A Month in Yorkshire

“When Rosebury Topping wears a cap,Let Cleveland then beware a clap.”

More than an hour slipped away while I lounged and loitered, making the round of the summit again and again, till it seemed that the landscape had become familiar to me. Then the solitude was broken by the arrival of strangers, who came scrambling up the hill, encouraging one another, with cheerful voices. They gained the rocks at last, panting; two families from Middlesborough, husbands, wives, boys and girls, and a baby, with plenty to eat and drink in their baskets, come from the murky town to pass the Sunday on the breezy hill-top. How they enjoyed the pure air and the wide prospect; and how they wondered to find room for a camp-meeting on a summit which, from their homes, looked as if it were only a blunt point! They told me that a trip to Rosebury Topping was an especial recreation for the people of Middlesborough—a town which, by the way, is built on a swampy site, where the only redeeming feature is ready access to a navigable river. I remember what it was before the houses were built. A drearier spot could not be imagined: one of those places which, as Punch says, “you want never to hear of, and hope never to see.”

“’Tis frightful to see how fast the graves do grow up in the new cemetery,” said one of the women, whose glad surprise at the contrast between her home and her holiday could hardly express itself in words. “It can’t be a healthy place to bring up a family in. That’s where we live, is it—down there, under all that smoke? Ah! if we could only come up here every day!”

Middlesborough, as we can see from far off, is now a large town, numbering nearly 8000 inhabitants in 1851, and owes its sudden growth to coal and iron. There the smelting furnaces, roaring night and day, convert hundreds of tons of the Cleveland hills every week into tons of marketable iron. The quantity produced in 1856 in the Cleveland district was 180,000 tons. And there is the terminus of the “Quakers’ Railway;” a dock, of nine acres, where vessels can load at all times of the tide; an ingenious system of drops for the coal; branch railways running in all directions; and a great level of fifteen acres, on which three thousand wagons can stand at once.

I stayed two hours on the hill-top, then taking a direct line down the steepest side, now sliding, now rolling, very few minutes brought me to the village of Newton at the foot. With so sudden a change, the heat below seemed at first overpowering. In the public-house, which scrupled not to open its door to a traveller, I found half a dozen miners, who had walked over from a neighbouring village to drink their pint without molestation. Each recommended a different route whereby the ten miles to Stockton might be shortened. One insisted on a cut across the fields to Nuntharp.

My ear caught at the sharp twang of the ar—a Yorkshire man would have said Nunthurp—and turning to the speaker I said, “Surely that’s Berkshire?”

“Ees, ’tis. I comes not fur from Read’n’.”

True enough. Tempted by high wages in the north, he had wandered from the neighbourhood of Our Village up to the iron-diggings of Cleveland. I took it for granted that, as he earned more than twice as much as he did at home, he saved in proportion. But no; he didn’t know how ’twas; the money went somehow. Any way he didn’t save a fardin’ more than he did in Berkshire. I ventured to reply that there was little good in earning more if one did not save more, when a tall brawny fellow broke in with, “Look here, lad. I’d ruther ’arn fifty shillin’s a week and fling ’em right off into that pond there, than ’arn fifteen to keep.”

Just the retort that was to be expected under the circumstances. It embodies a touch of proud sentiment in which we can all participate.

I found the short cut to Nunthorp, struck there the high road, and came in another hour to Marton—the birthplace of Cook. It is a small village with a modernised church, and a few noble limes overshadowing the graves. The house where the circumnavigator was born was little better than a clay hovel of two rooms. It has long since disappeared; but the field on which it stood is still called “Cook’s Garth.” The parish register contains an entry under the date November 3rd, 1728: “James, ye son of James Cook, day-labourer, baptized.” The name of Mary Walker, aged 89, appears on one of the stones in the churchyard; she it was who taught the day-labourer’s son to read while he was in her service, and who has been mistakenly described as Dame Walker the schoolmistress.

I caught the evening train at Stockton, which travelling up the Durham side of the Tees—past Yarm, where Havelock’s mother was born—past the “hell kettles” and Dinsdale Spa, where drinking the water turns all the silver yellow in your pockets—and so to Darlington, where I stayed for the night.

