BEVERLEY--STONE
CROSSES--NORTHUMBERLAND--ALNWICK--HEXHAM--NEWCASTLE--DURHAM--KEPIER
HOSPITAL--CARLISLE.
The entrance gate to Beverley is a rather fine specimen of brick
architecture, with mouldings and niches all in the same material. It
fully carries out the principles of brickwork that have been the subject
of a former chapter, and is a delightful entrance to a country town of
first-class importance. The houses of Beverley are good, and it is
resorted to by many retired merchants and tradesmen who wish to pass
what remains of life in quiet.
[Illustration: MARKET SQUARE, BEVERLEY, YORKSHIRE.]
In the market place, which the engraver has given an excellent idea of,
is a quaint cross of the Carolean period. This market place occupies
some four acres, and is a perfect gem of picturesque town beauty. The
cross must have been among the last that were built as market crosses.
The history of these beautiful remains, that have done so much to
enliven old towns and cities, may be told in a few words. They were
devoted to various uses. Sometimes they were preaching crosses, as the
one at _Iron Acton_, where probably in very warm weather the vicar or
incumbent would address the congregation in the open air, or, like the
black friars in Hereford, where the pulpit cross seems to have stood in
cloisters. Sometimes they were memorial crosses, like the three grand
Eleanor crosses that are left us out of the original twelve; and it is
satisfactory to be able to think that these beautiful memorials will
again be copied very freely. The colonies even are beginning to erect
some imitations of the Waltham cross,[9] and indeed its marvellous
beauty speaks for itself. At one time there were certainly 5000 crosses
in England, but they were so easily destroyed in Cromwell’s time, that
very little trace of all this luxuriance of architecture is left. Some
crosses may be buried only a foot under the soil, and noble examples
lost to our sight; indeed it is by no means uncertain that we shall not
be able to add at least one Eleanor cross to our list, if not two. The
Chester Cross was buried for years, indeed centuries, before it was
discovered in front of St. Peter’s Church, only a few inches below the
footwalk, apparently placed reverently by some careful hand; and since
these pages have been commenced, and in some very recent alterations to
Neston church in this neighbourhood, the remains of three fine stone
crosses were exhumed. A cross filled many uses, as has been said, but it
was always contrived to make it an object of beauty to the
neighbourhood. The Charing Cross that has been recently erected opposite
the new hotel is one of the most successful that has been put up in
modern days, and much resembles the roadside one at Waltham. From these
old crosses proclamations used to be read, and tolls collected from the
market people. The modern drinking-fountain also is an adaptation of the
idea that suggested some of the crosses, and several of the old conduits
might be copied with great advantage. The one at Sherborne, which has
been illustrated in these pages, would be an excellent model for a
drinking-fountain, and one that has not yet been copied. The covered
market cross at Beverley is one of the last that was built, and answered
the same purposes as those of Salisbury or Malmesbury. These were merely
covered spaces for country people to rest in, in the heat and the rain,
and generally connected with some religious house in the neighbourhood.
They were usually octagonal and richly groined. That at Chichester is
the most elaborate, though the more ancient one at Salisbury, engraved
in page 119, is the most graceful and picturesque in the country. One
thing strikes us in these crosses--the smallness of the accommodation
for a public market; but then, as now, the market square was covered
with awnings or tents. And one of the most picturesque sights in England
is an old market square like the one at Hexham, or the one at Salisbury,
with their booths, on a busy market-day. Sometimes a cross was built on
an octagonal shaft surmounted with a crucifix, or a head with niches and
small statues, and an octagonal covering was built up round it reaching
to about half the height of the original shaft. This, as at Cheddar in
Somerset, is sometimes of later date, and sometimes, as at
Shepton-Mallet, in the same vicinity, built contemporaneously with the
central column. In great numbers of villages we find flights of steps
where a cross has once stood; but the eyesore being removed, the
Puritans allowed the steps to remain. In Malpas these are of enormous
dimensions, and when they were surmounted with a tall cross the effect
in this picturesque little country town must have been most striking.
As a rule, our modern representations of crosses have not been very
successful; they are wanting in lightness and ingenuity. One mode of
decoration, however, that is thoroughly unsuited to our climate, we are
not likely to see renewed, and that is the gilding of crosses. The
magnificent cross at Coventry was regilded in the reign of James II.,
and is said to have used up 15,403 books of gold.
Beverley was at one time surrounded by lakes that were formed by the
overflowing of the Humber, and its name is said to be derived from
Beaver lake, as at one time these animals were very abundant in this
part of Yorkshire. There is a grammar school here of great antiquity.
