When the Angles and Saxons arrived in our island they planted settlements in fertile districts. By the margins of some meandering river, which had already been named by the earlier Celtic race, the Saxon families located themselves and established homes, many of which are now large towns. The forest growth was cleared, and, with that love of home characteristic of the Saxons, a portion of the cleared land was enclosed, guarded, or protected, with the tines of forest growth—the tines or twigs of the wood; hence tun occurs in 137 Anglo-Saxon names of places in the 1,200 taken from Kemble’s Charters. This termination became to mean, not the tines or twigs alone, nor yet the hedges of which they were made, but the whole enclosure or estate was the tun or ton of some person; or the ton otherwise distinguished, as Stockton, the stockaded town; Middleton, the middle town; Willington, the town of the family of Willing—sons of Will. Other terminations indicate Saxon homes, as ham, worth, stoke, stow, fold, bury. In the Boldon Buke we find the Danish toft; and the universal description of small holdings in Hatfield’s Survey is a toft and a croft. We also find in primitive days the villagers holding dales of land—land divided into long, narrow strips or divisions, each villager knowing his own strip. When Weardale was more under cultivation, it was customary for the inhabitants to take in land from the moors; hence we find the place-name intake, locally intak. And at a later period still, when Acts of Parliament dealt with the division of moorlands, we got the name allotment, abbreviated to lotment and lot—the allotted land.
Acre is mentioned, as in Farnacres, in the Boldon Buke; and in later surveys are Longacre and Etheredacres. Barn, berry, beeld, byre, and by, bower, cave, castle, chesters, close, croft, dale, and darg—as six darg, from Anglo-Saxon dæg-weorc, day’s work. Fold, farm, faw, frith, gate, garth, hot, ing, ham, kirk, lodge, park, meadow, pry, shield, stead, ton, and wall, are common in the dales of the county of Durham.
Amongst the names referring to buildings we have cross, as Killhope Cross and Edmundbyres Cross. Stone crosses to guide the wayfarer were once erected at these places. Brig is from bridge, whether built of stone or wood. Currock, a pile of stones erected on the moors or fells as a landmark. Peth and lonnon and way are also common names. And all these have their adjectival component, as Lodge Field, Leases Park, Mill Houses, Pry Hill, Old Faw, Shield Ash, Watch Currock, etc.
DURHAM CATHEDRAL
By the Rev. William Greenwell, M.A., D.C.L., F.R.S., F.S.A.
IN the year 875 the great Scandinavian invasions were assuming large proportions, and among other parts of England where the Danes landed and harried the country was the coast of Northumbria. The monks fled from Lindisfarne, which had been selected by Aidan principally because of its resemblance to Iona. There was probably another reason for the choice: its neighbourhood to the stronghold of Bamborough, the seat of the Northumbrian Kings. Lindisfarne is very near to it, and naturally would be under the protection of the King who lived there.
Bamborough, however, proved no protection against the Danes, who came oversea, and, landing on the coast, overran not only a great part of the North of England, but also a considerable portion of the South of Scotland. The monks, fearing lest they should be deprived of St. Cuthbert’s body and their other treasures, and of their lives as well, fled from Lindisfarne, carrying with them the body of the saint. Many churches dedicated to St. Cuthbert in these parts probably mark the spots where the monks in their journeying rested for a while.
After wandering from 875 to 883, having remained for a short time at Crayke, they settled at Chester-le-Street, which was given to them by Guthred, a Danish King then reigning in Northumbria, and who had become a Christian.
There the body rested, and from it the Bernician See was ruled until the removal of Bishop Aldhun and the congregation of St. Cuthbert (after a short sojourn at Ripon) to Durham in 995. The difficulties of an adequate defence probably proved to the monks that Chester-le-Street was not a suitable place for their protection. The superior position of Durham was no doubt the reason why it was selected for the site of the see. This, then, was the commencement of the church and city of Durham.
In 999 Bishop Aldhun, having commenced it three years before, completed the building of a stone church, to which the body of St. Cuthbert was transferred from a wooden building (æcclesiola, Symeon calls it), where it had been at first placed. Of that church no part remains visible to the eye, though there are no doubt thousands of the stones belonging to it enclosed within the walls of the present church.
The first building remained until after the Norman Conquest, a great change having taken place in the meantime. The monks who, with the Bishop, had originally constituted the congregation of St. Cuthbert, had fallen from the rule which was first observed. There was in those days a great tendency among the regular clergy in the Saxon Church to degenerate into a kind of secular clergy. Symeon says those at Durham were neither monks nor regular canons. At Durham, as at Hexham, some members of the congregation were married and had families, and there was springing up at Durham possibly, as there certainly was at Hexham, an hereditary system, son succeeding father; and had the system gone on, there would have arisen a sacerdotal caste, with all the evils attending such a body. The Norman Conquest happily did away with that, as it did with other abuses. It is probable that some remains connected with these married members of the congregation were discovered in 1874, when the foundations of the east end of the old chapter-house, which was so ruthlessly destroyed in 1796, were laid bare. The graves of Bishops Ranulph Flambard, Galfrid Rufus, and William de St. Barbara were met with, each covered with a slab bearing his name—probably not quite contemporary—and in them were found three episcopal rings of gold, set with sapphires, and in the grave of Flambard, the head, made of iron, plated with silver, and the iron ferrule of a pastoral staff, all of which are now preserved in the cathedral library. Below the level of the Bishops’ graves there were found a considerable number of skeletons of men, women, and children, with one of which was deposited the iron head of a spear, having the socket plated with gold. There can be little doubt that these bodies belonged to the married portion of the congregation and their families, who occupied the monastery at Durham from the time of Aldhun to their being dispossessed by Bishop William of St. Carileph.