CHAPTER XVII

Locomotive, Number One—Barnard Castle—Buying a Calf on Sunday—Baliol’s Tower—From Canute to the Duke of Cleveland—Historic Scenery—A surprised Northumbrian—The bearded Hermit—Beauty of Teesdale—Egliston Abbey—The Artist and his Wife—Dotheboys Hall—Rokeby—Greta Bridge—Mortham Tower—Brignall Banks—A Pilgrimage to Wycliffe—Fate of the Inns—The Felon Sow—A Journey by Omnibus—Lartington—Cotherstone—Scandinavian Traces—Romaldkirk—Middleton-in-Teesdale—Wild Scenery—High Force Inn—The voice of the Fall.

Facing the entrance to the railway station, elevated on a pedestal of masonry, stands the first locomotive—Number One. With such machines as that did the Quakers begin in 1823 to transport coal from the mines near Darlington to Middlesborough along their newly-opened railway. Compared with the snorting giants of the Great Western, its form and dimensions are small and simple. No glittering brass or polished steel bedeck its strength; it is nothing but a black boiler, mounted on wheels, with three or four slender working-rods standing up near one end, and the chimney with its saw-toothed top at the other. Yet, common as it looks, it is one of George Stephenson’s early triumphs: one of the steps by which he, and others after him, established more and more the supremacy of mind over mere brute matter. It was a happy thought to preserve Number One on the spot where enlightened enterprise first developed its capabilities.

Tees is one of those streams—the “silly few”—which owe a divided allegiance, watering two counties at once. Rising high amidst the wildest hills of the north-west, it takes a course of eighty-three miles to the sea through many scenes of romantic beauty. Yesterday we looked down from Rosebury on the last two or three leagues of its outfall; to-day if all go well we shall see the summit from which it springs. It is a glorious morning; the earliest train arrives, interrupts our examination of the old locomotive, and away we go to breakfast at Barnard Castle, on the Durham side of the river.

There is so much of beautiful and interesting in the neighbourhood, scenes made classic by the pen of Scott, that I chose to pass the day in rambling, and journey farther in the evening. The town itself, old-fashioned in aspect, quiet enough for grass to grow here and there in the streets, was one of the ancient border-towns, and paid the penalty of its position. It has a curious market-cross, and touches of antiquity in the byeways; and owing to something in its former habits or history, is a butt for popular wit. “Barney-Cassel, the last place that God made,” is one way of mentioning the town by folk in other parts of the county; if you meet with a fellow more uncouth than usual, he is “Barney-Cassel bred;” any one who shoots with the long bow is silenced with “That wunna do, that’s Barney-Cassel;” and as Barney-Cassel farmers may be recognised by the holes in their sacks, so may the women by holes in their stockings.

One Sunday morning, a farmer, while on his way to chapel, noticed a fine calf in his neighbour’s field, and when seated in his pew, was overheard to ask the owner of the animal, “Tommy, supposin’ it was Monday, what wad ye tak’ for yer calf?” To which Tommy replied in an equally audible whisper, “Why, supposin’ it was Monday, aw’d tak’ two pun’ fifteen.” “Supposin’ it was Monday aw’ll gie two pun’ ten.” “Supposin’ it was Monday, then ye shall hev’t.” And the next day the calf was delivered to the scrupulous purchaser.

The pride of the town is the castle—ruined remains of the stronghold erected by Bernard Baliol to protect the lands bestowed on him by William the Red. Seen from the bridge, the rocky height, broken and craggy, and hung with wood, crowned by Baliol’s Tower, is remarkably picturesque. The Tees sweeps round the base, as if impatient to hide itself once more under green woods, to receive once more such intermingled shadows of rock and leafage as fell on it through Marwood Chase, and where Balder rushes in about a league above. A mile of sunlight, and then the brawling stream will play with the big stones and crowd its bed all through the woods of Rokeby.

Let us mount the hill and ascend the tower. The bearded hermit who inhabits therein points the way to the stone stair constructed within the massive wall, and presently we come to the top, where, although there is no parapet, the great thickness admits of your walking round in safety. The view is a feast for the eye—thick woods marking the course of the river, the trees thinning off as they meet the uplands, where fields and hedgerows diversify the landscape away to the hills; while in the distance the sight of dark, solemn moorlands serves but to heighten the nearer beauty. We can see lands once held by King Canute, now the property of the Duke of Cleveland: we passed his estate, the park and castle of Raby, about six miles distant on our way hither; and whichever way we look there is something for memory to linger on:

“Staindrop, who, from her sylvan bowers,Salutes proud Raby’s battled towers;The rural brook of Egliston,And Balder, named from Odin’s son;And Greta, to whose banks ere longWe lead the lovers of the song;And silver Lune, from Stanmore wild,And fairy Thorsgill’s murmuring child,And last and least, but loveliest still,Romantic Deepdale’s slender rill.”

