whether he had actually joined the plotters, his well-known friendship with the exiled Prince making it almost certain that he would be an important figure in any movement on their behalf. For the next few weeks the young Earl found himself obliged to remain in hiding, finding safety in the cottages of his tenants, and in the houses of friends and neighbours. Finally, though his good sense warned him that he was embarking on an almost hopeless enterprise, he decided to throw in his lot with the Jacobites.
Tradition has it that his decision was brought about by the taunts of his Countess, who, like the rest of the Jacobite ladies, was more enthusiastic than the men. Throwing down her fan, she scornfully offered that to her husband as a weapon, and demanded his sword in exchange. The immediate result was seen on that October morning when Derwentwater and his little band of followers rode over the bridge at Corbridge with drawn swords, on their way to Beaufront, which was their first rendezvous; and from there proceeded to Greenrigg, near the great Wall, which had been appointed as a general meeting-place.
There they were joined by Mr. Forster, of Bamburgh, with his contingent, and a few from the surrounding district. Rothbury next saw the little army, which was joined on Felton Bridge by seventy Scots; and thereafter Warkworth, Alnwick, and Morpeth heard James Stuart proclaimed King under the title of James III.
Newcastle was to have been their next objective, but, hearing that the city had closed its gates, and intended to hold out for King George, the Jacobite force, after some indecision, returned northward to Rothbury, where they were joined by a large company of Scottish Jacobites under Lord Kenmure. Northward again they marched to Kelso, where more than a thousand Scots joined forces with them.
The little army numbered now almost 2,000, and a council was held to determine what their next step should be. On its being resolved to enter England, some hundreds of the Highlanders returned home, leaving an army of about 1,500 to march southwards to Lancashire. On their way they put to flight at Penrith a motley force which was raised to oppose them; and, elated with a first success, moved forward to Preston, grievously disappointed on the way at the failure of the people of Lancashire to rise with them, for they had been given to understand that thousands in that county were only awaiting an opportunity to declare for “King James.”
At Preston they barricaded the principal streets, and repulsed General Willis; but the arrival of General Carpenter from Newcastle changed the face of affairs. Young Derwentwater had fought valiantly and worked arduously at the barricades, but Forster–whose appointment as General had been made in the hope of attracting other Protestant gentry to the Jacobite cause–offered to submit to General Carpenter under certain conditions. Carpenter’s reply was a demand for unconditional surrender, and the hopeless little tragi-comedy was played out. The last scene took place on Tower Hill three months later, when the gallant young Earl, then only twenty-six years old, laid down the life which, after all, had been spent in the service of others, with no selfish purpose in view, and which was offered him, together with wealth and freedom, if he would forsake his faith and throw aside his allegiance to the house of Stuart. Refusing to purchase life at such a price, he was condemned, and executed on Tower Hill on February 24th, 1716.
His brother Charles, who had been by his side throughout the rising, had the good fortune to escape from Newgate Prison, and passed most of his life abroad. Thirty years later, on his return to take up arms on behalf of James’ son Charles–“bonnie Prince Charlie”–when he also drew the sword in an attempt to regain the throne of his fathers, Radcliffe was captured and beheaded. (For account of a monument to the memory of these two brothers see in previous chapter paragraph relating to Haydon Bridge.)
The story of General Forster’s escape from Newgate is told by Sir Walter Besant, as all readers of his novel, “Dorothy Forster” know, though the author has taken those minor liberties with unimportant facts which are by common consent allowable in fiction.
James Radcliffe’s friends were allowed to have his body, though they were forbidden to carry it home for burial; for such were the love and esteem borne for the young Earl in the hearts of all his North-country friends and dependents, that the authorities feared a disturbance of the peace should his body be brought amongst them while their rage and grief were still at their height. Notwithstanding the prohibition, however, the body was brought secretly to Dilston, and buried in the vault of the chapel, which, with the ruined tower, are all that remain of the home of the Radcliffes. Standing amidst luxuriant foliage, and overlooking a romantic dell, the ruins of tower and chapel remain as they fell into decay on the death of their luckless owners. The confiscated estates were bestowed on Greenwich Hospital, whose agents administer them still, with the exception of certain portions purchased from time to time by various landowners. No other family took the place of the Radcliffes in the deserted halls; but tradition holds that the unfortunate Earl and his sorrowful lady still revisit their ancient home. The Earl’s body is now at Thorndon, in Essex. Below is Surtees’ beautiful ballad, “Lord Derwentwater’s Farewell.”
LORD DERWENTWATER’S FAREWELL
“Farewell to pleasant Dilston Hall,
My father’s ancient seat;
A stranger now must call thee his, Which gars my heart to greet.
Farewell each kindly well-known face My heart has held so dear;
My tenants now must leave their lord Or hold their lives in fear.
No more along the banks of Tyne
I’ll rove in autumn grey;
No more I’ll hear, at early dawn,
The lav’rocks wake the day;
Then fare thee well, brave Witherington, And Forster ever true;
Dear Shaftsbury and Errington,
Receive my last adieu.
And fare thee well, George Collingwood, Since fate has put us down;
If thou and I have lost our lives, Our king has lost his crown.
Farewell, farewell, my lady dear,
Ill, ill thou counsell’dst me;
I never more may see the babe
That smiles upon thy knee.
And fare thee well, my bonny gray steed, That carried me aye so free;
I wish I had been asleep in my bed The last time I mounted thee;
The warning bell now bids me cease, My trouble’s nearly o’er;
Yon sun that rises from the sea
Shall rise on me no more.
Albeit that here in London Town
It is my fate to die;
O carry me to Northumberland,
In my father’s grave to lie.
There chant my solemn requiem
In Hexham’s holy towers;
And let six maids of fair Tynedale Scatter my grave with flowers.
And when the head that wears the crown Shall be laid low like mine;
Some honest hearts may then lament For Radcliffe’s fallen line.
Farewell to pleasant Dilston Hall, My father’s ancient seat;
A stranger now must call thee his, Which gars my heart to greet.”
Near to Corbridge the waters of the Tyne lave the ancient piers of the old Roman bridge which led to Corstopitum, the most considerable of the Roman stations in this region. The recent careful excavations have laid bare the evidence of what must have been a most imposing city, and many treasures of pottery, coins and ancient jewellery and ornaments, together with large quantities of the bones of animals, some of them identical with the wild cattle of Chillingham, have been brought to light. The famous silver dish known as the Corbridge Lanx, which was found at the riverside by a little girl in 1734, had evidently been washed down from Corstopitum. It is now preserved at Alnwick Castle. The antiquity of Corbridge is thus superior to that of Hexham, as far as may be known; but on the other hand, while Hexham in Saxon times grew to power, Corbridge declined. Yet, in its time, it was more than the home of a famous Abbey; it was a royal city, albeit the date of its elevation to royal rank coincided with the decline of the kingdom of which it was the final capital. When the fierce and ruthless internal quarrels, which rent Northumbria after Edbert’s glorious reign, had weakened it so that it fell a prey to the gradual encroachments of its northern neighbours, the once royal city of Bamburgh was left in the hands of a noble Saxon family, and the court was removed to Corbridge, which remained the abode of the kings of Northumbria until Northumbria possessed royal rank no longer. The tale of the two hundred years during which Corbridge was the capital city is a tale of red slaughter and ruin, murder and bitter feud, not against outside foes, but between one family and another, noble against king, king against relatives of other noble houses, amongst which might possibly be found the thegn to succeed him, or to murder him in order to bring about his own more speedy elevation to a precarious throne.
So much was this the case, that Charles the Great, at whose court the learned Northumbrian, Alcuin, was secretary, said that the Northumbrians were worse than the invading heathen Danes, who, by this time, had begun their ravages in the land. Amongst the rulers of Northumbria in those days, the name of Alfwald the Just, who was called “the Friend of God,” shines out with enduring light across the stormy darkness of that terrible period; yet even his just and merciful rule and noble life could not save him from the hand of the assassin. He was buried with much mourning and great pomp in the Abbey at Hexham; and during the recent excavations the fact of a Saxon interment was verified as having taken place beneath the beautiful tomb which tradition has always held to be that of King Alfwald the Just. This fact also helped to demonstrate the extent of the original Abbey.
There was a monastery at Corbridge in the year 771, which is supposed to have been founded by St. Wilfrid. Of the four churches which were erected in later times, only one survives–the parish church of St. Andrew, which occupies the site of the early monastery. In this ancient church may be seen part of the original Saxon work, and many stones of Roman workmanship are built up in the structure.
Like most other old churches in the north, it suffered severely at the hands of the Scots, and, as at Hexham Abbey, traces of fire may be seen on some of the stones.
King David of Scotland, on his invasion of England in 1138, which was to end at the “Battle of the Standard,” at Northallerton, encamped at Corbridge for a time, and terrible cruelties were committed in the district by his followers. In the next century, King John turned the little town upside down in his efforts to find treasure which he was convinced must be concealed somewhere in the houses; but his search was fruitless. In the days of the three Edwards, during the long wars with Scotland, Corbridge suffered terribly, being fired again and again; on one occasion, in 1296, the destruction included the burning of the school with some two hundred hapless boys within its walls.[4] [Footnote 4: _See_ Bates, p. 149.]
Those heroes of our childhood’s days, William Wallace and Robert Bruce, were far from guiltless in these cruelties, though in justice to them personally, the wild and lawless character of the men who formed their undisciplined hosts must be remembered; and we know that Wallace tried to save the holy vessels in Hexham Abbey, but, as soon as his back was turned, they were swept away in the very presence of the officiating priest.
During these terrible years most of Northumberland was a desolate waste; and divine service had almost ceased to be performed between Newcastle and Carlisle, even Hexham being deserted for a time. After the battle of Bannockburn, matters were worse, if possible, and all the north lay in fear of the Scots, but from time to time spasmodic efforts at retaliation were made by the boldest of the Northumbrian landowners. In the reign of Edward III., however, many of these great landowners thwarted the King’s designs by making a traitorous peace with their turbulent neighbours.
David II. of Scotland encamped at Corbridge for a time during his second attempt to invade England but this expedition ended in his defeat and capture at Neville’s Cross. Thereafter the north had rest for some years, and Corbridge seems to have been left in peace. The Wars of the Roses passed it by; and the Civil Wars in Stuart days also, except for an unimportant skirmish; and the only part Corbridge saw of the Jacobite rising of “The Fifteen” was the little cavalcade from Dilston which clattered over the old bridge on its way to Beaufront. That bridge is the same which we cross to-day; the date of its erection, 1674, may be seen on one of its stones, and it was the only one on the Tyne which withstood the great flood of 1771, when even the old Tyne Bridge at Newcastle was swept away.
Quite close to the church there is an old pele-tower, which is in an excellent state of preservation, little of it having disappeared except the various floors. The vicars of Corbridge must have been often thankful for such a refuge at hand, where they could bid defiance to marauding bands, whether of Scottish or English nationality. In the Register of the parish church may be seen a most interesting entry, showing the Earl of Derwentwater’s signature as churchwarden.
At a little distance from Corbridge, to the northward, is the fortified manor-house of Aydon Castle, standing embowered in trees where the Cor burn runs through a little rocky ravine, down whose steep sides Sir Robert Clavering threw most of a marauding band of Scotsmen who had attacked the grange; the place known as “Jock’s Leap” obtained its name from one of the Scots who escaped the fate of his comrades by his leap for life across the ravine. The Castle, or hall, as it is variously called, has not suffered such destruction as might have been expected, seeing that it dates from the thirteenth century; but the thickness of its walls, and the arrow-slits and narrow windows are obvious proof of the necessity for defence which existed when it was first erected in the days of Edward I. Many features of great interest, notably the ancient fireplaces, remain in the interior of the building.