The towns of Scarborough and Whitby contain nothing at all that could
illustrate the subject in hand; indeed, on the accession of Queen
Elizabeth, Whitby only contained thirty or forty houses.
In the adjoining county of Westmoreland there is not very much that
comes within our range. The beauty of the county needs no telling here.
The English lakes are hardly excelled in beauty anywhere in the world,
but of course their requirements for modern travel have caused a modern
growth of architecture. The ruins of the castle where Catherine Parr
was born are near Kendal, but the town itself contains nothing of
interest architecturally.
Appleby, the county town, was at one time a place of importance, but it
was twice burned down during the wars, and the present appearance is
quite modern. Ambleside is a charming town almost entirely composed of
modern detached cottages, each in its own garden.
The county of Northumberland suffered, like Dorset, severely, from
incursions of the Danes, though in the former county they were suffered
to settle after their overthrow by King Alfred; and Mr. G. Tate, in an
interesting history of Alnwick, has given a curious list of Danish words
that are still preserved in the dialect spoken about that town.
Indeed he shows that every word which is of strange origin has come from
Scandinavia. This work of Mr. Tate’s was reviewed some ten years since,
in the _Builder_, in a very interesting article, from which I do not
hesitate to borrow.
The writer says that in general the people who visit Alnwick for the
first time feel sadly disappointed. They look upon it as the ancient
home of the Percies, and almost expect to find men in mediæval costume,
or at any rate they do think that the town should have the appearance of
some newly fought field, and there should be some few pieces of armour
lying about; and often the disappointment is expressed loudly at the
first sight of the small quiet gray town lying in its green basin.
Wordsworth and Pennant even make no secret of their chagrin, as they
found their hopes all scattered; and Halleck, the American poet, is very
much exercised at the appearance of the liveried menial who let him
through the ancient halls of Hotspur and his wife, for the modest sum of
“ten shillings and sixpence sterling.” Yet it seems that the inhabitants
are all antiquaries, either from the associations with which they are
surrounded or the force of old customs, and there is hardly a tradesman
that does not possess some collection of local antiquities. Mr. Tate
reinvests Alnwick, as it were, with some of its ancient glories. He
says, “When several of our great towns were mere villages, Alnwick was a
walled town and enjoyed a corporate existence; warlike barons, wielding
power little less than regal, resided within its great castle, ruled
their vassals, and hatched their plots against their sovereign, or
devised schemes for public liberty. Malefactors were executed there,
and grisly and gory heads were exhibited over the gates; mitred abbots
and cowled monks lived hard by, and dispensed a splendid hospitality
within their abbeys. Old customs lingered long here; and there yet
remains somewhat of the racy savour of olden times, in the tastes and
associations of the inhabitants.”
The Percies were in possession of Alnwick at least 120 years before it
was walled and fortified, and the wall that surrounded it does not seem
to have differed very much from that of Chester. The Border warfare, or
rather perhaps armed plunder, that one might almost have supposed was
inherited from the Danish blood that flowed in the veins of the northern
people, accounts for much of their architecture.
When Worcester says--
---- “The fox
Who ne’er so tame, so cherished, and locked up,
Will have a wild trick of his ancestors,”
he might have been alluding to the neighbours by whom Hotspur was
surrounded. It is computed that no less than 2000 men must have been
employed in a complicated system of day and night watching to guard
against the lawless raids of the Middle Ages. The day watches began
their duty at daylight, and blew a horn on the approach of the foe, and
all men were bound on pain of death to follow the fray with hue and cry.
Goods captured from the Scots were restored to the owner, and the
capturer was rewarded. No man was permitted to speak to a Scotsman
without leave from the warder, so great a terror did the inroads of the
Northerners cause among the English.
Perhaps there may have been a reverse to this picture, and the hands of
the Englishmen were not quite clean. The conduct of the stout Earl of
Northumberland in Chevy Chase is not such as we can well excuse. He
certainly had no pretence of right on his side to take three summer days
of pleasure in the Scottish woods, and kill and bring back to Alnwick
the chiefest harts in Douglas’s manor. This must always have struck even
the most youthful admirer of the beautiful ballad. Then they were not
satisfied with moderate, or indeed excellent sport. A hundred fallow
deer did not appease the “stout Earl” and his friends, for they seem to
have coolly prepared for further hunting. The chronicler simply says--
“And long before high noon they had
A hundred fat bucks slain;
Then, having dined, the drovers went
To rouse them up again.”
