of Hesleyside who, in place of a sound meal, would sometimes serve up a spur on an otherwise empty dish, by way of hint that the larder had need to be replenished; and Hesleyside, proud of its past, still keeps this spur as an heirloom. But out of strength, as says Samson’s riddle, there cometh sweetness. The later generations of Charltons have been a cultured race, and it was a rare collection of choice books which was dispersed at the Hesleyside sale a few years ago. Of the ancient tower nothing now remains, the present mansion of the family, situated amid woods which are conspicuous for many miles around, having been built at a comparatively recent period.
At Bellingham, where several fairs are still annually held, and which has been, so long as local history goes back, the central market town of this remote district, we find amid the billowy moorlands a sweet pastoral country, set about with well-timbered lands. The village took its name from the De Bellinghams (now extinct), a family which tried to drive out the Charltons of Hesleyside, and came to no good thereby. Under Henry VIII. Sir Alan de Bellingham was the Warden of the Marches. The village is somewhat commonplace, but has a very interesting church and beautiful surroundings. A mile away Hareshaw Lynn comes tumbling down, between seamed cliffs and verdurous precipices.
“’Tween wooded cliffs, fern-fringed it falls,All broken into spray and foam.”
“’Tween wooded cliffs, fern-fringed it falls,All broken into spray and foam.”
“’Tween wooded cliffs, fern-fringed it falls,
All broken into spray and foam.”
For two miles there is a succession of beautiful cascades, which sing their wilful tune under a dappled archway of clinging shrubs and bending trees. Bellingham Castle has disappeared, like the family by which it was erected, but the old church, with its strong stone roof, bears witness of how in the days of the Border feuds even the House of God had need to be built so that it might be defended against wary and ruthless foes. The structure is in the early Norman style. The stone roof was probably added after the church had been twice fired by the Scots. The nave seems to have been used for much the same purpose as the peel towers, the narrow windows having obviously been intended as much for defensive purposes as for the admission of light. At Bellingham, as indeed throughout all this wild Border country, one may gather a plentiful store of song and legend—tales of how a man whom Bowrie Charlton had slain was buried at the Charlton pew door, so that his murderer dared not to go to church again whilst he lived; of how St. Cuthbert appeared in the church to a young lady who sought a miracle, and how the said miracle was but half completed because of the fright of the young lady’s mother; of how other miracles were wrought at St. Cuthbert’s Well; and of many another strange event of superstitious times. “The past doth win a glory from its being far,” but Bellingham is a very humdrum village now, with no more exciting occurrences than its fairs.
BELLINGHAM CHURCH.BELLINGHAM CHURCH.
BELLINGHAM CHURCH.
CHIPCHASE CASTLE.CHIPCHASE CASTLE.
CHIPCHASE CASTLE.
Shortly after the North Tyne has dreamed leisurely along through Bellingham village, its quiet ways are suddenly disturbed by the inrush of a water which is almost as wide as its own, and greatly more turbulent. The Rede has come downfrom the wild and bare region which the Watling Street traversed on its way to Jedburgh and beyond. Its springs are in the slopes of the Cheviot range north of Carter Fell. Forcing its way over a rock-strewn bed, it flows under the dark shade of Ellis Crag, and by the battlefield of Otterburn, and, with many a capricious bend or lordly curve, past the ancient Roman station of Habitancum, where, until a splenetic farmer destroyed all but its lower portions, the heroic figure of “Rob of Risingham,” one of the most ancient of English sculptures, might be seen. The Rede is a stream which drains an enormous acreage of moor. A day’s rain will swell it into a broad and boisterous torrent, with wide skirts extending far over the haughs. Famous for salmon-breeding is the Rede, and it is only by constant watching that the men of Redesdale are prevented from taking, out of all due season, what they regard as their own. When there is no “fresh” in the river the fish may be seen lying crowded together in the shallow pools, so that itis possible to wade in and take them without intervention of net, or gaff, or rod. But it is an exasperating circumstance that, plentiful as the salmon are, the season for rod-fishing in Redesdale is short, in spite of the law which permits it to be pursued for most months of the year; for as the fish come up here for the spawning season only, there are not more than some two months during which they may become the angler’s legitimate prey. Doubtless such scenes as that which is depicted by Sir Walter Scott in “Guy Mannering” have been witnessed in Redesdale on many a former day. Salmon-spearing from “trows” was common down to at least the middle of the present century, the “trow” being a sort of double punt, pointed at the bows and joined together by a plank at the stern, and the spear, or “leister,” being a barbed iron fork attached to a long pole. The Tyne has a Salmon Conservancy Board in these more severe times, and if trow or leister were to be seen on the river they would be seized as spoil of war.