Returning down the Cor burn to the Tyne, our way lies eastward by the side of the river, which here, after splashing and sparkling over the shallows below Corbridge, narrows again to a deeper stream of swifter current, and flows between green meadows and leafy woods, fern-clad steeps and level haughs, all the way down to Ryton, where the picturesque aspect of the river ceases, and it becomes an industrial waterway. On this reach of the river are several places of considerable interest.
Riding Mill, a pretty village in a well-wooded hollow, enclosed by steep hills which rise ever higher and higher to the moors by Minsteracres and Blanchland, stands where Watling Street, or Dere Street, leading down the long slope of the country from Whittonstall, on reaching the Tyne turned westward to Corstopitum. Further down the stream is Stocksfield, where the aged King Edward I. halted on his last journey into Scotland, on that expedition which was to have executed a summary vengeance upon the Scots; he journeyed forward by slow stages, but was taken ill at Newbrough, where he stayed for some time, before continuing his journey by Blenkinsopp, Thirlwall, and Lanercost to Carlisle.
On the opposite side of the stream from Stocksfield is the lovely village of Bywell, a “haunt of ancient peace,” “sleeping soft on the banks of the murmuring Tyne.” This little peaceful spot was at one time a very busy centre of life and industry on a small scale; in the Middle Ages the inhabitants drove a thriving trade in all the necessities for a people who spent a great part of their lives upon horseback, especially in the making of the ironwork required–“bits, stirrups, buckles, and the like, wherein they are very expert and cunning.” The Nevilles, lords of Raby and earls of Westmoreland, held Bywell at this time; before that it was in the hands of the Balliols, of Scottish fame, who, like the Bruces, were Norman knights high in favour with their kings, Norman and Plantagenet, though they afterwards became their most determined foes.
Long before the advent of the Normans, a church was built here by St. Wilfrid, and in it–St. Andrew’s or the “White” Church–Egbert, twelfth bishop of Lindisfarne, was consecrated by Archbishop Eanbald in the year 803. More than a thousand years afterwards, in 1896, an Ordination service was again held at Bywell, in St. Peter’s church, when five deacons were ordained by Bishop Jacob. And in times yet more remote than Wilfrid’s age, Roman legionaries crossed the Tyne at this point over a bridge of their own construction, of which the piers might be seen until our own day. Bywell, too, had its “find” of Roman silver; in 1760 a silver cup was found in the Tyne, bearing the inscription “Desidere vivas” around the neck of the vessel.
When the Nevilles were lords of the manor of Bywell, they began to build a castle here, which, however, was left unfinished; the ancient tower still standing, with its picturesque draping of ivy, was the gate-house of the intended fortress. On the rebellion of the northern earls in 1569, Westmoreland’s forfeited lands passed to the crown, so that Bywell was held by Queen Elizabeth for a year or two, until she sold the estate to a branch of the Fenwick family.
Bywell is unique in Northumberland in possessing two churches side by side yet in different parishes. The town of Bywell, we are told by the same authority before quoted, lay in a long line by the north bank of the Tyne, and was “divided into two separate parishes” even then, so that there ought to be traces of former buildings westward from the present village. In connection with the two churches which adjoin each other so closely, tradition tells the well-known story of the two quarrelsome sisters who could not agree on the building of a church and therefore each built one. One might have imagined, with some show of reason, that there being two parishes, the two churches were placed there in sheltering proximity to the castle, were it not for the fact that the churches were in existence long before the stronghold of the Nevilles was contemplated.
St. Andrew’s, called the “White” church from the fact of its being served in later days by the White friars, is the more ancient of the two. As we have seen, a church erected by St. Wilfrid stood on this site, and a goodly portion of the Saxon work remains in the tower. The hagioscope, or “squint” in this church, and the “leper” window in St. Peter’s are interesting relics of the Middle Ages.
St. Peter’s, or the “Black” church which once belonged to the Benedictines or Black friars, is of much later date than its neighbour, though still an ancient building, being supposed to date from the eleventh century. Its most interesting possessions are two very old bells, bearing Latin inscriptions, one announcing “I proclaim the hour for people rising, and call to those still lying down,” and the other reading “Thou art Peter.”
Bywell suffered greatly in the flood of 1771, when the bridge was swept away, many houses destroyed, several people drowned, and both churches greatly damaged.
It is not surprising that this tranquil little village–“the retreat of the old doomed divinities of wood and fountain, banished from their native haunts,” to quote Mr. Tomlinson’s happy phrase–has always been beloved of artists, many of whom have transferred to their canvasses the beauties of its mingled scenery of graceful woods and sparkling waters, ancient fortress, peaceful meadows, and gray old towers. Many noteworthy and fine old trees are to be found in and around this artists’ haunt.
On the opposite side of the river, Bywell’s younger sister, Stocksfield, grows apace, reaching out towards the lulls and along the eastward lanes, though not as yet in such measure as to cover the hillsides with any semblance of a town, being still almost hidden amongst the profusion of trees that clothe most of the district in their leafy greenery. On the north bank of the stream the village of Ovingham now rises into view, its name telling us plainly that there was a settlement here in Saxon times “the home of the sons of Offa”; and the slope above the river is fittingly crowned by the ancient church of St. Mary, whose tower, with its curiously irregular windows, is the work of the Saxon builders of the original church. The rest of the building, except some Saxon work at the west end of the nave, dates from early Norman days. Here is the burial place of the famous brothers John and Thomas Bewick, who were born at Cherryburn House, just across the river. In this delightful spot the boy Thomas Bewick grew up, absorbing unconsciously the natural beauties that are to be found here by the Tyne and in the little ravine through which the Cherry Burn flows, which beauties he so lovingly reproduced on his engraving blocks later in life.
At the fords of Ovingham, Eltringham, and Bywell, the Scots under General Leslie crossed the Tyne in 1644, and made their way into Durham, leaving six regiments to watch Newcastle.
The picturesque ruins of Prudhoe Castle, whose lofty towers dominate the valley for some distance up and down the stream, stand on a commanding rocky ridge above the Tyne. The lands of Prudhoe were given, soon after the Norman Conquest, to one of Duke William’s immediate followers, Robert de Umfraville; and it was Odinel de Umfraville who built the present castle in the twelfth century. Its strength was soon put to the test, for a few years after it was built William the Lion of Scotland found that the place baffled all his attempts to capture it. In his anger he determined to reduce the fortress of Odinel, who had spent much time at the Scottish court in his youth, the Kings of Scotland being at that time lords of Tynedale. The attempt ended in total failure, the greatest harm the Scots did on that occasion being to destroy the cornfields and strip the bark from the apple trees near the Castle; while, a day or two afterwards, Odinel de Umfraville, with Glanvile and Balliol, captured the Scottish monarch himself at Alnwick.
Another Umfraville, Richard, quarrelled with his neighbour of Nafferton, on the opposite side of the river, for having begun to erect a fortress much too near Umfraville’s own. He sent a petition to the King on the subject and King John commanded Philip de Ulecote’s building operations to cease. The unfinished castle, known as Nafferton Tower, remains to this day as Philip’s masons left it so many centuries ago.
Sir Ingram de Umfraville was by the side of Edward II. at Bannockburn, when, before the battle, Bruce ordered his men to kneel in prayer. Edward looked on the kneeling host, and turning to Umfraville, exclaimed “See! Yon men kneel to ask mercy.” “You say truth, sire,” answered the knight of Prudhoe; “they ask mercy–but not of you.”
The last Umfraville, who died in 1381, left a widow, the Countess Maud, who married a Percy of Alnwick, and so the castle passed into the hands of that family, in whose possession it still remains.
When Odinel de Umfraville was building the keep of his castle, every one in the neighbourhood was pressed into the service, and all lent their aid except the men of Wylam. Wylam had been given to the church of St. Oswyn at Tynemouth, and, as was customary, was freed by charter from the duty of castle building, or any other feudal service excepting such as were rendered to the Prior of Tynemouth as occasion arose. So, in spite of the angry surprise of the lord of Prudhoe, the Wylam men quietly held to their charter, and not all Odinel’s threats or persuasions moved them one whit.
The Stanley Burn, which enters the Tyne close to Wylam railway station, divides this part of the county of Durham from Northumberland, so that from Wylam to the sea the south side of the Tyne is in the county of Durham. The most noteworthy object at Wylam, or, to be precise, a little way along the old post-road, leading to Newcastle from Hexham, is the red-tiled cottage in which George Stephenson was born in 1781. It stands on the north bank of the Tyne, where it can be distinctly seen from passing trains. Its neighbour cottage has been repaired and re-roofed, but Stephenson’s cottage remains unaltered.
Mr. Blackett, who owned Wylam Colliery at the beginning of the nineteenth century, took the keenest interest in the question of locomotives, and had tried more than one on his estate before George Stephenson brought them to the point of practical use. At Newburn, just four miles down the Tyne, George Stephenson passed many years of his youth; here he learned to read and write, when he was old enough to earn a man’s wage and could afford the few pence necessary; and here, in the parish church, may be seen, with an interval of twenty years between them, the entries of his two marriages.
Newburn is important nowadays for its steel works, within whose workshops is incorporated an old building formerly known as Newburn Hall; but in days long past its importance arose from its being on the ford of the Tyne nearest to Newcastle. This ford was frequently made use of, notably by the Scots in the reign of Charles I. Their chief camping ground is pointed out to us by the name of Scotswood, which also describes what Scotswood was like in those days–a great contrast to its present appearance, when the lines of brick and mortar stretching out uninterruptedly from Newcastle make it practically one with that town. In 1640, the Scottish army, under General Leslie, faced the Royalist troops, under Lord Conway, on the south side of the river. The Scots mounted their rude cannon on Newburn Church tower, and the English raised earthworks along the bank of the river, which was here fordable in two places. The two armies calmly watered their horses on opposite banks of the stream all the next morning, but a shot at a Scottish officer from the English ranks precipitated the battle; and the Scottish army, having made a breach in both earthworks with their artillery, waded across the fords and drove the Royalist troops up the bank, after one spasmodic rally, which, however, failed to check the Scottish advance. The way was now open for the Scottish army to continue down the south bank of the Tyne and attack Newcastle from Gateshead. It had been Lord Conway’s task to prevent this, but owing to his incapacity or want of whole-hearted enthusiasm for his cause, he failed entirely.
Not until 1644, however, was a Scottish attack on Newcastle actually made, for on this occasion Leslie, as we have already seen, led his men across the fords higher up the river and marched southwards. The earthworks thrown up by Conway’s troops may still be seen on Stella Haughs.
It is supposed that the Romans had a fort here, commanding the passage of the river; indeed it would have been strange had this not been the case, for the Romans were not the people to disregard any point of strategical importance, especially one so near their stations of Pons Aelii and Condercum. Many stones of Roman workmanship have been used in the building of the Newburn church.
From this point to its mouth, nearly fifteen miles away, both banks of the Tyne present an unbroken scene of industry. Between the steel works of Newburn and the iron and chemical works, the brick and tile works of Blaydon and past the famous yards of Elswick, down to the wharves and shipyards of North and South Shields, the Tyne rolls its swift dark waters through a scene of stirring activity; the air is dusky with soot and smoke, and reverberant with the clang of hammers and the pulsing beat of machinery. Some old and world-famed works have been closed or removed, like Hawks’ and Stephenson’s, but others, many others, have opened; and the map of the positions of Tyne industries, published under the auspices of the Newcastle and Gateshead Chamber of Commerce, is a record of resolute toil and brilliant achievement in the many aspects of industrial life represented on the river.