Barnard Castle was lost to the Baliol family by the defeat of John Baliol’s pretensions to the crown of Scotland. Later it was granted, with the adjoining estates, to the Earls of Warwick, and on the marriage of Anne Neville with royal Gloucester, the Duke chose it as his favourite residence. You may still see his cognizance of the boar here and there on the walls, and on some of the oldest houses in the town. The Earl of Westmoreland had it next, but lost it by taking part in The Rising of the North. The couplet:—

“Coward, a coward, of Barney Castel,Dare not come out to fight a battel,”

is said to have its origin in the refusal of the knight who held the castle, to quit the shelter of its walls and try the effect of a combat with the rebels. And so the game went on, the Crown resuming possession at pleasure, until the whole property fell by purchase, in 1629, to an ancestor of the present owner—the Duke of Cleveland.

“Whoy! ’tis but a little town to ha’ such a muckle castle,” exclaimed one of three men who had just arrived with a numerous party by excursion train from Newcastle, and ventured to the top of the tower. “Eh! the castle wur bigger nor the town.”

Whatever may have been, the thick-voiced Northumbrian was wrong in his first conclusion, for the town has more than four thousand inhabitants. But, looking down, we can see that the castle with its outworks and inner buildings must have been a fortress of no ordinary dimensions. Nearly seven acres are comprehended within its area, now chiefly laid out in gardens, where, sheltered by the old gray stones, the trees bear generous fruit. If you can persuade the hermit to ascend, he will point out Brackenbury’s Tower, a dilapidated relic, with dungeons in its base, now used as stables; and near it a cow-stall, which occupies the site of the chapel. Examine the place when you descend, and you will discover, amid much disfigurement, traces of graceful architecture.

The hermit himself—a man of middle age—is a subject for curiosity. So far as I could make him out, he appeared to be half misanthropist, half misogynist. He quarrelled with the world about eighteen years ago, and, without asking leave, took possession of a vault and a wall-cavity at the foot of the great round tower, and has lived there ever since, supporting himself by the donations of visitors, and the sale of rustic furniture which he makes with his own hands. His room in the wall is fitted with specimens of his skill, and it serves as a trap, for you have to pass through it to ascend the tower. He showed me his workshop, and pointed out a spot under the trees at the hill-foot where flows the clear cold spring from which he draws water. The Duke, he said, sometimes came to look at the ruin, and gave him a hint to quit; but he did not mean to leave until absolutely compelled. I heard later in the day that he had been crossed in love; and that, notwithstanding his love of solitude, he would go out at times and find a friend, and make a night of it. But this may be scandal.

I went down and took a drink at the spring which, embowered by trees and bushes, sparkles forth from the rocky brink of the river; and rambled away to Rokeby. There are paths on both sides of the stream, along the edge of the meadows, and under the trees past the mill, past cottages and gardens, leading farther and farther into scenes of increasing beauty. Then we come to the Abbey Bridge, whence you get a pleasing view of a long straight reach of the river, terminated by a glimpse of Rokeby Hall, a charming avenue, so to speak, of tall woods, which, with ferns, shrubs, and mazy plants, crowd the rocky slopes to the very edge of the water. From ledge to ledge rushes the stream, making falls innumerable, decked with living fringes of foam, and as the noisy current hurries onward it engirdles the boulders with foamy rings, or hangs upon them a long white train that flutters and glistens as sunbeams drop down through the wind-shaken leaves. Strong contrasts of colour enrich the effect:

“Here Tees, full many a fathom low,Wears with his rage no common foe;For pebbly bank, nor sand-bed here,Nor clay-mound, checks his fierce career,Condemn’d to mine a channell’d way,O’er solid sheets of marble gray.”

On the Yorkshire side, a few yards above the bridge, the remains of Egliston or Athelstan Abbey crown a pleasant knoll surrounded by wood. They are of small extent, and, on the whole, deficient in the picturesque; but as an artist said who sketched while his wife sat sewing by his side, “There are a few little bits worth carrying away.” The east window, in which the plain mullions still remain, is of unusual width, the chancel exhibits carvings of different styles; two or three slabs lying on the grass preserve the memory of an abbot, and of a Rokeby, who figures in the still legible inscription as Bastard; and the outbuildings are now occupied as a farm. Some years hence, when the ivy, which has begun to embrace the eastern window, shall have spread its evergreen mantle wider and higher, the ruins will be endowed with a charm wherein their present scanty nakedness may be concealed. Yet apart from this the place has natural attractions, a village green, noble trees, Thorsgill within sight; and just beyond the green a mill of cheerful clatter.

