Besides, those who are acquainted with the Wear know that it has higher boasts than its importance as a channel of navigation and outlet of trade. Even in its busiest parts—from Sunderland and Monkwearmouth to Chester-le-Street and Lambton—venerable associations with feudal and monkish times struggle for notice with the evidences of modern prosperity and enterprise. At Durham decisive victory is won by the memories of the past over the grimy allurements of the present. From the Cathedral City we carry away impressions of the picturesque grouping of its old houses and bridges, of the ruins of its strong Norman keep built by the Conqueror to repress the turbulent townsmen, and of the magnificent fane which covers the bones of St. Cuthbert and of the Venerable Bede, rather than feelings of respect for its manufacturing industry, or even for its distinction as the seat of a Northern University. We remember the former glories of the County Palatine, the semi-regal power and pomp of its Prince-Bishops, the odour of miracle that drew throngs of pilgrims to its saintly shrine, and the treasures that had an equally potent attraction for grasping kings and barons and for marauding Borderers, in preference to statistical and other testimony of the growth of its trade and population. All up the valley of the Wear, to Bishop Auckland and Witton, and to Wolsingham and Stanhope, commerce has pushed its way, and the very sources of the stream have been probed by the lead-mining prospector. But beauty is there also, and in possession—the beauty of stately woods, embowering princely piles, like Brancepeth Castle, the very stones of which are part of the national history; of clear reaches of the river, sweeping under fragments of religious houses, such as Finchale Priory, gently draped by time with moss, lichen, and ivy; of old bridges and mills and quaint bright villages and wide stretches of fertile land. Beyond all these comes a wilder and barer district, where the hills draw closer to the river, and cultivation and population become more rare, and where at length, over the massive and rounded outlines of the fells, as we rise towards the great “dorsal ridge” of England, we catch glimpses of the Cumberland Mountains and of the Cheviots.
To trace the Wear upwards or downwards is like ascending or descending the stream of English history; from the busy present we move back into the feudal age, and at length into the quietude of primitive Nature. Primitive Nature holds her ground staunchly on Kilhope Law and the “Deadstones,” and over other great bare tracks of rolling upland, near the meeting-point of the shires of Cumberland, Northumberland, and Durham, whence the Welhope, the Burnhope, the Rookhope, and a host of lesser moorland streamlets, bring down their waters to feed the infant Wear. In spite of the mining prospector and the railway projector, many of these fells and dales are more lonely to-day than they were three, or even ten centuries ago. Of the great tangle of lines that cover like a cobweb the lower valleys of the Tyne and Wear, only one or two outer filaments find their way into the neighbourhood of Upper Weardale, and all of them fail by many miles to reach the solitudes of Kilhope Moor.
THE COURSE OF THE WEAR.
The smoke of one of the great “workshops of England” may hang darkly upon the eastern horizon, but it is still too distant to pollute the pure air of the hills. Roads, indeed, cross these wildernesses of “ling” and peat-moss—west and east from Alston and Nenthead into Weardale; north and south, from the valleys of the Allen and Derwent to the Tees—through tracts that, in the early part of the century, were traversed only by bridle and footpaths; but these serve in a measure to concentrate any passing traffic, and to leave the open moors more lonely than before. The travelling chapman with his pack, the drover, and the gipsy, promise to become as extinct, as wanderers of the fells, as is the moss-trooper from the Debateable Land, or the pilgrim on the way to St. Cuthbert’s shrine. Their occupants are the wild creatures of the hills and the flocks of black-faced sheep; with a sprinkling of shepherds, who preserve in their dialect and customs many relics of what Durham and the Wear were before the Coal Age. There are mining communities scattered up the valleys and along the hill-slopes; and at Burtreeford, a little above the bridge at Wearhead—the old rendezvous for the wrestling and other sports of Weardale Forest—is what is reported to be the richest vein of lead-ore in England. The lead-miners, like the other dalesmen, are in some ways a race apart, rough and unsophisticated, like the features of the district they occupy, but hearty, sincere, and full of sturdy independence of thought, and free from many of the vices which mark their class elsewhere. It is true now, as it was at the time of the “Raid of Rookhope,” when the Tynedale reivers were seen pricking over the moss by Dryrig and Rookhope-head to harry the lands of the Bishopric, that
“The Weardale men they have good hearts,
And they are stiff as any tree.”
STANHOPE BRIDGE. / ROGERLEY.
The Middlehope and the Rookhope flow into the Wear from the north, below St. John’s Chapel in Weardale, through some of the wildest country in the Forest; and still farther down, upon the same hand, Stanhope burn meets the parent stream at Stanhope. This ground was the favourite hunting-field of the old Bishops of Durham, and in Stanhope Park they had their lodge, where, at stated seasons, they came with a great crowd of retainers to chase the buck and roe. These gatherings are not yet wholly forgotten in the legends of the district. It was the duty of the Auckland vassals of the See to erect the necessary buildings for the housing of the Bishop and his joyous company, including a temporary chapel, where, it may be supposed, the rites of the Church had, on a good hunting day, rather perfunctory performance. The turners of Wolsingham provided the three thousand trenchers for the feeding in the open air; and the Stanhope villeins had the task of carrying the provisions and conveying the surplus venison and game to the palaces at Bishop Auckland and Durham. Often there was more serious sport afoot in Weardale Forest—for instance, when Edward III. hunted the nimble host of Scots whom Lord Moray and the Douglas brought across the Border in 1327 to pillage the Palatinate. The invaders were mounted on hardy little horses, and with their bags of oatmeal at their backs, were themselves as well prepared as their steeds to rough it and pick up their living on the moors. After having been frightened from the neighbourhood of Durham by Edward’s approach, they led him a fine wild-goose chase over the hilly country between the Tyne and the Wear. At last the English van, under Rokesby, descried the Scots encamped upon a strong height south of the Wear. To the challenge to come down and fight upon the level, the enemy prudently replied that they were on English ground, and “if this displeased the King, he might come and amend it;” they would tarry for him. There were skirmishing and great noise and bonfires kept up all night; but next morning the King, surveying the ground from Stanhope Park, found that the Scots had shifted to another hill. On the twenty-fourth day of the chase, the English passed the river and climbed the mountain, but found only three hundred cauldrons and a thousand spits, with meat all ready for cooking; also ten thousand pairs of old boots and shoes of untanned hide. The invaders had cleverly outwitted their pursuers, and were already leagues off on their homeward way over Yadsmoss and the western extremity of the county, carrying with them hurdles they had made for crossing the marshy ground where the English could not follow.