And, apart from the mere prosperity and commercial supremacy of the district, there is another cause for pride in the many notable inventions which hail from Tyneside; from the locomotive and the “Geordie” lamp of Stephenson, the hydraulic machinery and the big guns of Armstrong, to the wonderful turbine engines of Parsons; the invention of water-ballast, too, belongs to the Tyne, for it was the idea of a Gateshead man, and first used at Jarrow.
And, in connection with ships and seafarers, though not in any commercial sense, we may proudly recall the fact that the first Lifeboat was launched on the Tyne and named after the river; and the first Volunteer Life Brigade was formed at Tynemouth. The Worth Eastern Railway is carried across the Tyne by the Scotswood Bridge; and it was on this part of the river that the boat-races, for which the Tyne was once famous, were rowed. At Newcastle, the river is bridged by four huge structures–The Redheugh Bridge, the new King Edward VII. bridge, the High Level, and Swing Bridges,–all connecting Newcastle with the sister town of Gateshead. An interesting sight it is to see the Swing Bridge gradually turning on its central pivot, until it lies in a straight line up and down the stream, allowing some huge liner to pass, or some new battleship, fresh from Elswick, to sail down the river, on its way to make its trial trip over the “measured mile” in the open sea at the mouth of the river, and thereafter to take its place among the armaments of the nations.
The High Level Bridge allows ships of any height to pass under its lofty and graceful arches, which look so light, but are yet so strong. This splendid bridge is an enduring monument of Robert Stephenson, whose work it was; and the story of its erection, at the cost of nearly half a million of money, makes most interesting reading. It took nearly two and a half years to build, and was opened for traffic in 1849–little more than three years after the first pile was driven in. A few months later, in 1850, the newly built Central Station, with its imposing portico, was opened by Queen Victoria.
Passing down the Tyne from Newcastle, which requires separate notice, and Walker, with its reminiscences of “Walker Pit’s deun weel for me,” we arrive at Wallsend, which in twenty-five years has grown from a colliery village with a population of 4,000 to a town of 23,000 inhabitants. Here are great shipbuilding and repairing yards, chemical works and cement works; here, too, are Parsons’ Steam Turbine Works, where was designed and built the little “Turbinia,” on which tiny vessel the early experiments were made with the new engines; and here are the famous mines which have made “Best Wallsend” a synonym for best household coal all over the land. These mines, after having been closed for many years, were reopened at the beginning of the century, and now turn out upwards of one thousand tons of coal per day.
The church of St. Peter, at Wallsend, is little more than a hundred years old; the old Church of Holy Cross, now long disused, was built towards the end of the twelfth century. But Wallsend itself, as all the world knows, is of much greater antiquity, for was it not, as its name proclaims, situated at the end of the Great Wall? Its name then, however, was not Wallsend but Segedunum.
Willington Quay, further down the river, was, for a time, the home of George Stephenson, and here his son, Robert, was born. At Howdon, which used to be known as Howdon Pans, from the salt-pans there, the painter John Martin and his brothers once worked when boys, being employed in some rope-works. Here, too, the Henzells, a family of refugees who settled in the district in the days of Elizabeth, founded some glass works, for which industry the Tyne has been famous from that day to this.
[Illustration: THE RIVER TYNE AT NEWCASTLE (showing Swing Bridge open).]
Before the railway on the south side of the river was laid down, passengers who wished to reach Jarrow had to alight at Howdon and cross the river; and a racy dialect song–“Howdon for Jarrow” with its refrain of “Howdon for Jarra–ma hinnies, loup oot”–commemorates the fact. Willington Quay and Howdon carry on the line of shipbuilding yards to Northumberland Dock and the staithes of the Tyne Commissioners, where the waggon ways from various collieries bring the coal to the water’s edge. Tyne Dock, just opposite, and the Albert Edward Dock near North. Shields, provide abundance of shipping accommodation, besides what is afforded by the river itself; and now the river flows between the steep banks of North and South Shields. As the names declare, these two growing and prosperous towns once consisted of a few fishermen’s huts, or “shielings”; but that was long ago, when the north shore of the Tyne was owned by the Prior of Tynemouth, and the southern shore by the Bishop of Durham, and the citizens of Newcastle complained to King Edward I. that these two ecclesiastics had raised towns, “where no town ought to be,” and that “fishermen sold fish there which ought to be sold at Newcastle, to the great injury of the whole borough, and in detriment to the tolls of our Lord the King.” These quarrels between Newcastle and the other settlements on the Tyne continued with varying results, until in the days of Cromwell, Ralph Gardiner of Chirton, a little village close to North Shields, took up the cudgels for the growing towns; and by dint of great perseverance, and in spite of much persecution and ill-will, succeeded in getting most of the unjust privileges of their stronger neighbour abolished.
There were salt-pans, too, on both sides of the mouth of the Tyne, which were worked in connection with the monasteries from very early days; and Daniel Defoe, when he visited the north in 1726, declared that he could see from the top of the Cheviot “the smoke of the salt-pans at Sheals, at the mouth of the Tyne, which was about forty miles south of this.”
North Shields clings haphazard to the steep bank of the Tyne, and spreads away up and beyond it, reaching out towards Wallsend on the river shore and Tynemouth along by the sea, the older parts by the river looking black and grimy to the last degree; but there is a silver lining to this very black cloud–not visible, it is true, but distinctly audible–in the great shipbuilding and repairing works known as Smith’s Dock, one of the largest concerns of the kind in Great Britain, where so many hundreds of men earn their daily bread; and in the fishing industry, which was the foundation of the town’s prosperity, and bids fair to be so for many years to come, as it is increasing year by year. The Fish Quay at North Shields is a sight worth seeing; and, in the herring season, it is increasingly frequented by Continental buyers.
The fortunes of South Shields and Jarrow, though these towns are not in Northumberland, are yet so bound up with the story of the Tyne that no one would ever think of that river without them. Especially is this the case with Jarrow, which “Palmer’s” has raised from a small colliery village to a large and flourishing town. In those famous yards, everything that is necessary for the building of the largest ironclad, from the first smelting of the ore until the last rivet is in place, can be done. All Northumbria–Northumbria in the ancient and widest sense of the word–owes a debt of gratitude to Jarrow, for was it not the home of Bede? The monk of Jarrow, who spent all his long life in the same monastery by the Don, coming to it when he was a child of ten, made that spot of Northumbrian ground famed to the farthest limits of the civilized Europe of his day; and scholars from all over the Continent came to learn at the feet of the Northumbrian teacher. Beloved and revered by all, and in harness to the last hour of his busy life, he died in the year 735, just one hundred years after the coming of Aidan to Lindisfarne. “First among English scholars, first among English theologians, first among English historians, it is in the monk of Jarrow that English literature strikes its roots.”–_J.R. Green_.
The Jarrow of to-day, and all its neighbours of industrial Tyneside, possess no beauty of aspect such as the towns that are more fortunately situated on the upper reaches of the river; they are muffled in clouds of smoke and soot, and darkened by the necessities of their toil in grimy ores and the ever-present coal. But no one who has ever looked on these smoky reaches of the Tyne with a seeing eye, or steamed down the river on a day either of gloom or sunshine, can refuse to acknowledge that it has a certain grandeur, a stern beauty of its own, that can stir the heart and the imagination more deeply than any mere prettiness.
From the numberless hives of activity on both sides of the river clouds of smoke roll heavily upward, and jets of steam from panting machinery leap up in momentary whiteness on the dark background; the white wings of flocks of wheeling gulls flash in the occasional sunshine which lights up the scene, and between the clouds there are glimpses of blue sky. Towards sunset, the evening mists drape the darkening banks and crowded shipping in a soft robe of gray, which, together with the glowing sky behind, produces most wonderful Turneresque effects; and the fall of night on the river only changes the aspect without diminishing the interest of the scene. The blaze from a myriad workshops and forges glows against the darkness, the lamps twinkle overhead on the steep banks, and the lights from wharf and steamer are reflected in a thousand shimmering lines on the dark water, which flows on soundlessly, like the river of a dream.
On a day of wind and sun all these beauties are intensified a thousandfold; the smoke is blown hither and thither in flying clouds, the current seems to rush more swiftly, and a sense of vigorous life permeates the whole scene, giving to the beholder a feeling of keen exhilaration, as of new life rushing through his veins. Especially is this the case on reaching the mouth of the river and meeting the dancing waters of the open harbour, where the twin piers of South Shields and Tynemouth reach out sheltering arms. Within the wide bay they enclose, the storm-driven vessel may always find comparatively smooth water, how wildly soever the waves may rage and roar outside.
It is difficult to believe that so lately as the years 1858-60, the “bar” at the mouth of the Tyne was an insuperable obstacle to all but vessels of very moderate draught; and that ships might lie for days, and sometimes weeks, after being loaded, before there came a tide high enough to carry them out to sea. The river was full of sand-banks, and little islands stood here and there–one in mid-stream, where the ironclads are now launched at Elswick. Three or four vessels might be seen at once bumping and grounding on the “bar” unable to make their way over. Well might the old song say–
“The ships are all at the bar,
They canna get up to Newcastle!”
An old map of the Tyne shows a number of sand-banks down the lower reaches of the river, with ships aground on each, of them.
But the River Tyne Commissioners have changed all that, and their implement of warfare has been the hideous but necessary dredger. No longer need vessels of heavy tonnage desert the Tyne for the Wear, as they were perforce driven to do during the first half of the nineteenth century, for the Wearsiders had set about deepening and widening their river long before the Tynesiders did the same by theirs. Considerable and continuous pressure had to be brought to bear on the civic authorities at Newcastle before they finally took action; but having once done so, the future of the Tyne was assured. Now it ranks second only to the Thames in the actual number of vessels entering and leaving, and owns only the Mersey its superior in the matter of tonnage.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.
“Her dusky hair in many a tangle clings About her, and her looks, though stern and cold, Grow tender with the dreams of by-gone days.”
–_W.W. Tomlinson_.
The outward signs of “by-gone days,” in the Newcastle of to-day, with the one notable exception of the Castle, must be diligently sought out amongst the overwhelming mass of what is often called “rampant modernity,” of which the town to-day chiefly consists. The modernity, however, is not all bad, as this favourite phrase would imply; much of it is doubtless regrettable and a very little of it perhaps inevitable; but no one will deny either the modernity or the beauty of Grey Street, one of the finest streets in any English town; or the fine appearance of Grainger Street, Blackett Street, Eldon Square, or any other of the stately thoroughfares with which Grainger and Dobson enriched the town within the last eighty years–no one, that is, who has learned to “lift his eyes to the sky-line in passing along a thoroughfare” instead of keeping them firmly fixed at the level of shop windows.
The grim old building which, when it was new, gave its name to the town, is one for which no search needs to be made; its blackened and time worn walls are seen from the train windows by every traveller who enters the city from the south. So near is it to the railway, that in the ultra-utilitarian days of sixty or seventy years ago, it narrowly escaped the ignoble fate of being used as a signal-cabin. It was rescued, however, by the Society of Antiquaries, and carefully preserved by them–more fortunate in this respect than the castle of Berwick, for the platform of Berwick railway station actually stands on the spot once occupied by the Great Hall of the Castle.
