and for many centuries the great seat of the princely house of Neville,
would require, to deal with it in justice, more pages than a volume of
limited space can afford. A few of its leading features must, however,
be mentioned. Portions of the present building were erected by Ralph,
Lord Neville, one of the commanders at Neville’s Cross, who died in
1367. His son John carried on the work, and in 1378 obtained a licence
from Bishop Hatfield to embattle and crenellate his manor-house at Raby.
In aspect the castle consists of buildings forming a rough square, with
towers projecting from three of the corners, the whole enclosing a
courtyard. The four outer sides face the cardinal points. Some distance
from the main building, a wall 30 feet high with a deep moat on its
outer side entirely enclosed it. The main entrance is guarded by a large
tower thrown forward in a flanking position, rendering the approach
exceedingly difficult to an opposing force. This building is known as
Clifford’s Tower. At the south end of a curtain wall running southwards
stands the Watch Tower, which has, however, been considerably
modernized. Adjoining the great gatehouse,
[Illustration: STREATLAM CASTLE.]
which is the work of at least two builders, is the tower which Leland
says bears the name of Joan, wife of the first Earl of Westmorland. East
of Joan’s Tower is another stretch of curtain wall now containing the
drawing-rooms, and terminating at Bulmer’s Tower, an interesting
building in shape an irregular pentagon. On the upper story of this
tower is the badge of the builder, a large Old English <f>b</f>, doubtless like
the bull, their other badge, derived from the Bulmers.
A block of modern buildings adjoining the Bulmer Tower adjoins a tower,
from which a corridor enters the great hall, 90 feet long and 35 feet
wide. Close to the hall is the kitchen, which has been preserved in all
its original quaintness. Over a passage leading from the east side of
the great hall is the chapel. A short curtain wall connects this portion
of the building with the Mount Raskelf Tower, evidently named after a
manor owned by the Nevilles in Yorkshire. It is rather curious to
observe that the Christian names Ralph and Henry, which occur so
frequently in old northern families, are the predominating names
respectively of the great houses of Neville and Percy.
Walworth Castle, a large, picturesque old house, was erected by the
Jenisons in or about the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The north front,
flanked by two projecting wings, has a centre three stories high
terminating in a balustraded parapet. The south front has a circular
tower at each end. The windows were originally decorated with fine old
painted glass of heraldic design, which has been almost entirely
destroyed in modern times. Some fragments have, however, been gathered
together and are preserved in a window in the corridor. Here King James
I. was entertained and slept on his progress to the South in 1603.
Inferior to the larger houses, there were in the county several
buildings of great strength coming under the same head as the
_peel-houses_ or _towers_ on the borders.
One of these, now only represented by a few portions of the outer walls,
was Dalden Tower. The buildings appear to have formed a tower rather
longer than square, standing on a slight mound. The walls were of
rubble, 5 feet thick. In the east wall there is a square-headed niche,
surmounted by a pediment within an ogee-headed arch, the space within
which is filled with tracery. Two blank shields are upon a cornice over
the pediment. The niche seems to point to the room once adjoining having
been the private chapel. On the inner side of the curtain facing the
west wall there appears to have been a cell with a loophole.
A more recent manor-house was built about the reign of James I.,
adjoining the tower on the east, and portions of it are built into the
present farmhouse. For some generations it was a seat of the Royalist
family of Collingwood, and, at an earlier date, of a branch of the great
house of Bowes. It was a lady of this family, Maud, wife of Sir William
Bowes and heiress of Sir Robert Dalden, who possessed within the old
walls a curious library. In her will, made in 1420, she left to Matilda
Hilton _one Romaunce-boke_, to Dame Eleanor Washington _the boke with
the knotts_, to Elizabeth de Whitchester a book that is called
_Trystram_, and to her god-daughter Maud, daughter of the Baron of
Hilton, _one Romaunce boke is called the Gospells_. Surtees pertinently
writes: "Did a romance ever actually exist under this strange title? or
had the lady of Dalden met with one of Wicliffe’s Bibles, and conceived
the Gospels to be a series of fabulous adventures, in which our Saviour
and His Apostles were introduced to act and to moralize like the goodly
personages who figure in the ancient mysteries, or in _Les Jeux du Roi
René d’Anjou_"?