The narrow streak of gleaming water which made a silvery line across Deadwater Bog has now taken toll of wide lands—
“The struggling rill insensibly has grownInto a brook of loud and stately march,Crossed ever and anon by plank and arch.”
“The struggling rill insensibly has grownInto a brook of loud and stately march,Crossed ever and anon by plank and arch.”
“The struggling rill insensibly has grown
Into a brook of loud and stately march,
Crossed ever and anon by plank and arch.”
Far more than this it has done, indeed, for no longer would any plank be capable of spanning its waters. The North Tyne, which, with all its winding, keeps a much straighter course than the Rede, is now beyond all doubt a river, and such a river as, being liable to sudden and mighty floods, called “freshes” or “spates” in these parts, is of a width altogether out of proportion to the ordinary depth of its waters. Very pleasant and cool and shady are the banks of the North Tyne on hot summer days, and of such varying beauty, withal, that the angler whose thoughts are not too intently fixed on his creel, and on those stories of extraordinary luck with which he purposes hereafter to entertain his friends, may lose all sense of his occupation in that “peace and patience and calm content” which, says Izaak Walton, seized upon Sir Henry Wotton, “as he sat quietly on a summer’s evening, on a bank, a-fishing.” He is a fortunate angler who can take “a contemplative man’s recreation” on such a river as the North Tyne, where he may camp out for a month together, well assured of sport; but where he need not feel lonely unless he wills, for a moderate walk will generally suffice to bring him to a village and an inn.
Among the oldest of these villages is Wark, some five miles below Reedsmouth. In course of centuries of change it has fallen from its high estate, for it was once the capital of North Tynedale, and a session of the Scottish Courts was held on its Moot Hill when Alexander III. was King of Scotland, great part of Northumberland being also under his rule. Wark is a very unpretending village now, with a modern church, and a school founded by a philanthropic pedlar, and nothing about it half so interesting as its history. A mile away stands ChipchaseCastle, which looks bright and new as it is seen from the railway, and yet is one of the most ancient and famous strongholds on the Borders. Not all of it is equally ancient, however, for in the time of James I. the present noble manor-house was added to the “keep” of earlier days by a descendant of that Sir George Heron who was slain in “The Raid of the Reidswire,” and who is called in the ballad which celebrates that event, “Sir George Vearonne, of Schipsyde House.” Ballad-writers were clearly not particular in the matter of proper names, for Sir George’s patronymic was known well enough to the Scots, seeing that after his death they made presents of falcons to their prisoners, grimly observing that the said prisoners were nobly treated, since they got “live hawks for dead herons.”
There was a village of Chipchase in Saxon times, and there are remains of a fort much older than the keep which has been incorporated with the existing mansion. Peter de Insula, a retainer of the Umfravilles of Prudhoe, which is further down the Tyne, lived here in the thirteenth century. The Herons, who followed him, were of the same family as the stout baron who is celebrated by Sir Walter Scott:—
“That noble lordSir Hugh the Heron bold,Baron of Twisell and of Ford,And captain of the hold.”
“That noble lordSir Hugh the Heron bold,Baron of Twisell and of Ford,And captain of the hold.”