The site of the New Castle, on a part of the river bank which slopes steeply down to the Tyne, had been occupied centuries before by a Roman fort, constructed by order of the Emperor Hadrian, who visited Britain A.D. 120. He also constructed a bridge over the Tyne at this spot, fort and bridge receiving the name of Pons Aelii, after the Emperor (Publius AElius Hadrianus). This became the second station on the Great Wall erected by Hadrian’s orders along the line of forts which Agricola had raised forty years before. This station shared the fate of others on the abandonment of Britain by its powerful conquerors, who had now for more than two hundred years been its no less powerful friends and protectors. Pons Aelii fell into ruins; but so advantageous a site could not long be overlooked, and we read of a Saxon settlement there, apparently that of a religious community, from which fact it was known as Monkchester. All the records of this period seem to have perished, for we hear nothing of the settlement during the Danish invasions; but a Saxon town of some kind was evidently in existence at the time of the Conquest, though in 1073 three monks from the south who came to York, and, obtaining a guide to “Muneche-cester,” sought for some religious house in that settlement, could find none, and were prevailed upon by the first Norman Bishop of Durham, Walcher, to stay at Jarrow. The years from 1069 to 1080 were evil years for Northumberland, for at the first-named date the Conqueror devastated the North, and left neither village nor farm unscathed; and, as the desolated land was beginning to recover again, Odo of Bayeux and Robert of Normandy relentlessly laid it waste once more, partly in revenge for the murder of Bishop Walcher at Gateshead, and partly to punish Malcolm of Scotland for his invasion of Norman territory.
It was on his return from this expedition, which had penetrated as far north as Falkirk, that Robert, by his father’s orders, raised a stronghold on the Tyne on the site of the old Roman fort, in the year 1080. His brother, William Rufus, erected a much stronger and better one, the Keep of which, re-built by Henry II., stands to-day dark and grim, looking out over river and town, as it has stood since the Red King ruled the land, and, like his father, the Conqueror, found it desirable to have a stronghold at this northern point of his turbulent realm, around which a town might grow up in safety.
The roof and battlements of the Keep are modern, but the rest of it–the walls, 12 to 18 feet thick; the dismal dungeon, or guard chamber, with iron rings and fetters still fastened to the walls and central pillar; the beautiful little chapel, with its finely-ornamented arches; the little chambers in the thickness of the walls; the well, 94 feet deep, sunk through the solid masonry into the rock beneath; the arrow slits in the walls; the stones in the roof scored with frequent bolts from the besiegers’ crossbows, one of which bolts is firmly embedded in the wall opposite one of the narrow windows; the ancient weapons and armour–all these breathe of the days when the Red King’s castle took its part in the doings of our hardy ancestors in those stormy times in which they lived and fought.
The last time the old Keep was called upon to act as fortress and refuge in time of war was in Stuart days, after the ten weeks siege of Newcastle by the Scottish General Leslie, Earl of Leven, in 1644, when brave “Governor Marley” and his friends held out in the castle for a few days longer, after the town was taken. In memory of this stout defence and long resistance King Charles gave to the town its motto–_Fortiter defendit triumphans_, which Bates gives as having originally been _Fortiter defendendo triumphat_–“She glories in her brave defence.”
Two of the original fireplaces still remain in the Castle, and there are besides many objects of great interest which have been bestowed there from time to time for safe keeping; and many more are to be seen at the Black Gate, formerly the chief entrance to the Castle Hall and its surroundings. The Great Hall of the Castle, in which John Baliol did homage to Edward I. for the crown of Scotland, stood on the spot now covered by the Moot Hall. The Black Gate, the lower part of which is the oldest part of the building, which has many times been altered and repaired, is now used as a museum. There were nearly a dozen rooms in it, and not so many years ago the Corporation of Newcastle let these out in tenements, until this building also was rescued from degradation by the Newcastle Society of Antiquaries, who took down most of the dividing walls, and converted it into a museum. Here may be seen stored many sculptured stones, altars, and statues, which have been brought from the various Roman stations in the north.
Around the walls of one room are to be seen facsimiles of the famous Bayeux tapestry; there is also a model of the Castle as originally built, and there are many more exhibits and loans of the very greatest interest.
Of the walls of Newcastle only fragments remain, the most considerable portion being found between Westgate Road and St. Andrew’s Churchyard; here are also remains of several of the watch-towers that stood at intervals around the walls–the Heber Tower, the Mordaunt or Morden Tower, and the Ever Tower. Between the two first named towers may be seen a little doorway, walled up, once used by the Friars, who obtained from Edward II. permission to make the doorway in order that they might the more easily reach their gardens and orchards outside; but they had to be ready to build it up at a moment’s notice on the approach of an enemy. One of the towers–the Carliol or Weaver’s Tower–was pulled down to make room for the Central Free Library, opened in 1881. Many little fragments of the Castle wall are to be seen near the High Level Bridge, incorporated in other walls, as far as the South Postern of the Castle, which is said to be the only remaining Norman postern in England and is the oldest remaining part of the Castle.
The old streets of Newcastle are fast disappearing to make room for the ever-increasing needs of commerce; at the moment of writing it is being proposed to pull down more of the historic street called the Side, to make room for new printing offices. At the head of this curious old street, which curves downward from the Cathedral to the river, stood the birthplace of Cuthbert Collingwood, who was to become Admiral Lord Collingwood, and second in fame only to Nelson himself. Both this house and the one where Thomas Bewick had his workshop, near the Cathedral, have gone to make room for new buildings.
At the foot of this street, where it curves to the river front, is the Sandhill, facing the Swing Bridge. Here are several old houses remaining, with many-windowed fronts, looking out on the river. One of these was the house of Aubone Surtees, the banker, whose daughter Bessie, in 1772, stole out of one of those little windows, and gave herself into the keeping of young Jack Scott, who was waiting for her below. The adventurous youth became Lord Chancellor of England, and is best known as Lord Eldon; his brother William became Lord Stowell, and was for many years Judge of the High Court of Admiralty.
Opposite the old houses of the Sandhill, close to the river bank, is the old Guildhall, greatly altered in appearance from the time when John Wesley preached from its steps to the keelmen and fishermen of the town. It was here that a sturdy fishwife put her arms round him, when some boisterous spirits in the crowd threatened him with ill-usage, and, shaking her fist in their faces, swore to “floor them” if they touched her “canny man.”
This spot, where the Swing Bridge unites the lower banks of the stream, seems always to have been the most convenient point for crossing the river, for the present bridge is the fifth that has spanned the Tyne at this point: Hadrian’s bridge, Pons Aelii; a mediaeval bridge destroyed by fire in 1248; the Old Tyne Bridge, swept away in the flood of 1771; the successor of this, which was found too low to allow of the passage of such large vessels as were able to sail up the Tyne after the deepening of the river bed; and the present Swing Bridge, which is worked by hydraulic machinery, the invention of Lord Armstrong. We do not know how long Hadrian’s bridge lasted, but William the Conqueror, when returning from his expedition into Scotland in 1071, was obliged to camp for a time at “Monec-cestre,” as the Tyne was in flood, and there was no bridge.
Some ancient houses are to be found in Low Friar Street, one of which, with winged heads and dolphins carved on it, is said to be the oldest house in Newcastle. Turning up an opening on the west side of this street, all that is left of the ancient Blackfriars’ Monastery may be seen; some of its rooms are used as the meeting places of various Trade Guilds, and the rest form low tenement houses, in the walls of which are many Gothic archways and ancient window-openings built up. Over the door of the Smith’s Hall is a carving of three hammers, and the inscription:–
“By hammer and hand
All artes do stand.”
This Hall was formerly the Great Hall of the monastery; and here Edward Baliol did homage to Edward III. for his crown of Scotland. Nun Street, leading out of Grainger Street, reminds us of the days when the Nunnery of St. Bartholomew stood in this part of the town, and the Nun’s Moor was part of the grounds belonging to the establishment. In High Friar Street, which was not then the dilapidated lane it now appears, Richard Grainger was born.
Another part of the town which has fallen from its former high estate is the Close, which lies along the river front, westward from the Sandhill. Here, at one time, lived many of the principal inhabitants of Newcastle–Sir John Marley, Sir William Blackett, Sir Ralph Millbank, and others equally important; and here, too, was the former Mansion House of the city, where the Mayors resided, and where they could receive distinguished visitors to the town. Amongst those who have been entertained there were the Duke of Wellington and the first King of the Belgians. But in 1836 the Corporation of Newcastle sold the house, with the furniture, books, pictures, plate, and everything else it contained.
Eastward from the Sandhill is Sandgate, immortalised in the “Newcastle Anthem”–The Keel Row. Its present appearance is very different from the green slope and sandy shore of former days; the keelmen, too, have vanished, and their place in the commercial economy of the Tyne is taken by waggon-ways and coal-shoots. The old narrow alleys of the town, called “chares,” are fast disappearing; the best known is Pudding Chare, leading from Bigg Market to Westgate Road. Many and various are the explanations that have been offered to account for its curious name, but the true one does not seem yet to have appeared.
Pilgrim Street owes its name to the fact that it was the route of the pilgrims who came in great numbers to visit the little chapel or shrine of Our Lady of Jesmond, and St. Mary’s Well. In Pilgrim Street was the gateway of a stately mansion, surrounded by beautiful gardens, called Anderson Place, from a Mr. Anderson who bought it from Sir Thomas Blackett in 1783. It had been built by another Mr. Anderson in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, on the site where once stood the monastery of the Grey Friars; he, however, had named his mansion “The Newe House.” In this house Charles I. lived when a prisoner in Newcastle. Anderson Place no longer exists, but the Newcastle of to-day has a constant reminder of its last owners, for Major George Anderson, son of the Mr. Anderson who purchased it in 1783, gave to the Cathedral of St. Nicholas the great bell–known on that account as “The Major”–whose deep reverberant “boom” can be heard for a distance of ten miles. The bell was re-cast in 1891, and in 1892 a new peal of bells was consecrated by Canon Gough.
Westgate Road is another interesting street; the old West Gate stood near the site of the present Tyne Theatre, and from this point onward the street follows, almost exactly, the line of the Roman Wall.
Some noteworthy houses in Newcastle are–No. 17, Eldon Place, where George and Robert Stephenson lived in the years 1824-25; No. 4, St. Thomas’ Crescent, where the celebrated artist, Wm. Bell Scott lived when he was headmaster of the School of Art, and to whom Swinburne wrote a fine memorial poem; the Academy of Arts, in Blackett Street, built for the exhibition of pictures by those well-known painters T.M. Richardson and H.T. Parker, and for a short period the home of the Pen and Palette Club, which, both here and in its new home at Higham Place, has entertained many people distinguished in letters, art, and travel who have visited the town of late years; and No. 9, Pleasant Row, the birthplace of Lord Armstrong, which has only recently been destroyed to make way for the N.E.R. Company’s new ferro-concrete Goods Station in New Bridge Street.
The list of important buildings in Newcastle, exclusive of the churches, is a long one; one of the most prominent is the Library of the Literary and Philosophical Society, familiarly known as the “Lit. and Phil.,” which stands at the lower end of Westgate Road, a little way back from the roadway. It is built on the site of the town house of the Earls of Westmoreland; and its fine Lecture Theatre was a gift to the Society from Lord Armstrong. It is the centre of the intellectual life of the city as a whole, apart from the work of the justly famed Armstrong College, a teaching institute of University rank. This was formerly known as the Durham College of Science, and, with the Durham College of Medicine, forms part of the University of Durham.
