The little town of Chester-le-Street lies three miles ahead, past the few cottages of Plawsworth, once the site of a turnpike-gate, and by Chester Moor and the pretty wooded hollow of Chester Dene, where the Con Burn goes rippling through the undergrowth to join the river Wear, and a bridge carries the highway across the gap. Approaching Chester-le-Street, the bright yellow sandstone mass of Lumley Castle, the ancient seat of the Earl of Scarborough, is prominent in the valley to the right, while beyond it rise the woods of Lambton Castle, the Earl of Durham’s domain. The neighbourhood of Chester-le-Street yet preserves the weird legend of the “Lambton Worm,” and Worm Hill is still pointed out as the home of that fabulous monster who laid the country under contribution for the satisfying of his voracious appetite, and was kept in good humour by being provided with the milk of nine cows daily. Many had essayed to slay the serpent and had fallen victims instead, until the heir of Lambton, returned from the red fields and hair’s-breadth escapes of foreign wars, set forth to free the countryside from the terror. But before he started, he was warned (so the legend runs), that unless he vowed, being successful in his enterprise, to slay the first living thing he met on his return, the lords of Lambton would never, for nine generations to come, die in their beds. He took that vow, and, armed with his trusty sword and a suit of armour made of razor-blades, met and slew the Worm, who coiled himself round the knight in order to crush him as he had the others, and so was cut in pieces against the keen edges. But the victor on returning was met by his father, instead of by the favourite dog who had been destined for the sacrifice. The sword dropped from his nerveless hand, and he broke the vow. What mattered it where the future generations died; in their beds, or, as warriors might wish, in their boots?
As a matter of fact, the next nine heirs of Lambton did die more or less violent deaths; a circumstance which is pointed to in proof of the legend’s truth. If other proof be wanting, one has only to visit Lambton Castle, where the identical trough from which the Worm drank his daily allowance of milk is still shown the curious tourist!
Chester-le-Street bears little in its appearance to hint at its great age and interesting history. A very up-to-date little town, whose prosperity derives from its position as a marketing centre for the surrounding pitmen, it supports excellent shops and rejoices in the possession of Co-operative Societies, whose objects are to provide their subscribers with whatever they want at cost price, and to starve the trader, who trades for profit, out of existence. That shops and societies exist side by side, and that both look prosperous, seems remarkable, not to say miraculous. Let the explanation of these things be left to other hands.
The name of Chester-le-Street doubly reveals the Roman origin of the place from the castle on the road which existed here in those distant times, and has easily survived the name of Cunecaster, which the Saxons gave it. At Cunecaster the ancient bishopric of Bernicia, forerunner of the present See of Durham, had its cathedral for a hundred and thirteen years, from A.D. 882 to 995; having been removed from the Farne Islands on the approach of the heathen Danes, the monks carrying the coffin of their sainted bishop, St. Cuthbert, with them on their wanderings. The dedication of the present church to Saints Mary and Cuthbert is a relic of that time, but the building itself is not older than the thirteenth century. It preserves an ancient anchorites’ cell.
The finest surviving anchorage in England is this of Chester-le-Street. It is built against the north wall of the tower, and is of two storeys with two rooms on each. Two “low-side” windows communicating with the churchyard remain, and a smaller opening into the church is close by. Through this, food and offerings were passed to the anchorite, together with the keys of the church treasure-chest, left in his custody by the clergy. From this orifice the holy hermit could obtain a view all over the building, and an odd hagioscope or “squint,” pierced through one of the pillars, allowed of his seeing the celebration of Mass at a side-chapel, in addition to that at the High Altar. This was no damp and inconvenient hermitage, for when the anchorite was kicked out at the Reformation, and bidden go and earn an honest living, his old home was let to three widows. Eventually, in 1619, the curate found the place so desirable—or, as a house-agent would say, so “eligible”—that he took up his abode there.