This ballad is evidently written in the interests of the English, and
whoever may have been generally most to blame in the Border quarrels, it
is clear that the English on the occasion of Chevy Chase had a good deal
of wrong on their side.
The waits were suppressed in 1831 by the Corporation. They used to last
from Martinmas to January, and Mr. Tate remembers the criers
perambulating the town at night with a “Good morrow, masters all!
half-past three on a frosty morning;” and once or twice a week altering
their apostrophe to the name of a householder, “Good morrow, Mistress
Turner! half-past two on a cloudy morning.” Singular as such customs may
seem now, it is only a comparatively few years since constables used to
perambulate the city at night time in Liverpool and other large towns,
using almost similar language. Fortunately the establishment of new
police has deprived them of the power of paying off some old grudge
against any particular inhabitant who might be supposed to require
information about the time of night and the state of the weather; and
the watchman with his lantern has now become a thing of the past,--more
so even than mail-coaches with their rumbles and horns, which, indeed,
have not even yet disappeared from some of the more remote parts of the
island.
[Illustration: HEXHAM.]
Hexham is a very imposing-looking town, as it is approached from the
railway. The Moot Hall and the Abbey Church occupy commanding features
in the landscape. The Abbey Church was at one time a cathedral,
dedicated to St. Andrew. Every building in Hexham that can boast of any
antiquity bears testimony to the disturbed state of the old times. This
is the case also with Haltwhistle, on the left bank of the Tyne, and
other Northumbrian towns. Those who are in the habit of spending time in
amateur gardening may be interested to know that the gloves called
“Hexham tans” are manufactured here, and sent into the country to be
sold at exactly double the price they bring in Hexham. Formerly hats
like the Monmouth caps were made here, but, as in Monmouth, all the
factories are now closed. Hexham has produced two remarkable
chroniclers--John of Hexham and Prior Richard.
[Illustration: HEXHAM.]
[Illustration: BLACK GATE, NEWCASTLE.]
The Black Gate at Newcastle-on-Tyne is a singular example of the
architecture of the period we have been describing. Gloomy and
forbidding it looks, as if really every man’s hand was against his
neighbour, and his neighbour’s against him. It has been recently
destroyed, but the engraving is taken from a photograph that was
fortunately made before. Of course the windows are modern in comparison
with the rest of the building. This gate was built at an enormous cost
in the reign of Henry III., and, as a recent chronicler has said, “it is
apt to convey a gloomy impression of Norman character and times, in
passing under the low and narrow arch. Louring and characteristic is the
effect of its great depth, thirty-six feet, and suggestive of thoughts
of the awful dungeons of the mighty barons, and the deeds of cruelty too
often perpetrated in them.” The older fortifications were quite
inadequate for the defence of Newcastle against the Scots, who seem to
have ravaged it at will. Part of them remained until very recently
behind the priory of Black Friars.
The history of the walls is very illustrative of the times. On one of
the inroads of the Scots, after they had exhausted the old programme of
plunder and fire, they carried off a wealthy citizen with them to
Scotland, and held him for ransom. This was not long in coming, and on
his return to his town he resolved to protect the city with walls in
order to prevent similar accidents. In this he was assisted by the
inhabitants and the King, and he was enabled to build a wall of twelve
feet high and eight feet thick, strongly resembling, it is said, the
walls of Avignon. This wall measured about a mile and three quarters in
circuit, and was surrounded with a ditch of more than twenty yards in
breadth. There were said to be seven gates in these walls, and seventeen
round towers, and effigies of men cut in stone to represent watchers.
All these works were completed in the fourteenth century.
A description of Durham would hardly be complete without some reference
to St. Cuthbert, to whom the See owes its origin. He was originally a
cowherd, but believing that he had a calling for holy orders he left his
sheep in the wilderness and soon obtained admission. His piety and
austere life at once marked him out for high office, and he ultimately
became Bishop of Lindisfarne. This office was no sinecure in his day,
and it required all the efforts of the ecclesiastics and their see to
preserve any of their property from the ravages of the Danish invasions,
which seem to have occurred as often as it was supposed there was
anything worth plundering, and they could collect sufficient men to
plunder, with the necessary ships and arms.
Lindisfarne Island is the part most exposed to any incursions of the
Danes, and the ecclesiastics finally grew tired of the wearisome and
unequal contest and determined to remove to safer quarters; and after
various wanderings, in which they carried with them the body of St.
Cuthbert, they finally rested at
[Illustration: DURHAM, FROM AN OLD HOMESTEAD ON THE WEAR.]