Other seats of learning in the town are the Rutherford College, in Bath Lane, and the Royal Grammar School, which dates from the reign of Henry VIII. It was reconstituted by Queen Elizabeth, and has had many changes of abode. At one time it occupied the buildings of the Convent of St. Mary, which covered the space where Stephenson’s monument now stands. While the Grammar School was located there, the boys Cuthbert Collingwood, William Scott, and John Scott, who afterwards became so famous, attended it; and other distinguished scholars were John Horsley, author of _Britannia Romana_, and John Brand and Henry Bourne, the historians of Newcastle. The school is now situated in Eskdale Terrace and its splendid playing fields stretch across to the North Road.
One of the most interesting buildings in Newcastle is the Hancock Museum of Natural History, at Barras Bridge. It contains a matchless collection of birds, and some unique specimens of extinct species; also the original drawings of Bewick’s _British Birds_, and other works of his. The famous Newcastle naturalist, John Hancock, presented his wonderful collection, prepared by himself, to the museum. Here, too, is a complete set of fossils from the coal measures, including some fine specimens of Sigillaria. These are only a few of the treasures contained in the museum, which was built chiefly through the generosity of the late Lord and Lady Armstrong, Colonel John Joicey of Newton Hall, Stocksfield, and Mr. Edward Joicey of Whinney House.
The new Victoria Infirmary, on the Leazes, is a magnificent building, and was opened by King Edward VII. in 1906. It was erected by public subscription, and when L100,000 had been subscribed, the late Mr. John Hall generously offered a like sum on condition that the building should be erected either on the Leazes or the Town Moor. Arrangements were made to do so, and another L100,000 given by the present Lord and Lady Armstrong.
But fine as all these buildings are, the pride of Newcastle is one much older than any of them–the Cathedral church of St. Nicholas, with its exquisitely beautiful lantern steeple. This wonderful lantern was the work of Robert de Rhodes, who lived in the fifteenth century. The arms of this early benefactor of the church may yet be seen on the ancient font. The present church was finished in the year 1350, says Dr. Bruce; but there was a former one on this site to which the crypt is supposed to belong. It has undergone many alterations at different times, and has sheltered within its walls many and various great personages.
[Illustration: NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.]
In 1451, a treaty between England and Scotland was ratified in the vestry. In the reign of Henry VII., his daughter, Princess Margaret, attended mass here, with all her retinue, when she stayed in the town on her way to Scotland to be married to the gallant young king James IV. She was entertained at the house of the Austin Friars, which stood where now stands the Holy Jesus Hospital at the Manors, near to the Sallyport Tower. When James I. became king of England, he attended service here, as he passed through Newcastle on his way to his southern capital. In the reign of his ill-fated son, Charles I., Newcastle was occupied by the Scots, under General Leslie, for a year after the battle of Newburn in 1640; and again in 1644 was besieged by them for ten weeks. On this occasion the town nearly lost its chief ornament and pride–the lantern of the church; for “There is a traditional story,” says Bourne, “of this building I am now treating of, which may not be improper to be here taken notice of. In the time of the Civil Wars, when the Scots had besieged the town for several weeks, and were still as far as at first from taking it, the General sent a messenger to the Mayor of the town, and demanded the keys and the delivery up of the town, or he would immediately demolish the steeple of St. Nicholas.
“The Mayor and Aldermen, upon hearing this, immediately ordered a certain number of the chiefest Scottish prisoners to be carried up to the top of the old tower, the place below the lantern, and there confined. After this, they returned the General an answer to this purpose, that they would upon no terms deliver up the town, but would to the last moment defend it; that the steeple of St. Nicholas was indeed a beautiful and magnificent piece of architecture, and one of the great ornaments of the town, but yet should be blown to atoms before ransomed at such a rate; that, however, if it was to fall it should not fall alone; that at the same moment he destroyed the beautiful structure he should bathe his hands in the blood of his countrymen, who were placed there on purpose, either to preserve it from ruin or to die along with it. This message had the desired effect. The men were kept prisoners during the whole time of the siege, and not so much as one gun was fired against it.”
In 1646, when Charles I. was a prisoner in Newcastle for nearly a year (from May, 1646, to February 3rd, 1647), this was the church he attended; and we may picture him listening perforce to the “admonishing” of the stern Covenanters. In this connection occurs the oft-told story of his ready wit, when one of the preachers wound up his discourse by giving out the metrical version of the fifty-second Psalm, with an obvious allusion to his royal hearer:–
“Why dost thou, tyrant, boast abroad, Thy wicked works to praise?”
Charles quickly stood up and asked for the fifty-sixth Psalm instead:–
“Have mercy, Lord, on me, I pray,
For man would me devour.”
The good folk of Newcastle with willing voice rendered the latter Psalm, doubtless to the discomfiture of the preacher.
Gray, who published his _Chorographia_, or Survey of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, just three years after this, describes St. Nicholas’ as having “a stately, high, stone steeple, with many pinakles, a stately stone lantherne, standing upon foure stone arches, builded by Robert de Rhodes…. It lifteth up a head of Majesty, as high above the rest as the Cypresse Tree above the low Shrubs.”
The church underwent a terrible despoliation at the hands of the Scots in 1644; but more terrible still were the injuries it received, a little more than a century later, from those who ought to have been its friends. In the years 1784-7 there were many alterations made in the building, during which almost all the old memorials and monuments perished, or were removed; those which were not claimed by the living representatives of the persons commemorated being ruthlessly sold, or destroyed; and the brasses were disposed of as old metal. The modern alterations and restorations have been more happy in their effect, and one of the notable additions to the church is the beautiful carved oak screen in the chancel, the work of Mr. Ralph Hedley.
There are many beautiful memorial windows in the church, and many memorials in other forms to the various eminent North-country folk who have been connected with Newcastle and its chief place of worship. The Collingwood cenotaph is the most interesting of all; the brave Admiral’s body, as is well known, lies beside that of his friend and commander, Nelson, in St. Paul’s Cathedral, but this memorial of him is fittingly placed in the Cathedral of his native town, within whose walls he worshipped as a boy. There are two monuments by Flaxman–one of the Rev. Hugh Moises, the famous master of the Grammar School when Collingwood was a boy; and the other of Sir Matthew White Ridley, who died in 1813. Of the newer monuments, those of Dr. Bruce, of Roman Wall fame, and of the beloved and lamented Bishop Lloyd, are particularly fine.
Near the east end of the church, which was raised to the rank of a Cathedral in 1881, is hung a large painting by Tintoretto, “Christ washing the feet of the Disciples”; this was presented to the church by Sir Matthew White Ridley in 1818. There are many more things of interest in the Cathedral, but mention must be made of a wonderful MS. Bible, incomplete, it is true, but beautifully written and illuminated by the monks of Hexham, and other manuscript treasures carefully kept in the care of the authorities.
The oldest church in the town is St. Andrew’s, supposed to have been built by King David of Scotland at the time when that monarch was Lord of Tynedale, in the reign of King Stephen. It suffered greatly in the struggle with the Scots, whose cannon, planted on the Leazes, did it great damage, and some of the fiercest fighting, at the final capture of the town, took place close by, where a breach was made in the walls. In such a battered condition was it left that the parish Registers tell us that no baptism nor “sarmon” took place within its walls for a year (1645). But a marriage took place, the persons wedded being Scots, who, we learn from the same authority, “would pay nothing to the Church.”
In the church is buried Sir Adam de Athol, Lord of Jesmond, and Mary, his wife. It is supposed that this Sir Adam gave the Town Moor to the people of Newcastle, though this has been disputed. A fine picture of the “Last Supper,” by Giordano, presented by Major Anderson in 1804, hangs in the church.
St. John’s Church ranks next to St. Andrew’s in point of age; there are fragments of Norman work in the building, and it is known to have been standing in 1297. To-day the venerable pile, with its age worn stones, stands out in sharper contrast to its environment than does any other building in the town, surrounded as it is by modern shops and offices. The memories it evokes, and the past for which it stands, are such as the citizens of Newcastle will not willingly let die; and when, a few years ago, a proposal was made for its removal, the proposition aroused such a storm of popular feeling against it that it was incontinently abandoned.
All Saints’ Church was built in 1789, on the site of an older building which was in existence in 1296, and which became very unsafe. Here is kept one of the most interesting monuments in the city–the monumental brass which once covered the tomb of Roger Thornton, a wealthy merchant of Newcastle, and a great benefactor to all the churches. He died in 1429. He gave to St. Nicholas’ Church its great east window; but, on its needing repair in 1860, it was removed entirely, and the present one, in memory of Dr. Ions, inserted; and the only fragment left of Thornton’s window is a small circular piece inset in a plain glass window in the Cathedral. He gave much money to Hexham Abbey also.
Besides the famous men already mentioned in connection with the town, Newcastle possesses other well-known names not a few. In the Middle Ages, Duns Scotus, the man whose skill in argument earned for him the title of “Doctor Subtilis,” owned Northumberland as his home, and received his education in the monastery of the Grey Friars, which stood near the head of the present Grey Street. He returned to this monastery after some years of study at Oxford; in 1304 he was teaching divinity in Paris.
Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London in the reign of Edward VI., whose Northumbrian birthplace at Willimoteswick has already been noted, received his early education at the Grammar School in Newcastle, and on going to Cambridge was a student at Pembroke. We are told he was the ablest man among the Reformers for piety, learning and judgment. As is well known, he died at the stake in 1555.
William and Elizabeth Elstob, who lived in Newcastle at the end of the seventeenth century, were learned Saxon scholars, but were so greatly in advance of the education of their times that they met with little encouragement or sympathy in their labours.
Charles Avison, the musician and composer, was organist of St. John’s in 1736, and afterwards of St. Nicholas’.
It was he to whom Browning referred in the lines–
“On the list
Of worthies, who by help of pipe or wire, Expressed in sound rough rage or soft desire, Thou, whilom of Newcastle, organist.”
These lines have been carved on his tombstone in St. Andrew’s churchyard. He is best known as the composer of the anthem “Sound the loud timbrel.”
Mark Akenside, the poet, was born in Butcher Bank, now called after him Akenside Hill. His chief work “The Pleasures of Imagination,” is not often read now, but it enjoyed a considerable reputation in an age when a stilted and formal style was looked upon as a true excellence in poetry.
Charles Hutton, the mathematician, was born in Newcastle in 1737. He began life as a pitman; but, receiving an injury to his arm, he turned his attention to books, and taught in his native town for some years, becoming later Professor of Mathematics in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.
John Brand, the antiquary and historian of Newcastle, was born at Washington, County Durham, but came to Newcastle as a child. After attending the Grammar School, he went to Oxford, by the aid of his master, the Rev. Hugh Moises. He was afterwards curate at the church of St. Andrew.
Robert Morrison, the celebrated Chinese scholar, was born near Morpeth, but his parents came to Newcastle when the boy was three years of age. He died in China in 1834.
Thomas Miles Richardson, the well-known artist, was born in Newcastle in 1784, and was at first a cabinetmaker, then master of St. Andrew’s Free School, but finally gave up all other work to devote himself to his art.
Robert Stephenson went to school at Percy Street Academy, which for long has ceased to exist. There he was taught by Mr. Bruce, and had for one of his fellow-pupils the master’s son, John Collingwood Bruce, who afterwards became so famous a teacher and antiquary.
