A soft eye-music of slow waving boughs,
Powerful almost as vocal harmony.”
At Gainford, which clusters round a large village green, there is an air of rustic fashion and luxury, for here reside many prosperous persons who have places of business in Darlington, which is seven miles away. Gainford boasts of a medicinal spring, or spa. It is a pretty strong fountain of water, situated about half a mile from the village, and close to the banks of the Tees, which at this place has a pathway through the woods. It is affirmed of the Gainford spa that whilst the water has the usual “smell of rotten eggs” it is innocent of unpleasant taste, an asseveration which, having tested it, I cannot conscientiously confirm. The church of Gainford, it is stated in all the guide-books, is of great antiquity, having been built by Egred, Bishop of Lindisfarne, between the years 998 and 1018; but as a matter of fact scarcely anything of this old church remains, except a few sculptured stones and fragments of crosses which have been built, in an exceedingly olla podrida manner, into the porch of the present building, where I found displayed a carefully detailed statement of the week’s revenue, amounting to the sum of fifteen shillings and eightpence-halfpenny. On the Yorkshire bank, opposite to Gainford, there is the end of an ancient earthwork, which runs across country from the Swale to the Tees, and which is surmised to be older than the Roman conquest of Britain. At Gainford, Samuel Garth, the poet of the “Dispensary,” was born.
Two miles from this village, and by so much nearer to the wealthy “Quaker town” of Darlington, a noble stone bridge crosses the Tees, connecting the Yorkshire bank with the site of the ancient Roman station of Magis. Pierce Bridge carries the old Roman road—the Leeming Lane—from Durham to Yorkshire. Careless antiquaries call it the Watling Street, which, however, we left behind us at Greta Bridge. For twenty miles or so, or for an equal space on either side of the Tees, the Leeming Lane, which has various local designations, is probably the straightest road in all England. One may see it rising and falling for miles in front, always keeping the direct course, whatever may be the depressions in the land. At Pierce Bridge, which is famous for its fishing, and where the trout may be seen lightly disporting themselves, the forces under the Earl of Newcastle had a skirmish with those of Lord Fairfax in 1642, at the hottest period of the civil war. A mile further down the river is High Coniscliffe, which is quaintly situated above a sudden cliff, so that it seems as if the first buildings erected here must have been intended for defence. It is but a very little cluster of buildings, this High Coniscliffe, taking its name, perhaps, from the fact that the river banks hereabouts are much frequented by rabbits, as, indeed, is the case with the banks of the Tees from Rokeby downwards. The one prominent building is the church, which has the peculiarity of being seven times as long as it is broad. The other singularity is that the pillars supporting the arches of the nave are no more than six feet in height. Low Coniscliffe, two miles away, is a more humble place, with no appearance of a cliff to account for its designation, and with an aspect of old-world poverty such as is presented by no other place with which we have, so far, met. At this point the interest of the river is, for the present, exhausted, and its beauty is gone, for just beyond Low Coniscliffe there is a quarter of a mile or so of waterworks, stretching on either side of the main road to Darlington, the three towns of Stockton, Darlington, and Middlesbrough, here pumping their water from the Tees. Darlington itself we leave to our left, but pass the mansions of some of its wealthy men—the Peases, the Backhouses, the Frys—who, however much they may retain of the old Quaker simplicity, certainly make no striking exhibition of it in the character of their dwellings.
Three miles from “the Quaker town,” and a much greater distance from High Coniscliffe, as the river winds, is the ancient village of Croft, occupying both banks of the Tees. On the Yorkshire side is the famous spa, to which invalids resort to drink the waters and to take the baths, and where marvellous cures are said to have been effected in times past. There are four sulphureous springs, of a much more decided character than the one already visited at Gainford, and owing, it may be, some part of their attractiveness to the sweetness of their situation. Croft is very commonplace on the Durham and very lovely on the Yorkshire side. The stone bridge which connects the two portions of the village, built in 1676, is the finest which crosses the Tees at any part of its course. It is on the site of an older structure, which was deemed greatly important by Henry VIII., as “the most directe and sure way and passage for the king our Sovereign Lord’s army,” when it was necessary to march against the Scots. The present bridge has a series of seven ribbed arches of fair width, and is so substantial that it is likely to endure until it can boast a more than respectable antiquity.
Croft Church is a half-brown, half-grey old building of mixed materials and of most evident age. It has an appearance more worn and dilapidated even than its years warrant, though it was built at least as early as the fifteenth century, seeing that it contains a tomb of one Richard Clervaux, who died in 1492. The interior of the church has great architectural interest, and the exterior is, in its quaint way, one of those “things of beauty” which deserve to remain “joys for ever.” In this church Bishop Burnet may have listened to his first sermon, for it was at Croft that he was born.
The Lord of the Manor of Croft, by the way, formerly held his lands on the peculiar condition that he should meet every newly-appointed Bishop of Durham on Croft Bridge, and, presenting him with a rusty old sword, declare—“My lord, this is the sword which slew the worm-dragon, which spared neither man nor woman nor child.” Traditions of these worm-dragons are plentiful in the north of England. There was, for example, “the Lambton worm,” slain by an ancestor of the present Earl of Durham, which used to devour a maiden at a meal; and there was “the loathly worm of Spindleston Haugh,” with a similarly voracious appetite. The lands of Croft had evidently been given to some supposed dragon-slayer, and were continued to his descendants by the yielding up and the immediate return of the famous sword.
We are now more than ever reminded that the Tees is the dividing line of two counties. Though the river has constantly increased in width, all the towns from Croft downwards are situated more or less on each side of the stream. The first of these is the quiet and sleepy town of Yarm, with a single broad street on one side of the river, and a few scattered houses and windmills on the other. Up to Yarm the tide reaches, and here also the net-fishing for salmon begins, small cobles, with salmon-nets on board, being plentiful in the neighbourhood of Yarm Bridge. What else the people of Yarm do for a living in these days is not readily discernible. In former times they were shipbuilders on a limited scale, though they must have been exceedingly small vessels which could be launched in such a situation. Yet there must have been some period of great prosperity in the previous history of the place, as will be guessed from the fact that the houses are almost all of great width and height, and—as is evident from a peculiarity of style not seen elsewhere—were built with some thought of show. The one street of the place is of the width of three or four streets in the more crowded quarters of the larger towns lower down the Tees, and has in its centre an odd sort of Town Hall, like a large sentry-box on arches. At Yarm we set our faces towards the great, growing Tees-side towns, passing the pretty bridge at Blackwell, where Sir Henry Havelock-Allan has a beautiful seat. Already the smoke of great industries is darkening the atmosphere, and when the wind is still and the clouds are low, a black, unpleasant haze creeps over the face of the country and spreads itself far inland.
STOCKTON.