Farther to the south an old tower, oblong in shape stood at Little Eden.
It was, however, taken down in the early days of last century by Mr.
Rowland Burdon, who erected the present castellated house at Castle
Eden. At Dinsdale, on the banks of the Tees, the remains of the ancient
home of the Surtees family were excavated by the late Mr. Scott Surtees,
and showed that a large gatehouse of late twelfth-century work, with
vaulted chambers and a newel stair, had once stood there.
The later manor-house of the Place family retains some portions of the
older building. With thick walls and low rooms with heavy beams and
rafters, and an old oak staircase with a wicket, it still remains a
picturesque fragment of former days. A stone originally fixed over a
gateway destroyed shortly before Hutchinson compiled his history is now
let into the wall on the left of the farmhouse door, and bears the arms
of Place quarterly with Surtees.
The home of the Surtees’s neighbours, the allied and equally noble house
of Conyers, was at Sockburn, situated on the same sweep of the Tees.
Traces of the foundations of gardens and orchards alone point out the
site of the old house, where Dugdale in 1666 had noted the family
emblazonments in or on the building--the arms of Conyers, Vesci, Scrope,
Neville, Dacre, FitzHugh, Lumley, and of the Royal Family. Surtees
suggests that seven of the coats seem to have formed a rich armorial
window, and that amidst them ran the motto, "REGI SECVLOR I’ MORTALI I’
VISIBILI SOLI DEO HONOR ET GLORIA I’ SECVLA SECVLOR." When the historian
wrote, "one old decaying Spanish chestnut" seemed alone to connect the
deserted spot with some recollection of its ancient owners. Of the old
house not one stone remains. A new house was erected about a century ago
by the baronet family of Blackett, who for some generations have owned
the manor. Here the far-famed Conyers falchion is preserved. The sword
dates from the thirteenth century, and has a blade 2 feet and 5½ inches
long. The handle is partly covered with ash, and has on the pommel two
shields, the three lions of England, and an eagle displayed. The cross
is engraved with decorative foliage of the period.
One of the most interesting specimens of the older fortified residences
was Ludworth Tower.[14] The building, which consisted of a
three-storeyed oblong tower of common limestone, stands near a brook, on
a low hill, at the head of the valley in which Shadforth village lies. A
lower vaulted room up till recently still contained a large open
fireplace and hearthstone. The only entrance was by a small arched door
leading to a spiral stone staircase, projecting from the north-west
angle of the tower. Remnants of a curtain wall exist to the east, and on
the west the adjoining ground has apparently been levelled by hand.
The whole appearance of the building, which has, unfortunately, in
recent years[15] been allowed to fall into a ruinous condition, was dark
and gloomy in the extreme. The date of its erection is fixed by the
licence obtained in 1422 by Sir Thomas Holden to embattle his
manor-house of Ludworth.
At Bellasis, or Belasyse, another old house, with stone walls of great
thickness and moated, is now occupied by a farmer.
Hollinside, an old mansion, associated with the Hardings, of whom Ralph
Harding the chronicler was a noteworthy member, still stands in ruins on
a bank above the River Derwent. Originally three stories in height, and
with two wings forming the three sides of a narrow court. The fourth and
east side is arched over and surmounted by a tower. On the west side a
turret projects in line with the south wall. The interior presents
several interesting features, and an outbuilding contains a large
fireplace.
Passing from the great homes of the county, and the older fortified
towers, we come to the time when, with the greater security accorded to
the minor gentry,
[Illustration: RABY CASTLE IN 1783.]
numerous manor-houses and country granges began to rise.
Even at this time, spoiled as the county is for residential purposes, it
requires no strong effort of the imagination to picture the county as it
was in later Tudor times. The Bishops, greater than ever through the
collapse of the Nevilles, still appointed their foresters, and doubtless
often made the dales resound with all the view-halloo of a gay hunt.