The artist and his wife were enjoying a happy holiday. They had come down into Yorkshire with a fortnight’s excursion ticket, and a scheme for visiting as many of the abbeys and as much picturesque scenery as possible within the allotted time. Sometimes they walked eight or ten miles, or travelled a stage in a country car, content to rough it, so that their wishes should be gratified. They had walked across from Stainmoor the day before, and told me that in passing through Bowes they had seen the original of Dotheboys Hall, now doorless, windowless, and dilapidated. Nicholas Nickleby’s exposure was too much for it, and it ceased to be a den of hopeless childhood—a place to which heartless fathers and mothers condemned their children because it was cheap.

What a contrast! Wackford Squeers and the Thracian cohort. Bowes, under the name of Lavatræ, was once a station on the great Roman road from Lincoln to Carlisle. Ere long it will be a station on the railway that is to connect Stockton with Liverpool.

Now, returning to the bridge, we plunge into the woods, and follow the river’s course by devious paths. Gladsome voices and merry laughter resound, for a numerous detachment of the excursionists from Newcastle are on their way to view the grounds of Rokeby. Delightful are the snatches of river scenery that we get here and there, where the jutting rock affords an outlook, and the more so as we enjoy them under a cool green shade. Leaving the Northumbrians at the lodge to accomplish their wishes, I kept on to Greta Bridge, and lost myself in the romantic glen through which the river flows. It will surprise you by its manifold combinations of rock, wood, and water, fascinating the eye at every step amid a solitude profound. This was the route taken by Bertram and Wilfrid when the ruthless soldier went to take possession of Mortham. You cannot fail to recognize how truly Scott describes the scenery; the “beetling brow” is there, and the “ivied banners” still hang from the crags as when the minstrel saw them. We can follow the two to that

“–grassy slope which seesThe Greta flow to meet the Tees:”

and farther, where

“South of the gate, an arrow flight,Two mighty elms their limbs unite,As if a canopy to spreadO’er the lone dwelling of the dead;For their huge boughs in arches bentAbove a massive monument,Carved o’er in ancient Gothic wise,With many a scutcheon and device.”

You will long to lengthen your hours into days for wanderings in this lovely neighbourhood. You will be unwilling to turn from the view at Mortham Tower—one of the old border peels, or fortresses on a small scale—or that which charms you from the Dairy Bridge. Then if the risk of losing your way does not deter, you may ramble to “Brignall Banks” and Scargill, having the river for companion most part of the way. And should you be minded to pursue the road through Richmondshire to Richmond, the village and ruins of Ravensworth will remind you of

“The Baron of Ravensworth prances in pride,And he views his domains upon Arkindale side.The mere for his net and the land for his game,The chase for the wild, and the park for the tame;Yet the fish of the lake, and the door of the vale,Are less free to Lord Dacre than Allen-a-Dale!”

Or, if inspired by a deeper sentiment, you prefer a pilgrimage to a spot of hallowed memory to every Englishman, choose the river-side path to Wycliffe, and see how ever new beauties enchant the way, and say on arrival if ever you saw a prettier village church or a more charming environment. Shut in by woods and hills here, as some writers show, is the birthplace of John Wycliffe, to whom freedom of conscience is perhaps more indebted than to Luther. One may believe that Nature herself desires to preserve from desecration the cradle of him who opened men’s hearts and eyes to see and understand the truth in its purity; cleansed from the adulterations of priestcraft; stripped of all the blinding cheats of papistry; who died faithful to the truth for which he had dared to live; who bequeathed that truth to us, and with God’s blessing we will keep it alive and unblemished, using it manfully as a testimony against all lies and shams whatsoever and wheresoever they may be found.

The church was restored, as one may judge, in a loving spirit in 1850. It contains a few interesting antiquities, and is fraught with memories of the Wycliffes. One of the brasses records the death of the last of the family. Sir Antonio a-More’s portrait of the great Reformer still hangs in the rectory, where it has been treasured for many generations.

