Memorials of old Durham

by Unknown

THE Great North Road crosses the Tees by Croft Bridge, on which the boundary between Yorkshire and Durham is marked by a stone dated 1627. This road is the "Darnton Trod," along which criminals from the South sought refuge all through the Middle Ages. Once across the Tees the fugitive was safe, for the King’s writ did not run in the Bishopric. Moreover, this was the road to the great sanctuary of St. Cuthbert at Durham, where a man was safe from the vengeance of his enemies; and so it happened that Darlington became a great resort of evil-doers, and in 1311 Bishop Kellaw issued a proclamation threatening with the terrors of excommunication all those who molested merchants going to and returning from Darlington market. The ill-name of the neighbourhood was not lost after the Bishop had been deprived of his own writs in 1536. The little inn of Baydale was the resort of the gentlemen of the road in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the rendezvous of Catton’s gang, the haunt of Barwick and of Sir William Browne, all noted highwaymen of the North.

The first hamlet in Durham through which the road passes is Oxneyfield, where, in the fields by the wayside, may be seen the Hell Kettles, four dark, still pools, formed by the natural sinking of the soil over the salt measures in the north bank of the Tees. There is a tradition that an Eastern diver, a black man, plunged into one of the pools, and reappeared in the Skerne, having discovered a subterranean connection between the two waters. The Black Man in North Country legends is usually the devil, and this story may be connected with the belief that the Hell Kettles sometimes grow boiling hot, and that the devil "seethes the souls of sinful men and women in them," at which times the spirits may be heard to cry and yell about the pools.

The Market-Cross at Darlington.

Passing by this haunted place the road leads on to Darlington, a borough full of historical relics, from the Bulmer Stone in Northgate to the first locomotive at Bank Top Station. The Bulmer Stone is a large boulder of Shap granite, which was borne down to its present resting-place on a glacier in the Ice Age. Lying in the midst of the level, marshy plains of the Skerne, it formed a landmark for the men of the Bronze Age, and was perhaps the origin of the town. An Anglian burial-ground, probably pre-Christian, was discovered in the town in 1876. After the conversion of the North a church was built, and two Saxon crosses from it are preserved in the present Church of St. Cuthbert. The history of this beautiful building does not come within the scope of the present section. To the west of the church lies the market-place, where in 1217 Stephen de Cantuaria purchased half a pound of pepper at the fair on the Feast of All Saints, which he rendered to Roger Fitzacris as service for this land in Milneflach and elsewhere. From the market-cross in 1312 was read the Bishop’s order that a tournament which had been proclaimed at Darlington should not be held, as it was forbidden by the laws of the land. That market-cross is not standing now, but its successor may be seen in the modern covered market, a plain column surmounted by a ball, which was erected in 1727 by Dame Dorothy Brown, the last descendant of the family of Barnes, whose members had held the office of bailiff of Darlington for over a hundred years. The old toll-booth, in which the bailiffs held their courts, was pulled down in 1806 and replaced by the present Town Hall. Ever since 1197, Darlington enjoyed the title of borough, and yet it possesses no early charters and had no corporate government; it was not visited by the municipal commissioners in 1833, and was only incorporated in 1868. Until its incorporation the Bishop of Durham appointed a bailiff, who held the old manorial court of the borough. Darlington enjoys the distinction of having retained its bailiff until the middle of the nineteenth century, whereas in the other Durham towns the Bishop had ceased to appoint bailiffs by the end of the seventeenth century. The fame of Darlington rests on the fact that the first passenger railway-line in England was laid between Darlington and Stockton by George Stephenson, who was supported by the capital and influence of Edward Pease of Darlington; the line was opened in 1825. This is surely glory enough for any town!

An Old Tithe-Barn at Durham.

Great Aycliffe, lying five miles north of Darlington on the highroad, was once one of the lesser forests of the Bishopric. About four miles north of Aycliffe the road crosses a little stream by the hamlet of Rushyford. This was a desolate spot in 1317, when on September 1 Lewis Beaumont, Bishop-elect of Durham, and the Cardinals Gaucelin John and Luke Fieschi, with a numerous train of attendants, travelled towards Durham, Beaumont to be consecrated in the cathedral, the Cardinals to negotiate a truce between England and Scotland. They had been warned at Darlington that the road was beset, and this warning, which they disregarded, proved only too true, for as they crossed the gloomy little burn at Rushyford, they were set upon by the notorious freebooter, Sir Gilbert Middleton, and his men. The Cardinals and their servants were stripped of their goods and allowed to continue their journey, but the borderers carried off the Bishop-elect to their fortress of Mitford Castle, and there held him to ransom, until the Prior and Convent of Durham by great sacrifices succeeded in redeeming him.

The next place of importance on the road is Ferryhill, a large modern village six and a half miles south of Durham. Few traces of the past survive here, except the fragment of an old stone cross, Cleve’s Cross, which is traditionally held to commemorate the slaying of a great wild boar, which ravaged Durham once upon a time, by a certain valiant Roger de Ferry, whose family long dwelt in the neighbourhood in great honour. About a mile to the south-east of Ferryhill is Mainsforth, the estate of Robert Surtees, the historian of Durham.

Midway between Ferryhill and Durham the highroad crosses the River Wear by Sunderland Bridge, and passes through the suburbs into the city of Durham.