Newcastle is not, as most southerners imagine, a dark and gloomy town of unrelieved bricks and mortar, for, besides possessing many wide and handsome streets, it has also several pretty parks, the most noteworthy being the beautiful Jesmond Dene, one of the late Lord Armstrong’s magnificent gifts to his native town. The Dene, together with the Armstrong Park near it, lies on the course of the Ouseburn, which is here a bright and sparkling stream, very different from the appearance it presents by the time it empties its murky waters into the Tyne. Besides these there are Heaton Park, the Leazes Park, with its lakes and boats, Brandling Park, and others smaller than these; and last, but most important of all, the Town Moor, a fine breezy space to the north of the town, of more than 900 acres in extent.
Of statues and monuments Newcastle possesses some half-dozen, the finest being “Grey’s Monument”–a household word in the town and familiarly known as “The Monument.” It was erected at the junction of Grey Street and Grainger Street in memory of Earl Grey of Howick, who was Prime Minister at the passing of the Reform Bill. The figure of the Earl, by Bailey, stands at the top of a lofty column, the height being 135 feet to the top of the figure. There is a stairway within the column, by which it can be ascended, and a magnificent view enjoyed from the top.
In an open space near the Central Station, between the _Chronicle_ Office and the Lit. and Phil., there is a fine statue of George Stephenson, by the Northumbrian sculptor, Lough. It is a full length representation of the great engineer, in bronze, with the figures of four workmen, representing the chief industries of Tyneside, around the pedestal–a miner, a smith, a navvy, and an engineer. At the head of Northumberland Street, on the open space of the Haymarket, stands a beautiful winged Victory on a tall column, crowning “Northumbria” typified as a female figure at the foot of the column. This graceful and striking memorial is the work of T. Eyre Macklin, and is in memory of the officers and men of the North who fell in the Boer War of 1899-1902. Two other noteworthy statues in the town are those of Lord Armstrong, near the entrance to the Natural History Museum at Barras Bridge, and of Joseph Cowen, in Westgate Road.
THE KEEL ROW
As I came thro’ Sandgate,
Thro’ Sandgate, thro’ Sandgate,
As I came thro’ Sandgate,
I heard a lassie sing
“O weel may the keel row,
The keel row, the keel row,
Weel may the keel row
That my laddie’s in
“O who is like my Johnnie,
Sae leish,[5] sae blithe, sae bonnie; He’s foremost ‘mang the mony
Keel lads o’ coaly Tyne
He’ll set and row sae tightly,
And in the dance sae sprightly
He’ll cut and shuffle lightly,
‘Tis true, were he not mine!
[Footnote 5: Leish = lithe, nimble.]
“He has nae mair o’ learnin’
Than tells his weekly earnin’,
Yet, right frae wrang discernin’,
Tho’ brave, nae bruiser he!
Tho’ he no worth a plack[6] is,
His ain coat on his back is;
And nane can say that black is
The white o’ Johnnie’s e’e
[Footnote 6: Plack = a small copper coin, worth about one-third of a penny.]
He wears a blue bonnet,
Blue bonnet, blue bonnet,
He wears a blue bonnet,
And a dimple in his chin
O weel may the keel row,
The keel row, the keel row,
Weel may the keel row
That my laddie’s in.”
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V.
ELSWICK AND ITS FOUNDER.
Sailed from the North of old
The strong sons of Odin;
Sailed in the Serpent ships,
“By hammer and hand”
Skilfully builded.
* * * * *
Still in the North-country
Men keep their sea-cunning;
Still true the legend,
“By hammer and hand”
Elswick builds war-ships.
–(_Northumbriensis_).
For a mile and a quarter, along the north bank of the Tyne, stretch the world-famed Elswick Works, which have grown to their present gigantic proportions from the small beginnings of five and a half acres in 1847. In that year two fields were purchased as a site for the new works about to be started to make the hydraulic machinery which had been invented by Mr. Armstrong.
In this undertaking he was backed by the wealth of several prominent Newcastle citizens, who believed in the future of the new inventions–Messrs. Addison Potter, George Cruddas, Armourer Donkin, and Richard Lambert. At that time Elswick was a pretty country village some distance outside of Newcastle, and the walk along the riverside between the two places was a favourite one with the people of the town. In midstream there was an island, where stood a little inn called the “Countess of Coventry”; and on the island various sports were often held, including horse-racing.
The price of the land for the new shops, which were soon built on the green slopes above the Tyne, was paid to Mr. Hodgson Hind and Mr. Richard Grainger; the latter of whom had intended, could he have carried out his plans for the rebuilding of Newcastle, not to stop until he made Elswick Hall the centre of the town.
Until the new shops were ready to begin work, some of Mr. Armstrong’s hydraulic cranes were made by Mr. Watson at his works in the High Bridge.
All the summer of 1847, the building went briskly on; and in the autumn work was started. At first Mr. Armstrong had an office in Hood Street, as he was superintending his machinery construction in High Bridge, as well as the building operations at Elswick. On some of the early notepaper of the firm there is, as the heading, a picture of Elswick as it was then, showing the first shops, the little square building in which were the offices, the green banks sloping down to the waterside, and the island in the middle of the shallow stream, while the chimneys and smoke of Newcastle are indicated in the remote background. Along the riverside was the public footpath.
The first work done in the new shops was the making of Crane No. 6; and amongst other early orders was one from the _Newcastle Chronicle_, for hydraulic machinery to drive the printing press. The new machinery rapidly grew in favour; and orders from mines, docks and railways poured in to the Elswick firm, which soon extended its works.
In 1854, when the Crimean War broke out, Mr. Armstrong was requested to devise some submarine mines which would clear the harbour of Sebastopol of the Russian war-ships which had been sent there. He did so, but the machinery was never used.
At the same time, in his leisure moments, he turned his attention to the question of artillery. The guns in use at that time were very little better than those which had been used during the Napoleonic wars; and Mr. Armstrong devised a new one, which was made at his workshops. It was a 3-pounder, complete with gun-carriage and mountings, and is still to be seen at Elswick.
With the usual reluctance of Government departments to consider anything new, the War Office of the day was slow to believe in the superiority of the new field-piece; but when every fresh trial proved that superiority to be beyond doubt, the gun was adopted. And then Mr. Armstrong showed the large-minded generosity which was so marked a feature of his character. Holding in his hand–as every man must, who possesses the secret of a new and superior engine of destruction–the fate of nations, to be decided at his will, and with the knowledge that other powers were willing and eager to buy with any sum the skill of such an inventor, Mr. Armstrong presented to the British Government, as a free gift, the patents of his artillery; and he entered the Government service for a time, as Engineer to the War Department, in order to give them the benefit of his skill and special knowledge.
A knighthood was bestowed upon him, and he took up his new duties as Sir William Armstrong. An Ordnance department was opened at Elswick, and the Government promised a continuance of orders above those that the Arsenal at Woolwich was able to fulfil. All went well for a time, but after some years the connection between the Government and Elswick ceased; the Ordnance and Engineering works were then amalgamated into one concern, and Mr. George Rendel and Captain Noble–now Sir Andrew Noble, and one of the greatest living authorities on explosives–were placed in charge of the former.
Released from the agreement to make no guns except for the British Government, Elswick was open to receive other orders, which now began to roll in from all the world. Elswick prospered greatly, until suddenly there came a check, in the shape of a strike for a nine hours day, in 1871. After the strike had lasted for four and a half months, work was resumed; but the old genial relationship between masters and men had received a rude strain, and was never the same as before.
Shipbuilding had been taken up a year or two before this, but the earliest vessels were built to their order in Mr. Mitchell’s yard at Walker. The first one was a small gunboat, the “Staunch,” built for the Admiralty. In later years the Walker ship-yard was united to the Elswick enterprises, and a ship-yard at the latter place was also opened.
Meantime, Captain Noble had been experimenting further in artillery, and in 1877 another and better type of gun was produced. It was adopted by the Government, and all guns since then have been modifications, more or less, of this type. In 1876 the famous hundred-ton gun for Italy was made, and was taken on board the “Europa” to be carried to her destination; this vessel being the first to pass the newly-finished Swing Bridge, another outcome of the inventive genius of the head of the Elswick firm. The gun, which was the largest in the world at that time, was lowered into the “Europa” by the largest pair of “sheer-legs” in existence, and was lifted out again at Spezzia by the largest hydraulic crane of that day, and all these were the work of the Elswick firm.
Soon after this the firm became Sir W.G. Armstrong, Mitchell, and Co.; and in consequence of the continued increase of business, it became necessary to open Steel Works also. This is one of the most notable features of the Elswick works; the wonders of ancient magicians pale into insignificance before the marvels of this department, and no Eastern Genius could accomplish such seemingly impossible feats with greater ease than do the workmen of Elswick.
The works continued to grow still further, and soon Elswick was building cruisers for China, for Italy (where works at Pozzuoli–the ancient Puteoli–were opened), for Russia, Chili, and Japan. Tynesiders took a special interest in the progress of the Japanese wars, for so many of that country’s battleships had their birth on the banks of the river at Elswick, and Japanese sailors became a familiar sight in Newcastle streets. Groups of strange faces from alien lands are periodically seen in our midst, and met with again and again for some time; then one day there is a launch at Elswick, and shortly afterwards all the strange faces disappear. They have gathered together from their various quarters in the town, and manning their new cruiser, have sailed away to their own land, and Newcastle streets know them no more; but, later, Tynesiders read in their newspapers of the deeds done on the vessels which they have sent forth to the world.
The ice-breaker “Ermack” is one of the firm’s most notable achievements, the vessel having been built and designed in their Walker yard, to the order of the Czar of Russia, in 1898, for the purpose of breaking up ice-floes in the northern seas, and more especially for keeping open a route across the great lakes of Siberia.
The Elswick firm became Armstrong, Whitworth and Co., Ltd., in 1897, which was also the year of another great strike; and two years later, a disastrous fire burned down three of their shops, throwing two thousand men temporarily out of employment. Still the works continued to grow, and business to increase, until, instead of the five and a half acres originally purchased, the Company’s works, in 1900, covered two hundred and thirty acres, and the number of men on the pay-roll was over 25,000–that is, sufficient with their families to people a town three times the size of Hexham. And the scope and extent of these works are extending, and yet extending; and now Elswick and Scotswood form an uninterrupted line of closely-packed dwellings, which stretch without a break from Newcastle, and make a background for the immense works on the river shore; and one would look in vain for any signs of the pretty country lanes and village of sixty years ago.
The founder of this great enterprise, in the early days of the Company, built for his workpeople schools, library, and reading rooms, as well as dwellings, and met them personally at their social gatherings and entertainments–generally provided by himself; but the increasing size of the concern, the excellence and capability, amounting to genius, of the various heads of departments chosen by him, and his own increasing years and failing health, led to his gradual withdrawal from personal attendance at Elswick. The last time he appeared there officially was when the King of Siam visited the works in 1897.
One who knew him well has written of him, “His mind was at the same time original and strictly practical; he noticed with a penetrating observation, and drew conclusions with intuitive genius. Abstract speculation had no charm for him; he never cherished wild dreams or extravagant ideas. But if his conception was thus wisely restricted, his execution of an idea was unrivalled in its thoroughness. Whether he was founding an industrial establishment, or building a house, or making a road, the hand of the man is quite unmistakable. There is the same solid basis, the same enduring superstructure. Every stone that is laid at Cragside or Bamburgh seems to be stamped as it were with the impression of his great personality, and the thoroughness of his work.” All his life long, the thoroughness with which he was able to concentrate his mind on the one subject which occupied it at the time, was a marked feature of Lord Armstrong’s character.