“That noble lord
Sir Hugh the Heron bold,
Baron of Twisell and of Ford,
And captain of the hold.”
The race has died out, as is the case with so many of the famous families of Northumberland; but coal sustains what a warlike lordship built, and Chipchase Castle is to this day as proud and stately a place as in the time of the noblest Heron of them all. There are grim stories told of what took place there in former rude times. Sir Reginald Fitz-Urse, says tradition, was starved to death in the dungeon of the keep, and another unfortunate knight, pursued by the swords of intending murderers, lost himself in the chambers of the castle walls, and never issued alive therefrom. The peel tower of Chipchase is almost as large as a Norman keep, and is more ornamented than was common in most structures of the kind. The more recent castle is held to be one of the noblest examples of Jacobean architecture that have come down to us.
HAUGHTON CASTLE.HAUGHTON CASTLE.
HAUGHTON CASTLE.
Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne, the poet, has recently reminded the world, through the medium of some Border ballads which but indifferently represent the dialect of Northumberland, that he is himself a Borderer. Long ago he wrote glowingly of “the league-long billows of rolling, and breathing, and brightening heather,” and of “the wind, and all the sound, and all the fragrance and freedom and glory of the high north moorland.” It is probably from Sir William de Swyneburn of Haughton Castle that he is descended. Haughton stands on the opposite bank of the river to Chipchase, and a brief space lower down. Here Archie Armstrong, the chief of a famous moss-trooping clan, was starved to death long ago—by accident, and not design, let it in justice be said. Sir William de Swyneburn was treasurer to Margaret of Scotland, and is credited with having had a great and insatiable greed for his neighbours’ lands. He was succeeded in histenure of the castle by the Widdringtons, one of whom is celebrated in the ballad of “Chevy Chase.” It was he, indeed, for whom the poet’s
”——heart was woe,As one in doleful dumps;For when his legs were smitten in twoHe fought upon his stumps.”
”——heart was woe,As one in doleful dumps;For when his legs were smitten in twoHe fought upon his stumps.”
”——heart was woe,
As one in doleful dumps;
For when his legs were smitten in two
He fought upon his stumps.”
But there was a Sir Thomas Swinburne at Haughton in the reign of Henry VIII. He was Warden of the Marches, and it was through his neglect of a prisoner that Archie Armstrong came to his death. Haughton Castle has a fine look of antique strength, but is nevertheless, in the main, a modern building. The original castle was burned down at some unrecorded time, and its ruins were restored and made habitable in the early part of the present century. Close by, it is sad to say, a former owner had a paper-mill, where forged assignats were manufactured for the purpose of being passed off as the genuine French article during the Duke of York’s expedition to Flanders in 1793. To Sir William de Swynburn the people around Haughton are still indebted for the convenience of a ferry, for one whichhe established so far back as the reign of Henry II. plies in the old fashion—by an overhead rope and pulley—to this day.
AT WARDEN.AT WARDEN.
AT WARDEN.
Past Haughton Castle the river strains and rushes between narrowing banks. Lower down, at Chollerford, it has changed its course somewhat in the lapse of centuries, and the waters of North Tyne now flow over what was the abutment of an ancient bridge. At this spot let the chance visitor take the poet’s advice:—
“Here plant thy foot, where many a foot hath trodWhose scarce known home was o’er the southern wave,And sit thee down, on no ignoble sod,Green from the ashes of the great and brave;Here stretched the chain which nations could enslave,The least injurious token of their thrall,Which, if it helped to humble, helped to save;This shapeless mound thou know’st not what to callWas a world’s wonder once—this was the Roman wall.”
“Here plant thy foot, where many a foot hath trodWhose scarce known home was o’er the southern wave,And sit thee down, on no ignoble sod,Green from the ashes of the great and brave;Here stretched the chain which nations could enslave,The least injurious token of their thrall,Which, if it helped to humble, helped to save;This shapeless mound thou know’st not what to callWas a world’s wonder once—this was the Roman wall.”
