WYCLIFFE.
Besides the “George,” mentioned by the novelist, there is at Greta Bridge another well-known place of entertainment, the “Morritt Arms.” The village is scarcely of consequence, except as the site of a Roman station, of which the remaining indications are now “a grassy trench, a broken stone.” The Greta is between here and the Tees so beautiful a river that Scott exhausted upon it all his powers of description, both in verse and prose. Having skirted Rokeby Park, it sweeps over a shelf of rock under a moss-covered bridge half-hidden in trees, and there meets with the obstacle of gigantic rocks, which seem as if they had been carried down in some tremendous flood and piled together in the central bed of the stream. Round these the Greta swirls to the Tees in two long rushing curves when the river is high, but in quiet, dry seasons it has one channel only, down which it rushes impetuously out of the leafy shade into the open sunlight.
Two miles above Rokeby are those Brignal banks of which the poet sings—
“O, Brignal banks are wild and fair,
And Greta woods are green,
And you may gather garlands there
Would grace a summer queen.”
The present mansion of Rokeby is modern, and occupies the site of a manor house which was burned down by the Scots after the battle of Bannockburn. The Rokebys were a powerful family in these parts up to the occurrence of the civil wars. It was a Rokeby who, according to Holinshed, defeated the insurrection of the Earl of Northumberland, in the time of Henry IV., and slew the earl. Scott gives the whole of the family pedigree in the notes to his poem, showing how the Rokebys were High Sheriffs of Yorkshire through many generations, as well as justiciaries, Secretaries of State, and members of Council. They were destroyed by their loyalty and the bad faith of the Stuarts, as was the case with so many other ancient families, and their estates, after passing through the hands of the Robinsons, have been in the possession of the Morritts through several generations.
There is a remarkable peel tower, with singularly light and graceful battlements, broken into varying heights, on the ridge of a hill just beyond the junction of the Greta with the Tees. It is now surrounded by farm buildings, but is much visited on account of the spectre called the Dobie of Mortham, a murdered lady whose blood the eye of strong faith may still see on the steps of the tower.
High above the Tees on the Durham side, when Mortham has been passed, may be seen the pretty village of Whorlton, the first red-tiled village that we have so far encountered on Tees-side. It is approached by an iron suspension bridge, which crosses the river at a point where its broad bed of solid rock is curiously broken into long uneven steps, giving it the appearance of having been quarried at some remote time, and making a series of falls that, instead of crossing the river, as ordinarily occurs, shelve along one side of it, and continue for long distances, turning the current in an almost indescribable way.