Durham City became a stronghold of great ecclesiastical families, the
sons and daughters of the prebendaries intermarrying with one another,
and the descendants of successive Bishops allied themselves by cross
marriages. In the country better farmsteads became erected, and
throughout the shire the landowners began to erect more commodious
residences. It is, with one or two exceptions, from this period that the
older halls and manor-houses still in existence date. It must not be
forgotten that there were at this time no great landowners in the county
in the sense that we now understand the term, and almost every village
had its own predominating squire.
A few houses still remain, not so strongly built as the peel-towers, yet
well adapted to defence. Holmside Hall is one of these. Once one of the
principal seats of the great House of Tempest, it was forfeited by
Robert of that name, who, with his son Michael, had joined the Earls in
their rebellion, and therefore appears in Hall and Humberston’s Survey
as a "capital messuage, with all the housings built of stone and covered
with slate, with the orchards and gardens, within a park containing
three acres." Now sufficient remains to show that once the buildings
were ranged round a court and surrounded by a moat. The north side was
faced by the chapel containing a still perfect west window of two
trefoil-headed lights under a square label, with the cinquefoil of the
Umphrevilles and two blank shields in the spandrels. Above the window "a
mutilated figure is fixed to the wall, with a full-moony face, and a
kind of round helmet," of which Surtees writes: "I should almost
conjecture this to be a rude piece of Roman sculpture, removed from the
station, which may possibly have furnished the coins and squared stones
used in building this chantry."
The house itself is a curiously confused building of many different
periods of architecture. The original gables were pulled down and the
house enlarged to the south. The windows are mullioned and narrow and
guarded with iron bars.
After the Tempests’ fall the estate became the property of William
Whittingham, the bigoted Calvinist Dean, whose name deserves perpetual
execration as the destroyer of much that was old and beautiful in Durham
Abbey. It is possible that in the austere gloom that even now pervades
the old house at Holmeside, he might find something sympathetic with his
own strange faith.
The Isle, another Tempest residence, stands on low ground, surrounded by
marshes caused through risings of the Skerne. It is a picturesque place,
with projecting gables and narrow mullioned lights. It was the residence
of Colonel John Tempest, first M.P. for Durham County, and still belongs
to the Marquess of Londonderry as representative of his family.
Sledwish Hall, standing lonely and sequestered, is a place of "ghastly
grey renown." Upwards of a hundred years ago the bones of an infant were
found interred in a stone coffin in the field adjoining. The house, too,
like most of these old mansions, is supposed to contain secret passages
and rooms. Portions of the present building, more particularly the south
front, date back to Plantagenet times, but the house as it now stands is
an interesting specimen of Tudor architecture. It was rebuilt by John
Clopton, Queen Elizabeth’s Receiver, his great work being the ceiling in
the Orchard Chamber. This is divided into compartments by deep
mouldings, ornamented by numerous crowned roses, fleurs-de-lis, and
pomegranates. In the centre is a shield bearing his family arms, a
quarterly shield, first and fourth, _paly a lion rampant_, and second
and third _a cross pattee fitchée_, over all a crescent for difference.
The arms are reversed through the artist having formed his mould without
considering that the impression was the final result. Two other shields
impressed from the same mould bear the initials E. C. (evidently for the
builder’s wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Ralph Ashton of Great Lever, in
Lancashire), the date 1584, and "a _tun_ with a rose _clapt on_."[16]
Above this shield is a rose surrounded by three crowns. At the four
corners of the room are large decorative groups; two are falcons with
pomegranates, the third is a swan, and the fourth a boar under an
oak-tree devouring an acorn. A deep cornice running round the whole
ceiling is decorated with repeated devices of the Royal lion and the
Welsh dragon supporting the crowned rose, the whole evidently symbolic
of Good Queen Bess. There are several other good rooms, and a large
chimney at the south-west is supported outside by three double brackets.
There are several other interesting mansions in this district. At
Cleatlam the old mansion of the Ewbankes still stands, gable-ended, with
mullioned windows. It was sold by them in the troublous times of the
great Civil War to the Somersets of Pauntley in Gloucester, and later
was a seat of the Wards. Another old home of the Ewbanke family was
Staindrop Hall, at the east end of the village of that name. The family
arms, _three chevronels interlaced and on a chief three pellets_, are on
one of the ceilings. Still another old house, once belonging to the same
race, was Snotterton Hall, which stood about a mile to the west of
Staindrop. Here the walls were embattled with crocketed pinnacles at the
corners, and the windows were triple mullioned lights under square
labels. Over the entrance the arms and crest of the Bainbridges, who
sold the estate to the Ewbankes in 1607, were sculptured. A portion of
the house which was pulled down in 1831 is preserved in the present Raby
Grange.