“Here plant thy foot, where many a foot hath trod
Whose scarce known home was o’er the southern wave,
And sit thee down, on no ignoble sod,
Green from the ashes of the great and brave;
Here stretched the chain which nations could enslave,
The least injurious token of their thrall,
Which, if it helped to humble, helped to save;
This shapeless mound thou know’st not what to call
Was a world’s wonder once—this was the Roman wall.”
Here, indeed, the great bulwark against northern barbarism approached the Tyne on either of its banks. The river is now crossed by a bridge which was built in 1775, but there still exist substantial remains of that by which the Roman legions crossed over to the great stations of Procolitia and Cilurnum. Procolitia was oneof a trio of important stations near to this portion of the North Tyne, and is some three or four miles away. Not many years ago no less than 16,000 coins, besides some rings, and twenty Roman altars, were discovered on this site. The coins ranged from the days of the Triumvirate to those of Gratian. The altars were all dedicated to Coventina. Who Coventina may have been, the antiquaries inquire in vain. Of her neither Greek, nor Roman, nor Celtic mythology has kept record. What is clear is that she must have been worshipped by the first cohort of Batavians, which kept guard here when these altars were made. At Cilurnum, now known as the Chesters, nearer by three miles to the bank of the Tyne and the ancient Roman bridge, altars were raised to more various deities. A cohort of Asturians was in garrison here. With the exception of Newcastle, probably, and Birdoswald certainly, this was the most important station on the Roman wall, and is at this time far the most wonderfully preserved. One may stand in the grounds of Mr. John Clayton, at the Chesters, and, with slight exercise of the fancy, reconstruct a Roman city in Britain, so materially is the imagination assisted by what recent excavations have disclosed. Agricola is believed to have built Cilurnum in 81A.D.It existed as a camp before the wall was built, and covered a space of six acres of ground. Coal was found on one of the hearths when the place was first unearthed, a curious proof of the long period during which that mineral has been in use in the district through which this river flows. Among the statuary discovered was a well-preserved figure which is believed to represent the river-god of North Tyne:—
“The local deity, with oozy hairAnd mineral crown, beside his jagged urnRecumbent.”
“The local deity, with oozy hairAnd mineral crown, beside his jagged urnRecumbent.”
“The local deity, with oozy hair
And mineral crown, beside his jagged urn
Recumbent.”
At Chollerford the even course of the river is broken by a long curving weir, over which the “wan water” comes down magnificently in seasons of flood. “The water ran mountains hie” at Chollerford Brae, says an old ballad; but that is clearly an exaggeration. Nevertheless, Chollerford is not the place at which one would choose to cross the river at flood-time, and without a bridge, as happened with “Jock o’ the Side,” when he was hotly followed by pursuers from Newcastle town. It is odd how ancient and mediæval and ballad history centres around this quiet spot. Half a mile away is Heaven’s Field, where Oswald of Northumbria gathered his army around him, set up the standard of the Cross by the Roman wall, adjured his troops to pray to the living God, and overthrew in one of the most important battles of our early history the far larger forces of heathenesse. Here we are approaching the point where the North and the South Tyne, making a fork of swift, clear-shining water, unite their streams to form the great river of which Milton, and Akenside, and many another poet, have admiringly sung. By the ancient village of Warden, the two streams, as an old writer says, “salute one another;” and where they meet there is a stretch of water as wide almost as a lake, reflecting on still days the high-towering woods and the misty hills which divide North and South Tynedale.
ALSTON MOOR.ALSTON MOOR.
ALSTON MOOR.
On the “Fiend’s Fell”—Tyne Springs—Garrigill—Alston and the Moors—Knaresdale Hall—The Ridleys—Haltwhistle—Allendale—Haydon Bridge and John Martin—The Arthurian Legends.