Durham. The saint, who during many years retained his flesh and natural
appearance, pointed out this spot, and the corpse seemed very angry when
they attempted to pass it in quest of any other. This, of course,
decided the question finally, and so Durham was originally founded. It
would be impossible to find a more magnificent site for a building in
England than that which Durham Cathedral occupies. The Wear sweeps round
a bluff that is covered with noble trees, and above this rise the three
vast towers of the cathedral, all of which are reflected in the still
broad water below.
From the churchyard, also, of St. Oswald’s, the view, though striking,
is very different. Here the great central tower is the prominent object,
supported by the western ones rising in the rear; while another grand
view of the building presents itself from Palace Green, a large open
space on the north side of the cathedral.
Notwithstanding the enormous advantages that such a building must afford
to the landscape of a city, the streets are not very picturesque, and
there is an unpleasantly squalid look about nearly all parts of it. From
the railway station or the banks of the Wear the views are incomparably
grand; but, like Constantinople seen from the Bosphorus, the charm of
the city melts away on entering: and for so important a city the hotel
accommodation is very inadequate.
Elver Bridge, when Britton published his _Picturesque Antiquities of
English Cities_, must have been one of the most picturesque objects in
the kingdom. It was formed of pointed arches finely ribbed underneath,
and it supported a pile of gabled houses with tall chimneys and ancient
balconies of unsurpassed beauty, and variety of form. The windows were
deeply recessed and mullioned, and there were stacks of tall chimneys,
square, octagonal, and divided into stages; indeed, if these buildings
had been simply taken as examples of mediæval architecture, they would
have been extremely valuable, but spreading over a fine roomy old bridge
and reflected in the waters below, they formed a picture that was a loss
to the nation when it was destroyed.
The view of Durham Castle here given, as the city is entered over the
bridge, is very striking. It seems as if it must have been secure from
the attacks of any enemy, with such contrivances of offence as were then
known, and well suited for the residence of a line of bishops whose
weapons of warfare were but too often carnal.
Kepier Hospital stands on the banks of the Wear, and is a delightful
resort for the inhabitants of Durham. The gateway here given is easily
fixed as to date, from the arms on the keystones of the groining; they
are those of two masters of the hospital from the years 1341 to 1345,
and this date exactly corresponds with the style of architecture. The
remains of the hospital itself are inside the gateway and of much later
date. It is occupied as a country inn, and some of the rooms are filled
with magnificent oak carvings.
[Illustration: DURHAM, FROM WEAR BRIDGE.]
Kepier Hospital was endowed with the large sum of £186 per annum, which
the bishops of Durham had given it out of the plenitude of their riches,
and a list of the offices of the thirteen brethren will throw some light
upon the singular requirements of the age. Six of these were to be
chaplains; the seventh brother was to be dispenser and larderer; the
eighth was keeper of the tannery; ninth the baker; tenth the miller;
eleventh the gauger; twelfth the keeper of stock; and the thirteenth
general proctor for all business of the hospital.
[Illustration: KEPIER HOSPITAL GATEWAY, DURHAM.]
We notice in Carlisle, as in all these northern cities, the same
indications of an age of turmoil. What few houses are left appear to
have been built
[Illustration: ROAD THROUGH CATHEDRAL CLOSE, CARLISLE.]
[Illustration: BUTTRESS, CARLISLE.]
to resist some sudden violence, and tell the bygone tale of insecurity.
For nearly two centuries Carlisle lay in ruins from the ravages of the
Danes, and it was only restored in the time of William Rufus. He planted
a colony of Flemings there--their type of feature is still to be noticed
among the inhabitants--and he encouraged an immigration of husbandmen
from the south. The singular way in which a type of feature is preserved
from generation to generation is certainly exhibited in Chester, in the
Roman character of many of the features of the country people near the
city. This has never been noticed, as far as I know, and it was only in
looking over a collection of Roman coins that it occurred to me. These
characteristics are especially to be noticed in the coins of Hadrian, or
Claudius, or Agricola--a full neck, a Roman nose, and strongly marked
features; indeed, nobody can go through the Chester market on a
Saturday, and observe the various types of feature, without being
struck with these peculiarities in the Cheshire women.
The old houses at Hexham which are engraved at the end of the chapter,
are extremely characteristic of the older northern towns, where cut
stone is more in vogue than “post and petrel.”
[Illustration: OLD HOUSES, HEXHAM.]
[Illustration: CASTLE SQUARE, LANCASTER.]