Northumberland Yesterday and To-day

by Jean F. Terry

The bridge at Haydon appears to have been the only one for some distance up and down the river in the sixteenth century, for we read of its being barred and chained, on various occasions of marauding troubles in Tynedale, to prevent the free-booters re-crossing the river.

In the days of Charles I. Colonel Lilburn marched to Haydon Bridge in command of some troops of the Roundheads, on his way to join their comrades at Hexham as a counter-move to the operations of the Royalist troops in the North. Little more than thirty years after this, when the days of Cromwell’s power had come and gone, and Charles II. ruled at Whitehall, the old Grammar School was founded at Haydon Bridge in 1685 by a clergyman, the Rev. John Shafto. Various changes have taken place in the school from time to time, necessitated by the gradual changes and educational needs of the passing years; and now, like the Grammar School of Queen Elizabeth at Hexham, it has been entirely re-constituted to meet modern requirements. John Martin, the famous painter of “The Plains of Heaven,” received the beginnings of his education at this school. He was born at East Land Ends farm in 1789. In after years the authorities of Haydon Bridge Reading Room, wishing no doubt to afford a perfect example to future generations of the truth of the proverb concerning a prophet and his own country, refused some of Martin’s pictures, which the gifted painter himself offered to them—an act which their successors have doubtless regretted.

At a little distance along the Langley Road, which leads past the school, a memorial cross is standing. It was erected in 1883 by the late Mr. C.J. Bates, the historian of Northumberland, to the memory of the last of the Derwentwater family, whose castle of Langley he purchased. The inscription on the cross reads:—“To the memory of James and Charles, Viscounts Langley, Earls of Derwentwater, beheaded on Tower Hill, London, 24th February, 1716, and 8th December, 1746, for loyalty to their lawful sovereign.”

A striking testimony, this, to the fact that freedom in England is a reality, and not merely a name. In what other land would an inscription such as this have been allowed to remain for more than twenty-four hours?

A couple of miles or more down the South Tyne is Fourstones, so called because of four stones, said to have been Roman altars, having been used to mark its boundaries. A romantic use was made of one of these stones in the early days of “The Fifteen.” Every evening, as dusk fell, a little figure, clad in green, stole up to the ancient altar, which had been slightly hollowed out, and, taking out a packet, laid another in its place. The mysterious packets, placed there so secretly, were letters from the Jacobites of the neighbourhood to each other; and the little figure in green was a boy who acted as messenger for them. No wonder that the people of the district gave this altar the name of the “Fairy Stone.”

Between Haydon Bridge and Fourstones are both freestone and limestone quarries, which latter have supplied many fossils to visitors of geological tastes. Halfway between Fourstones and Hexham, the two streams of North and South Tyne unite, and flow together down to the old town of Hexham, with its quaintly irregular buildings clustering in picturesque confusion round its ancient Abbey, which dominates the landscape from whatever point we approach.

Warden Village, already mentioned, lies in the angle formed by the meeting of the two streams, and has an ancient church which, however, has been largely rebuilt. From High Warden, near at hand, a delightful view may be obtained for a long distance up the valleys of North and South Tyne. On the summit of this hill there are the remains of a considerable British camp, showing that they had seized upon this point of vantage, and though the ancient British name has not come down to us, it is evident from the Saxon name of Warden (weardian) that Saxons as well as Britons were fully alive to the merits of the situation, “guarding” the valley at such a commanding point.

CHAPTER III.
DOWN THE TYNE.

The town of Hexham, standing on hilly ground overlooking the Tyne, immediately below the point at which the North and South Tyne unite, and spreading from thence down to the levels all round, is one of the most ancient in the kingdom. To write of Hexham with any measure of fulness would require much more space than can be given to it within the limits of a small book; only a mere summary can be offered here. Britons, Romans, and Saxons, in turn, have dwelt on and around the hill which, in Saxon days, was to be crowned with Wilfrid’s beautiful Abbey, which, we read, surpassed all others in England at that time for beauty and excellence of design and workmanship; nor was there another to equal it anywhere on this side of the Alps.

The name of Hexham is generally understood to be derived from the names of two little streams, the Hextol and the Halgut, now the Cowgarth and the Cockshaw Burns, which here flow into the Tyne; or, as Mr. Bates suggests, it may have been the “ham” of “some forgotten Hagustald,” which the name perpetuates. In any case its name was Hagustaldesham when King Ecgfrith (or Egfrid) of Northumbria gave it to his queen, Etheldreda, who wished to take the veil. Queen Etheldreda, however, preferred to go to East Anglia, which was her home; she retired to a convent at Ely, and bestowed the land at Hagustaldesham on Wilfrid, a monk of Lindisfarne, clever, ambitious and hardworking, who had become Bishop of York, which meant Bishop of all Northumbria.