Westholme Hall is another existing good specimen of Jacobean
architecture. It consists of a main building, with two gabled wings and
mullioned windows. The date 1606, and the name IOHN DOWTHET on a
chimney-piece in the hall, points to its erection by the Douthwaites,
who purchased the estate from the Boweses in 1603. Erected about the
same period, Gainford Hall still stands at the west end of the village.
It, too, has gable ends and mullioned windows, and several of the rooms
are wainscotted. One of the latter has a stuccoed border of flowers and
fruit. Over the door is the three-garbed chevron of the Cradocks and the
inscription IOHN : CRADOCK 1600.
At Bishop Middleham a large old gable-ended house has a doorway with
jambs and a pediment of carved freestone. It stands on the west side of
the road leading to the church, and was originally the property of the
Wards, one of whom was Master of Sidney-Sussex College at Cambridge. In
1738 it was the residence of Thomas Brunskill, whose daughter or
granddaughter married Edward Watson, of Ingleby Greenhow, in Yorkshire.
Another picturesque fragment of the past is the old house now standing
at the western end of Thorpe Thewles village. It is built of brick, with
low rooms, and is locally stated to have been visited by Queen Anne. The
tradition may possibly be a survival of one of our sovereigns’ passage
through the county, but it is impossible that any crowned head can ever
have rested in this old mansion. A few fields away a wing of the once
great house at Blakiston still stands. It alone remains to show where
the birthplace of one of our great old families once stood, and is the
only remnant of the later home of the loyal house of Davison, two of
whom were slain at the storming of Newcastle in 1644.
Cotham Conyers, or Cotham Stob, derives its affix name
[Illustration: GAINFORD HALL.]
[Illustration: THE OLD HALL AT THORPE THEWLES.]
from its erstwhile owners, the Conyers, and is another old gable-ended
manor-house. It stands, surrounded by elms, near to a brook. The rooms
are wainscotted, and over the fireplace in one of the rooms there was a
hunting scene on the panel, depicting a stag at bay. One of the upper
rooms was hung with tapestry. The estate was forfeited by the Conyers
through Ralph Conyers having taken part in the Earls’ rebellion in 1569.
Lying almost midway between the two Conyers’ seats of Cotham and
Sockburn stands the old home of the Killinghalls and Pembertons, at
Middleton St. George. The house formerly contained a painting, by
Francis Place, of "A Pointer and Pheasants." An old cross in the garden
is said to have been brought from Neasham Abbey.
Passing to the west of Darlington again, near the highroad leading to
Staindrop, stands Thornton Hall, for many years the residence of a
branch of the baronial family of Tailbois. It is a stone house, with
high pitched gables, old-world red tiles, and mullioned windows, and has
long been used as a farmhouse. Above the window over the main entrance
are two gargoyles. An interesting account of this house, with a number
of good sketches, may be found in Mr. G. A. Fothergill’s _Sketch-book_.
Several miles north of Thornton, a small old mansion with gables and
mullions may be seen at School Aycliffe, and not very far away, in a
north-westerly direction, the old grange of Midridge stands within an
old walled garden, with a row of old elms leading along the road from
the south. The house is a large treble-gable-ended building, and is said
to have been garrisoned by the Loyalist owner, Anthony Byerley, who was
a Colonel in the Royal army. His troopers are still locally known as
"Byerley’s Bull Dogs." A little to the south-west, the old house of
Newbiggin stands low, with solid stone walls, and the main staircase of
the same substantial material. There was formerly a tower on the west
end of the house.
The hall at Coxhoe, erected about the year 1725 by John Burdon, has a
richly decorated interior of contemporary date. In this house Elizabeth
Barrett Browning was born on March 6, 1806.