You may return from this pilgrimage by the way you went, or walk on through Ovington to Winston, and there take the train to Barnard Castle. I preferred the banks of Tees, for their attractions are not soon exhausted. One of the houses at Greta, which was a famous hostelry in the days of stage-coaches, is now a not happy-looking farm-house. It has seen sore changes. Once noise and activity, and unscrupulous profits, when the compact vehicles with the four panting horses rattled up to the door at all hours of the day or night, conveying passengers from London to Edinburgh. Now, a silence seldom disturbed save by the river’s voice, and time for reflection, and leisure to look across to its neighbour, wherein the wayfarer or angler may still find rest and entertainment. From Greta Bridge to Boroughbridge was considered the best bit of road in all the county. Now it is encroached on by grass, and the inns which are not shut up look altogether dejected, especially that one where the dining-room has been converted into a stable.

If you have read the ballad of The Felon Sow, we will remember it while repassing the park:

“She was mare than other three,The grisliest beast that e’er might be,Her head was great and gray:She was bred in Rokeby wood,There were few that thither goed,That came on live away.“Her walk was endlong Greta side,There was no bren that durst her bide,That was froe heaven to hell;Nor ever man that had that might,That ever durst come in her sight,Her force it was so fell.“If ye will any more of this,In the Fryers of Richmond ’tisIn parchment good and fine;And how Fryar Middleton that was so kend,At Greta Bridge conjured a feindIn likeness of a swine.”

I got back to Barnard Castle in time for the omnibus, which starts at half-past five for Middleton-in-Teesdale, nine miles distant on the road to the hills. I was the only passenger, and taking my seat by the side of the driver, found him very willing to talk. The road ascends immediately after crossing the bridge to a finely-wooded district, hill and dale, rich in oak, ash, and beech. Deepdale beck yawns on the left, and every mile opens fresh enjoyment to the eye, and revives associations. Lartington is a pretty village, which hears night and morn and all day long the tremulous voice of innumerable leaves. “Them’s all Roman Catholics there,” said the driver, as we left it behind; and by-and-by, when we came to Cotherstone—Cuthbert’s Town—“Here ’tis nothin’ but cheese and Quakers.” There is, however, something else, for here it was

“–the Northmen came,Fix’d on each vale a Runic name,Rear’d high their altar’s rugged stone,And gave their gods the land they won.Then, Balder, one bleak garth was thine,And one sweet brooklet’s silver line,And Woden’s Croft did title gainFrom the stern Father of the Slain;But to the Monarch of the Mace,That held in fight the foremost place,To Odin’s son, and Sifia’s spouse,Near Stratforth high they paid their vows,Remembered Thor’s victorious fame,And gave the dell the Thunderer’s name.”

A delightful day might be spent hereabouts in exploring the glen of the Balder, and the romantic scenery where it flows into Tees; the Hagg crowned by fragments of a stronghold of the Fitzhughs; and the grand rock on the river’s brink known as Pendragon Castle. The whole region for miles around was once thickly covered by forest.

The pace is sober, for some of the hills are steep. We come to Romaldkirk, and the folk, as everywhere else along the road, step from their houses to inquire for parcels or replies to messages, and the driver has a civil word for all, and discharges his commissions promptly. He is an important man in the dale, the roving link between the villagers and the town—“Barn’d Cas’l’,” as they say, slurring it into two syllables. It does one good to see with how much good-nature the service can be performed.

Hill after hill succeeds, the woods are left behind, the country opens bare and wild, rolling away to the dark fells that look stern in the distance. Big stones bestrew the slopes; here and there a cottage seems little better than a pile of such stones covered with slabs of slate or coarse thatch. “Poorish wheat hereabouts,” says the driver, as he points to the pale green fields. The farms vary in size from seventy to one hundred and fifty acres; and he thinks it better to grow grass than grain. Then we come in sight of Middleton, and presently he pulls up, while a boy and girl get inside, and he tells me they are his children, who have come out half a mile to meet him.

Middleton, with its eighteen hundred inhabitants, has the appearance of a little metropolis. There are inns and shops which betoken an active trade, maintained probably by the lead mines in the neighbourhood. I did not tarry, for we had spent two hours on the journey, and I wished to sleep at the High Force Inn, nearly five miles farther. We are still on the Durham side of the Tees, with the river now in sight, winding along its shallow, stony bed. The road is an almost continuous ascent, whereby the landscape appears to widen, and every minute the shadows grow broader and darker across the vale. At last the sun drops behind the hill-top, and the lights playing on the summits of the fells deepen into purple, umber, and black, darkest where the slopes and ridges intersect. Cliffs topped with wood break through the acclivities on the left, and here and there plantations of spruce and larch impart a sense of shelter. Every step makes us feel that we are approaching a region where Nature partakes more of the stern than the gentle.