In the early period of his career, while he was still in a solicitor’s office, and when the study of hydraulics was absorbing all his leisure hours, he was quizzically said to have “water on the brain.” Electrical problems also engaged his attention, and in 1844 he lectured at the Lit. and Phil. rooms on his hydro-electric machine, on which occasion the lecture room was so tightly packed that he had to get in through the window. In the following year he explained to the same society his hydraulic experiments and achievements; in 1846 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; and the next summer, 1847, saw the Elswick Works begun.
It is difficult to realize the fact, brought home to us on looking at dates like these, that Lord Armstrong and Robert Stephenson were contemporaries, and that both great engineers were engaged at the same time on the works which were to bring them lasting fame. The life and work of Robert Stephenson seem so remote, so much a part of bygone history, that it strikes the mind with an unexpected shock to realise that here is a life which began about the same time, yet has lasted until quite recent years; for Lord Armstrong’s long and successful career only closed with the closing days of the nineteenth century.
In the later years of his life he was greatly interested in repairing and partly re-building the historic castle of Bamburgh, which Mr. Freeman calls “the cradle of our race,” and which Lord Armstrong purchased from Lord Crewe’s Trustees. Of his personal character, the writer above quoted says, “Apart from his intellectual gifts, Lord Armstrong’s character was that of a great man. His unaffected modesty was as attractive as his broad-minded charity. In business transactions, he was the soul of integrity and honour, while in private life his mind was far too large to regard accumulated wealth with any excessive affection. He both spent his money freely and gave it away freely. His benefactions to Newcastle were princely, and his public munificence was fit to rank with that of any philanthropist of his time.”
Princely, indeed, were his gifts to his native town, as the list of them will show; they embraced either large contributions to, or the entire gift of, Jesmond Dene, the Armstrong Park, the Lecture Theatre of the Literary and Philosophical Society, St. Cuthbert’s Church, the Cathedral, St. Stephen’s Church, the Infirmary, the Deaf and Dumb Institution, the Children’s Hospital, the Elswick Schools, Elswick Mechanics’ Institute, the Convalescent Home at Whitley Bay, the Hancock Museum–to which he and Lady Armstrong contributed a valuable collection of shells, and L11,500 in money–the Armstrong Bridge, the Armstrong College, and the Bishopric Endowment Fund.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CHEVIOTS.
From the crowded, bustling scenes of Tyneside to the solitude of the Cheviot Hills is a “far cry,” even farther mentally than in actual tale of miles. Yet the two are linked by the same stream, which begins life as a brawling Cheviot burn, having for its fellows the head waters of the Rede, the Coquet, and the Till, with the scores of little dancing rills that feed them.
Nowhere in this land of swelling hills and grassy fields can one get out of either sight or sound of running water. Every little dip in the hills has its watercourse, every vale its broader stream, and the pleasant sound of their murmurings and sweet babbling fills in the background of every remembrance of days spent upon the green slopes of the Cheviots. You may hear in their tones, if you listen, the shrill chatter and laughter of children, soft cooing voices, and the deeper notes of manhood, and might fancy, did not your sight contradict the fact, that you were close to a goodly company, whose words met your ear, but whose magic language you could not understand.
One little burn of my acquaintance, which runs through field and dell to join the Till, I have hearkened to again and again for hours, unable to break away from the spell of its ever-varying, yet constant music–a sort of wilder, sweeter version of Mendelssohn’s Duetto, with the voices of Knight and Lady alternating and intermingling amidst a rippling current of clear bell-like undertones.
Down from Cheviot itself, the lovely little Colledge Water splashes its way, issuing from the wild ravine called the Henhole, where the cliffs on each side of the rocky gorge rise in some places to a height of more than two hundred feet. Concerning this ravine, there is a legend that a party of hunters, long ages ago, were deer-stalking in Cheviot Forest, when on reaching the Henhole their ears were greeted by the most ravishing music they had ever heard. Allured by the enchanting sounds, they followed the music into the ravine, where they disappeared, and were never again seen.
The range of the Cheviot Hills stretches for about twenty-two miles along the north-west border of Northumberland; and as the width of the range is, roughly speaking, twenty-one miles, we have a tract of over three hundred square miles of rolling, grassy, and heath-clad hills, of which about one-third is over the Scottish border in Roxburghshire. The giants of the range, The Cheviot (2,676 feet high), Cairn Hill (2,545 feet), and the striking cone of Hedgehope (2,348 feet), are all near to each other on Northumbrian soil, a few miles south-west of Wooler, which is a most convenient starting place for a visit to any part of the Cheviots, as the Alnwick and Cornhill Railway brings within easy reach the heights which lie still farther north.
The quiet little market town lies pleasantly among green meadows almost at the foot of the Cheviots; its low substantial stone houses, with few gardens in front, give the place a somewhat monotonous appearance, but the newer streets try to make amends by blossoming out into brilliant flower-plots in summer-time. Still, one would not quarrel with the older buildings; solid and unpretentious, they must look much the same as in the days of Border turmoil, when the first requisite in house or town was strength, not beauty.
Near to Wooler are many interesting places; within the limits of quite a short stroll one may visit the Pin Well, a wishing well of which there are so many examples to be found wherever one may travel; the King’s Chair, a porphyry crag on the hill above the Pin Well; Maiden Castle, or, less euphoniously, Kettles Camp, an ancient British encampment on the same hill, the Kettles being pot-like cavities in the ravines surrounding it; and the Cup and Saucer Camp, just half a mile distant from Wooler. The Golf Course is now laid out on these same heights.
To reach the Cheviots from Wooler, the most usual way is by the beautiful glen in which lies Langleeford. The bright streamlet known as the Wooler Water runs through it from Cheviot on its way to the town from which it has taken its present name; formerly it was known as Caldgate Burn. It was at Langleeford that Sir Walter Scott stayed, as a youth, in 1791, with his uncle, after they had vainly attempted to find accommodation in Wooler. Here they rode, fished, shot, walked, and drank the goat’s whey for which the district was famous in those days and for long afterwards.
Cheviot itself, or “The Muckle Cheviot,” is a huge cumbrous-looking mass, with rounded sides and flat top, boggy and treacherous, where, nevertheless, many wild berries brighten the marshy flats in their season. The name “Cheviot” is said to mean “Snowy Ridge” and well does this highest summit of the range merit the name, for on its marshy top and in the rocky chasms of Henhole and Bazzle, the winter’s snow often lies until far into the summer. Down through the weird and fairy-haunted cleft of Henhole, as we have seen, the little brown stream of Colledge Water splashes its way, breaking into golden foam between mossy banks as it reaches the outlet, and turns northward to join the Till.
This little burn is one of the prettiest of mountain streams; and in the district surrounding it are perhaps more points of interest than any other stream of such inconsiderable dimensions can show, saving only its neighbour, the Till. The whole of the surrounding country, wild, lonely, and romantic, teems with memories and reminders of the past. Sir Walter Scott, while on the visit already referred to, found an additional pleasure in the presence of so many relics of ancient days in the neighbourhood. “Each hill,” he wrote to a friend, “is crowned with a tower, or camp, or cairn, and in no situation can you be near more fields of battle.”
Indeed, the whole district of the Cheviots, and the lower lines of swelling hills into which the land subsides as it nears the sea, is crowded with the memorials of an earlier race; from every hill-top and rocky height they speak with tantalising half-revelations of that race which the Romans found here when their galleys brought them to the land which was to them Ultima Thule. No convincing explanation has yet been found of the concentric circular markings, with radiating grooves from the cup-shaped hollow in the middle, which are scored on the rocks wherever traces of an ancient camp are found; and the numbers of these traces are proof that this district was once a very thickly populated part of Britain.
And when Angle and Saxon were driving the early inhabitants before them, westward and southward, these hills and valleys still sheltered a considerable population; and Bede tells us of a royal residence not far away, at the foot of the well known Yeavering Bell, one of the more important hills of the range. It rises to a height of more than 1,100 feet, and then abruptly ends in a wide, almost level top, grass-grown and boulder-strewn, and crowned near the centre with a roughly-piled cairn. The ancient name of Yeavering Bell, as given by Bede in his account of the labours of St. Paulinus, was Ad-gefrin.
To recall the days when King Edwin and his queen, Ethelburga, came here from the royal city of Bamburgh, we must go back to a time nearly forty years after the Bernician chieftain, Ida, established himself in that rocky fortress, from whence he ruled a district roughly corresponding to the present counties of Durham and Northumberland, and known as Bernicia. One of Ida’s successors, Ethelric, overcame the tribe of Angles then established in the neighbouring district of Deira–the Yorkshire of to-day. His successor, Ethelfrith, ruled over the united district, and married the daughter of Ella, the vanquished chieftain. Her brother, Edwin, he drove into exile, and the young prince found refuge at the court of Redwald of East Anglia, where he remained for some years.
Redwald’s friendship, however, does not seem to have been above suspicion, for we find that Ethelfrith’s bribe had on one occasion nearly induced him to give up his guest, whose life, however, was saved by Redwald’s wife who turned her husband from his purpose. In his exile the thoughts of the young prince often turned towards his own land; and, once, as he sat brooding over his misfortunes, he saw in a vision one who came and spoke comforting words to him, saying that he should yet be king and that his reign should be long and glorious. “And if one should come to thee and repeat this sign,” said the stranger, laying his right hand on Edwin’s head “wouldst thou hearken to his rede?” Edwin gave his word, and the vision fled. Some little time after this, Ethelfrith of Northumbria, as the united districts were now called, fell in battle against Redwald, and Edwin, returning northward, became ruler of Northumbria, the sons of Ethelfrith fleeing in their turn before the new king. Edwin wedded, as his second wife, Ethelburga, daughter of that king of Kent in whose days Augustine came to England; and being a Christian princess, she brought with her a priest to her new home in the north. The priest’s name was Paulinus; and one day he went to the King and, placing his right hand on Edwin’s head, asked if he knew that sign. Edwin remembered, and redeemed his promise. He hearkened to the teaching of the earnest monk, with the result that before long he and his court were baptised by Paulinus, Edwin’s little daughter, it is said, being the first to receive the sacred rite.
This was at York; and when the king and queen went to the royal city of Bamburgh, or to their country dwelling at the foot of the Cheviots, Paulinus accompanied them; and wherever he went, he laboured to teach the North-country Angles and Saxons the gospel of Christ. This country dwelling, to which came Paulinus and his royal friends, was Ad-gefrin, or Yeavering; and though it is extremely unlikely that any traces of it could remain until our day, yet tradition points out a fragment of an old building still standing there, as a remnant of the royal residence.
In the region of Kirknewton, a pretty little village to the north-west of Yeavering, where Colledge Water joins the Glen, which gives its name to the romantic district of Glendale, Paulinus baptised many hundreds of Edwin’s people; and the name of Pallinsburn–which is now confined to a house at some little distance from the burn–enshrines the memory of yet another scene of the labours of the indefatigable monk.
If we stand on the wind-swept top of Yeavering Bell, we are surrounded by the evidences of still more remote days, for the whole of the summit was once a fortified camp of the ancient Britons. A roughly-piled, but massive wall, now almost all broken down, surrounded it, and within its grass-grown oval are two additional walls, at the east and the west ends of the enclosure, and many hut-circles, evidences of the rude dwellings of our remote ancestors. Excavations here many years ago brought to light a jasper ball, some fragments of a coarse kind of pottery, and some oaken armlets. Evidently the enclosure on the summit was intended to be a last resort in time of danger, for traces of many huts are to be found outside its encircling wall, which is surrounded by a ditch and a low rampart of earth. At the east end, where the porphyry crag juts out from the hilltop to a height of about twenty feet, full advantage has been taken of this naturally strong position.