Weare in Cumberland, amid the wilds. How did St. Augustine contrive to penetrate to such a region as this? The land is desolate, bleak, solitary. A desert of heathery hills; here and there a reed-fringed stream; in front the wild and stern face of Cross Fell! A seldom-trodden height, this Cumberland mountain, seeming to stand sentinel over all the country round. On its lower slopes, the three great commercial rivers of the North have their rise. We have come here in search of the source of the South Tyne, but a short morning’s wandering would lead us also to the sources of the Wear and the Tees. Cross Fell is 2,892 feet above the level of the sea, and to half that elevation we have ascended to reach these moors in which it seems to be set. The “Wizard Fell,” some poet has called it. The “Fiend’s Fell” it was called of old. To reach it from Alston one must trudge wearily afoot, or hire such vehicle as may be obtainable where travellers seldom come. The road winds about over windy uplands, ever rising nearer to the drifting clouds. A lead-miner’s bothie stands beside it here and there, and one is constantly passing places where the miners have “prospected” for ore. All the roadside, indeed, hasbeen explored and broken. The South Tyne is making music all the way, for it flows downward to one’s right, and is constantly tumbling over rocks and forming cascades over little precipices. It becomes a hasty, tumultuous river almost immediately after its birth, increasing in volume with a celerity quite wonderful to see, and seemingly impetuous to lose the cold companionship of these bleak and barren hills, which, despite their sternness, are all aglow with colour, and pulsating with rapid waves of light.
To the right, brown ridges of high moorland; to the left, slopes more broken, strewn over, as it would seem, with masses of light-purple rock; beyond all, the dark ridge of Cross Fell closing-in the lonely valley. A streak of brighter and fresher green than any that is visible on the hillsides indicates where a hidden thread of water percolates the moss. Then there is a glint of silver here and there. Finally, the eye lights upon a sedgy pool, in the centre of which there is perceptible that throbbing movement which tells of the presence of a spring. This, then, is the source of the South Tyne. Before its waters have travelled far from here they will be crossed by a rude, ancient bridge, and swollen by many a little tributary from the hills.
From the summit of Cross Fell at certain seasons the mysterious and terrible “helm wind” blows. When no breeze disturbs the air, and when, over all the country round, there is a clear and bright sky, a line of strangely tortured and curving clouds will form itself along the ridge of the mountain. Then the shepherds will hie to where shelter may be found, for they know that a wind will soon be blowing before which no human creature can stand upright, and that may uproot trees, and unroof houses, and carry dismay into the valleys far below. It was the fiends holding revel, said the early inhabitants of these regions; wherefore St. Augustine erected a cross on the highest part of the fell, collecting his monks around him, and holding a religious service there, whereby if the fiends were made less harmful they were by no means dispossessed. The nearest inhabited place is Garrigill, which is a prominent object in the valley as one ascends the moor from Alston. A Cumberland village is a series of white gleaming spots against the hillside—a collection of whitewashed walls and grey-blue roofs of stone. This of Garrigill is like so many others, except as to the height at which it has been built, and its bright contrast with the gloom of its surroundings. There is a pleasant shadow of trees about its housetops. There is a village inn, and a village green, and a village well. The young river flows past quickly, merrily, with the music of numerous little falls. The people of these hill regions are miners for the most part. Lead was worked in these mountain sides at times so far back as the Roman occupation of Britain, and some of the miners, if they had kept a record of such things, might show a pedigree longer than that of those whose ancestors were engaged in Senlac fight. Their chief quarters are at Alston and at Allenheads, but their bothies are scattered about these moors. The town of Alston is four miles below Garrigill. It is a pretty, white-looking town, high up on the slope of the moors. Of itstwo principal streets one is parallel with the river Nent, and the other with the South Tyne, the two streams here joining to make a fairly considerable river. At Alston we are again on the track of St. Augustine’s footsteps. He may even have founded a place of worship here, and it is in keeping with the tradition of his having Christianised Cumberland that the church should bear his name.