The church also contains fourteen monumental effigies ascribed, without much truth in the ascription, to the Lumleys. John, Lord Lumley, collected them from ruined abbeys and monasteries in the neighbourhood some three hundred years ago, and called them ancestors. He was technically right; for we all descend from Adam, but not quite so right when, finding he could not steal a sufficient number of these “ancestors,” he commissioned the local masons to rough-hew him out a few more. They are here to this day, and an ill-favoured gang they look, too.
The town of Chester-le-Street found little favour with De Foe, who, passing through it, found the place “an old dirty thoroughfare town.” The modern traveller cannot say the same, but it is possible that if he happened to pass through on Shrove Tuesday, he would describe the inhabitants as savages; for on that day the place is given up to a game of football played in the streets, the town taking sides, and when the ball is not within reach, kicking one another. With a proper respect for their shop fronts, the trades-folk all close on this day.
The three miles between Chester-le-Street and Birtley afford a wide-spreading panorama of the Durham coal-field. Pretty country before its mineral wealth began to be developed, its hills and dales reveal chimney-shafts and hoisting-gear in every direction, and smoke-wreaths, blown across country by the raging winds of the north, blacken everything. Birtley is a typical pit village and its approaches characteristic of the coal country. The paths are black, the hedges and trees ragged and sooty, and tramways from the collieries cross the road itself, unfenced, the trucks dropping coal in the highway. One coal village is as like another as are two peas. They are all frankly unornamental; all face the road on either side, each cottage the exact replica of its unlovely neighbour, and the footpaths are almost invariably unpaved. These are the homes of the “Geordies,” as the pitmen once were invariably called. They were rough in their ways, but very different from the more recent sort: the trade-unionist miner: the better educated but more discontented and unlovable man. But “Geordie,” the old-type typical pitman, was not a bad fellow, by any means. If any man worked, literally, by the sweat of his brow, it was he, in his eight hours’ shift down in the stifling tunnels of the coal-mine. He earned a high wage and deserved a higher, for he carried his life in his hand, and any day that witnessed his descent half a mile or so into the black depths of the pit might also have seen an accident which, by the fall of a roof of coal, by fire or flood, explosion, or the unseen but deadly choke-damp, should end his existence, and that of hundreds like him.
The midday aspect of a coal village is singularly quiet and empty. Scarce a man or boy is to be seen. Half of them are at work down below, in the first day shift to which they went at an early hour of the morning: and those of the night, who came up when the others descended, are enjoying a well-earned repose. A coal-miner just come to bank from his coal-hewing, looks anything but the respectable fellow he generally is, nowadays. With his peaked leathern cap, thick short coat, woollen muffler, limp knickerbockers, blue worsted stockings, heavy lace-up boots and dirty face, he looks like a half-bleached nigger football-player. When washed, his is a pallid countenance which the stranger, unused to the colourless faces of those who work underground, might be excused for thinking that of one recovering from an illness. And washing is a serious business with “Geordie.” Every pitman’s cottage has its tub wherein he “cleans” himself, as he expresses it, while the women-folk crowd the street. What the cottages lack in accommodation they make up for in cleanliness and display. The pitman’s wife wages an heroic and never-ending war against dirt and grime, and both have an astonishing love of finery and bright colours which reveals itself even down to the door-step, coloured a brilliant red, yellow, or blue, according to individual taste. Nowadays football claims “Geordie’s” affections before anything else. That rowdy game, more than any other, serves to work off any superfluous energy, and there are stories, more or less true, which tell of pitmen, tired of waiting for “t’ ball,” starting “t’ gaame” by kicking one another instead! Coursing, dog-fancying, and the breeding of canaries are other favourite pitmen’s pastimes, and they dearly love a garden. Where an outdoor garden is impossible, a window garden is a favourite resource, and even the ugliest cottages take on a certain smartness when to the yellow doorstep are added bright green window-shutters and a window full of scarlet geraniums. Very many pitmen are musical. We do not in this connection refer to the inevitable American organ whose doleful wails wring your very heart-strings as you pass the open cottage doors on Sunday afternoons, but to the really expert violinists often found in the pit villages.