Now, instead of advancing foes, the spreading heather climbs steadily up the sloping sides of this ancient stronghold, and invades the central enclosure at its will; a few hardy sheep that have wandered up here from the richer pastures below, and now and again a stray tourist, anxious to make acquaintance at first hand with one of the more famous of the Cheviot heights, and more than satisfied with the glorious view spread out before him, are all that disturb the brooding peace of its grassy solitudes. Up here the wind blows keenly around us with an exhilarating freshness in its breath, and we think regretfully of coats left behind at the shepherd’s hospitable dwelling, which, with the rest of the cottages clustering round the old farm house, lies sunning itself in the warm glow of the September afternoon, in the green fields at the foot of the sheltering hills.
Looking southward now, up the stream, there is stretching away to the left the long ridge of Newton Tor, and away behind it Great Hetha and Little Hetha; while half-way down the vale the Colledge Water tumbles over the rocks at Hethpoole Linn (or Heathpool, as the modern rendering has it), breaking into amber spray deep down beneath overhanging trees and boulders and golden bracken.
This brings our thoughts to days comparatively modern, for when Admiral Collingwood was raised to the peerage of Great Britain, it was by the title of “Baron Collingwood of Caldburn and Hethpoole, in the county of Northumberland.” The brave Admiral was fond of planting an oak tree whenever he found an opportunity, to secure the continuance of those wooden walls which in his hands, and in those of his life-long friend, Nelson, had proved such a sure defence to his country. In a letter dated March, 1806, he wrote to his wife, “I wish some parts of Hethpoole could be selected for plantations of larch, oak, and beech, where the ground could best be spared. Even the sides of a bleak hill would grow larch and fir.” In another letter some months later he told her what “agreeable news” it was to hear that she was taking care of his oaks, and planting some at Hethpoole; and saying that if he ever returned he would plant a good deal there; adding, however, that he feared before that could take place both he and Lady Collingwood might themselves be planted in the churchyard beneath some old yew tree.
Hethpoole presents us with a link not only with history, but with romance as well. An ivied ruin near at hand, with walls of enormous strength, is said to be the remains of the castle where the final tragedy in “The Hermit of Warkworth” took place. Here, it is said, the distracted lover came upon his lady and his brother, who had at that moment effected her escape, and not recognising the youth, rushed upon the pair with drawn sword, only to discover too late his terrible mistake, and lose both brother and bride–for the lady received a mortal wound in trying to save her rescuer.
Turning our eyes now northward across the Glen from Yeavering Bell, we are looking towards Coupland Castle, and the fact that it was built so late as the reign of James I. bears eloquent testimony to the insecurity of life and property on the Borders even at that period. The barony either gave its name to, or took its name from, a well-known Northumbrian family, of which one of the most prominent members was that Sir John de Coupland who succeeded in capturing David of Scotland at the battle of Neville’s Cross–not, however, before he had lost some of his teeth by a blow from the mailed fist of that doughty monarch!
Beyond Coupland Castle we look across Milfield Plain lying in the angle formed by the meeting of the Glen with the deep and sullen Till, whose slow windings can be traced as it gleams at intervals between the undulations of the lower hills through which it flows northwestward to the Tweed. Though a brisk and sparkling stream in certain parts of its course, the general characteristics of the Till are well borne out by the lines–
Tweed says to Till
“What gars ye rin sae still?”
Till says to Tweed
“Though ye rin wi’ speed
And I rin slaw;
Where ye droon ae man
I droon twa.”
There is yet more of historical and traditional interest to note in this view from the top of Yeavering Bell, which, as I saw it last, lay warm in the glow of a September afternoon. Nennius is our authority for stating that on Milfield Plain took place one of the great conflicts in which King Arthur
“Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame The heathen hordes, and made a realm, and reigned”
And, as we gazed, the level spaces seemed peopled once more with charging knights, flashing sword and swinging battle-axe, and the intervening centuries dropped away, and Arthur’s call to battle for “our fair father Christ,” seemed curiously befitting that romantic scene. But, as the shadows lengthened, and the streams took on a golden glow in the rays of the September sun, then slowly setting, “the tumult and the shouting of the captains” died away, and the figure of an earnest monk seemed to stand by the riverside, with prince and serf, peasant and warrior for his audience, and the cold bright waters of the Glen dripping from his hand, as he enrolled one after another into the ranks of an army mightier than the hosts of Arthur or Edwin.
Milfield again emerges into notice out of the obscurity of those dark ages, in the days of the Bernician kings who succeeded Edwin; for Bede tells us that “This town (Ad-gefrin) under the following kings, was abandoned, and another was built instead of it at a place called Melmin,” now Milfield. Nothing, however, remains here of the buildings which once sheltered the royal Saxons and their court. In later days, Milfield has a melancholy interest attaching to it from its connection with the battle of Flodden; for, on the heights above, King James fixed his camp, in the hope that Surrey would lead his troops across the plain below. Of the other considerable heights of the Cheviot range, Carter Fell and Peel Fell are the best known; they both lie right on the border line of England and Scotland, between the North Tyne and the Rede Water. As we have already seen, the men of Tynedale and Redesdale bore a reputation for lawlessness in the time of the Border “Moss-trooping” days, and until nearly the end of the eighteenth century the tradesmen and guilds of Newcastle would take no apprentice who hailed from either of these dales. The tracks and passes between the hills, once alive with frequent foray and wild pursuit, are now silent and solitary but for the occasional passing of a shepherd or farmer, and the flocks of sheep grazing as they move slowly up the hillsides. A quaint survival of the remembrances of those days was unexpectedly brought before me one day. A child presented me with a bunch of cotton-grass, gathered on the moors not far from the Roman-Wall. I asked if she knew what they were that she had brought. “Moss-troopers,” she replied.
Many of the Cheviot heights bear most suggestive and interesting names, such as Cushat [7] Law, Kelpie [8] Strand, Earl’s Seat, Stot [9] Crags, Deer Play, Wether Lair, Bloodybushedge, Monkside, etc., etc.
[Footnote 7: Cushat = a wood-pigeon.] [Footnote 8: Kelpie = a water-witch.]
[Footnote 9: Stot = a bullock.]
In these lonely wilds, which occupy all the northwest of the county, one may travel all day and meet with no living thing save the birds of the air, and a few shy, wild creatures of the moorlands; curve after curve, the rounded hills stretch away into the distance, grass-grown or heatherclad, with occasional peat-mosses; above is the “grey gleaming sky,” and, all around, a stillness as of vast untrodden wastes, and a sense of solitude out of all proportion to the actual extent of this lonely region. The fascination of it, however, admits of no denial, even on the part of those newly making its acquaintance; while those who in childhood or youth roam over its wild fells, and feel the spell of its brooding mystery, retain in their hearts for all time an unfading remembrance of its magic charm.
COLLEDGE WATER.
My sire is the stooping Cheviot mist, My mother the heath in her purple train; And every flower on her gown I’ve kissed Over and over and over again.
The secret ways of the hills are mine, I know where the wandering moor-fowl nest; And up where the wet grey glidders[10] shine I know where the roving foxes rest.
[Footnote 10: Glidders = Patches of loose stones on the hillside.]
I know what the wind is wailing for
As it searches hollow and hag and peak; And, riding restless on Newton Tor,
I know what the questing shadows seek.
I know the tale that the brown bees tell, And they tell it to me with a raider’s pride, As, drunk with the cups of Yeavering Bell, They stagger home from the English side.
I know the secrets of haugh and hill; But sacred and safe they rest with me,
Till I hide them deep in the heart of Till, To be taken to Tweed and the open sea.
–_Will. H. Ogilvie_.
BY PERMISSION OF MESSRS. W. AND R. CHAMBERS
CHAPTER VII.
THE ROMAN WALL.
“Take these flowers, which, purple waving, On the ruined rampart grew,
Where, the sons of Freedom braving, Rome’s imperial standard flew.
Warriors from the breach of danger Pluck no longer laurels there;
They but yield the passing stranger Wild-flower wreaths for Beauty’s hair.” –_Sir Walter Scott._
(Lines written for a young lady’s album.)
Of all the abundance of treasure which Northumberland possesses, from a historical point of view–of all its wealth of interesting relics of bygone days–ancient abbey, grim fortress, menhir and monolith, camp and tumulus–none grips the imagination as does the sight of that unswerving line which pursues its way over hill and hollow, from the eastern to the western shores of the north-land, visible emblem, after more than a thousand years, of the far-flung arm of Imperial Rome.
From Wallsend on the Tyne to Bowness on the Solway Firth it strode triumphantly across the land; even now in its decay it remains a splendid monument to that mighty nation’s genius for having and holding the uttermost parts of the earth that came within their ken. As was inevitable, after the lapse of nearly eighteen centuries the great work is everywhere in a ruinous condition, and in many places, especially at its eastern end, has disappeared altogether; but not only can its course be traced by various evidences, but it was actually standing within comparatively recent years. As lately as the year 1800–lately, that is, compared with the date of its building–its existence at Byker was referred to in a magazine of the period. Now nothing is to be seen of it excepting a few stones here and there, for many miles from Wallsend; but the highroad westward from Newcastle, by Westgate Road, as is well known, follows the course of the Wall for nearly twenty miles. But farther west we may walk along the uneven, broken surface of the mighty rampart, or climb down into the broad and deep fosse which lies closely against it along its northern side, without troubling ourselves with the arguments and uncertainties of antiquaries, who have by no means decided on what was the original function of the Wall, who was its real builder, why and when the earthen walls and fosse which accompany it on the south were wrought, and many other smaller controversial points, which afford endless matter for speculation and discussion.
Early references to the Wall show that our forefathers knew it as the Picts’ Wall; it is now generally referred to as the Wall of Hadrian, the general concensus of opinion yielding to that indefatigable ruler the credit of having wrought the mighty work. Whether built originally as a frontier line of defence or not, opinions are not agreed; but it is very certain that the Wall afforded the only secure foothold in the North to the Romans for well-nigh two centuries of hostility from the restless Brigantes to the southward, and the Picts and Scots to the north; and for another century or so after their southern neighbours had become friendly and peaceful, it still remained a substantial bulwark against the northern barbarians.
Throughout the whole of its length it steadily holds the line of the highest ridges in its course, climbing up slopes and dipping down into the intervening hollows with the least possible deviation from its onward course. The most interesting, because most complete, portion of the Wall, is that in the neighbourhood of the three loughs–Broomlee, Greenlee, and Crag Loughs, which, with Grindon Lough to the south of the Wall, boast the name of the Northumberland Lakes. On this portion of the wall is situated the large Roman station of Borcovicus, from which we have gained a great deal of our information as to what the life of the garrisons on this lonely outpost of Empire was like.
The station is situated on hilly ground, which slopes gently to the south, and is nearly five acres in extent. On entering the eastern gateway one cannot but experience a sudden thrill on seeing the deep grooves worn in the stone by the passing and repassing of Roman cart and chariot wheels. That mute witness of the daily traffic of the soldiery in those long-past centuries speaks with a most intimate note to us who eighteen hundred years afterwards come to look upon the place of their habitation. The station itself is of the usual shape of the Roman towns on the course of the Wall–oblong, with rounded corners. The greatest length lies east and west, in a line with the Wall; and two broad streets crossing each other at right angles lead from the north to the south, and from the east to the western gateways. Each of the four was originally a double gateway; but in every case one half of it has been closed up, no doubt when the garrison was declining in numbers, and the attacks of the enemy were increasing in severity.
[Illustration: NORTH GATEWAY, HOUSESTEADS AND ROMAN WALL.]