The northern portion of the county does not contain so many houses of
interest as the southern; there are, however, a few interesting
mansions.
Fen Hall, near Lanchester, is an interesting old house,
[Illustration: FEN HALL.]
dating from the Stuart period. It has the Greenwell arms over the
entrance, and is now fast falling into a ruinous condition.
[Illustration: A CORNER OF WASHINGTON HALL.]
Washington Hall, a large, old stone mansion, built in the form of an E,
with high-pitched roof and gable-ends, stands to the south side of the
low hill on which the church is built. The lights are divided by stone
mullions and transoms. It was erected by the family of James, possibly
by the Bishop, and was, in Hutchinson’s time, the seat of the
Bracks.[17] It is now, like the old hall at Rainton, in a pitiable
state, and let in tenements.
In the neighbourhood of Sunderland there are several interesting houses.
High Barnes, for long the home of the Ettricks, is now a convent, and
has been considerably altered. Low Barnes, the Pembertons’ old home, is
let to a laundry company. Ford Hall is a comparatively modern house, but
is interesting as having been the birthplace of General Havelock.
Pallion Hall, an old stone mansion, has recently been pulled down.
The old hall at West Boldon is more modern, having been erected in 1709
by the Fawcetts. The house has the arms of that family over the main
entrance, and several of the rooms are wainscotted. A quaint record of
another generation may well be noted in the late Mr. Boyle’s own words:
"On one of the window-panes in a bedroom, in a neat hand of the early
part of last century, someone has written with a diamond:
"Beautifull Grace Andrew."
On the next pane, in equally delicate script, another hand has added:
"Fair written Name, yet fairer in my heart,
No Diamond cutts so deep as Cupid’s Dart."
Travelling by railway from Boldon to Newcastle, the house now known as
the Mulberry Inn is a familiar object, just outside of Felling station.
It has been a picturesque building, and for long was the residence of
the Brandlings. It is now undergoing a serious alteration. A small
stone summer-house, once in the garden, still stands on one of the
station platforms.
[Illustration: THE DOORWAY, WEST RAINTON HALL.]
Kibblesworth Hall, a few miles south of Gateshead, is a solid Jacobean
brick house, with stone-mullioned, square-headed windows. It has a fine
oak staircase, and some of the fireplaces and cornices are of
contemporary date. The house has been let in tenements to the pitmen of
the adjoining colliery, the stables turned into cottages, and the
gardens into allotments. Another old house that has undergone a similar
fate is West Rainton Hall, erected about 1690 by Sir John Duck, Bart. It
stands on the main street of the village, shorn of the battlements
mentioned by Surtees, but still retaining a fine old doorway,
reminiscent of its better days.
There are also in this district several other old houses dismantled and
in tenements, betokening the scattering of their once owners to many far
lands. It is a pleasure to turn from these to a few houses still in good
condition. The Hall,[18] Houghton-le-Spring, was perhaps erected by
Robert Hutton, Rector of Houghton, between the years 1589 and 1623,
although its erection is more popularly attributed to his grandson and
namesake. This later Robert Hutton was Captain of a troop of horse in
the Parliamentary army, and, like Dobson of Harlow Hill,
" ... went to Dundee
And when he came back
held his head hee."
With the proceeds of this expedition he is supposed to have built the
house in which his descendants dwelt for many generations. To satisfy
some scruple of his conscience, or, according to another story, to lie
near a favourite horse, he was buried in his garden under an altar-tomb,
inscribed:
"Hic Jacet Robertvs Hvtton armiger qvi obiit Avg die nono 1680. Et
moriendo vivet."
Stella Hall, a picturesque Elizabethan structure, situated close to the
River Tyne, was erected by the Tempests on the site of a nunnery, and
still contains some tapestry representing the story of Hero and Leander.
Scattered up and down the dales are many other old homes that a writer
dealing with his homeland would love to touch upon, but space forbids.
Even these short notes are all too short. The old mansions of our
countryside are a much neglected feature of archæology, and each house
in itself demands photographs and drawings and a chapter quite as long
as this.
DURHAM ASSOCIATIONS OF JOHN WESLEY
BY THE REV. T. CYRIL DALE, B.A.