XX
The surrounding districts anciently possessed a prime horror (which has lost nothing in the accumulated legends of centuries) in the “Brawn of Brancepeth.” This terror of the countryside, resolved into plain matter of fact, seems to have been a wild boar. Boars were “brawns” in those days, and the adjacent “Brancepeth” is just “brawn’s path,” as Brandon is supposed to have been “brawn den.” This, to modern ideas, not very terrible wild animal, seems to have thoroughly alarmed half a county:—
He feared not ye loute with hys staffe,
Nor yet for ye knyghte in hys mayle,
He cared no more for ye monke with hys boke,
Than the fyendis in depe Croix Dale.
It will be seen by the last line in this verse that the author was evidently prepared to back the devil and all his works against anything the Church could do. But that is a detail. The wild boar was eventually slain by Hodge of the Ferry, who ended him by the not very heroic process of digging a deep pit in the course of his usual path, and when the animal fell in, cutting his head off, doubtless from a safe point of vantage above. Divested of legendary trappings, we can readily picture the facts: the redoubtable Hodge hiding in the nearest and tallest tree until the wild boar came along and fell into the hole, when the champion descended and despatched him in safety. The traditional scene of this exploit is half a mile to the east of Ferryhill, at a farmstead called Cleve’s Cross.
Croixdale, or, as modern times have vulgarised its name, Croxdale, lies on our way to Durham, past the hills of High and Low Butcher Race. Now a shabby roadside village, with a railway station of that name on the main line of the North Eastern Railway, this neighbourhood has also had its romance. The road descends steeply to the river Wear, and in the vicinity is the dark hollow which mediæval superstition peopled with evil spirits, the “fyendis” who, as the ballad says, cared nothing for the monk with his book. To evict these hardy sprites a cross was erected, hence “Croixdale”; but with what result is not stated.
The cross roads here, too, have their story, for Andrew Tate, a highwayman, convicted of murdering and robbing seven persons near Sunderland Bridge, was hanged where they branch off, in 1602, and afterwards buried beneath the gallows. Now that no devils or highwaymen haunt the lovely woodland borders of the Wear at this spot, it is safe to linger by Sunderland Bridge, just below Croxdale, where the exceedingly picturesque old stone bridge of four arches carries the road over the river. Perhaps the distant railway viaduct may spoil the sylvan solitude of the place, but, on the other hand, it may help to emphasise it. Across that viaduct rush and roar the expresses to and from London and the North; while the fisherman plys his contemplative craft from the sandy beaches below the bridge. Many a wearied coach passenger, passing this spot in the old days on summer evenings, must have longingly drunk in the beauty of the scene. Other passengers by coach had a terrible experience here in 1822, when the mail was overturned on the bridge and two passengers killed.
Thoresby, in his Diary, under date of May 1703, describes one of his journeys with his usual inaccuracy as to the incidence of places, and mentions Sunderland Bridge, together with another, close by. This would be Browney Bridge, to which we come in a quarter of a mile nearer Durham; only Thoresby places it the other way, where, on the hillside, such a bridge would be impossible. He mentions seeing the legend, “Sockeld’s Leap, 1692,” inscribed on one of the coping-stones, and tells how two horsemen, racing on this road, jumped on the bridge together with such force that one of them, breaking down the battlements of the bridge, fell into the stream below, neither he nor his horse having any injury.
Ascending the steep rise beyond Browney Bridge, Farewell Hall on the left is passed, the place taking its name, according to the commonly received story, from the Earl of Derwentwater bidding farewell to his friends here when on his way, a captured rebel, to London and the scaffold, in 1715. Climbing one more ridge, the first view of Durham Cathedral is gained on coming down the corresponding descent, a long straight run into the outskirts of the city. Durham Cathedral appears, majestic against the sky, long before any sign of the city itself is noted; a huge bulk dominating the scene and dwarfing the church of St. Oswald at the foot of the hill, itself no inconsiderable building. To the right hand rises Nine Tree Hill, with the nine trees that stand sponsors to it still weirdly conspicuous on its crest, and down beneath it spread the grimy and unkempt works of the Old Elvet Colliery.
