no singing takes place on the western side of the tower. The popular,
but mistaken, idea in Durham is that this is because a choir-boy once
overbalanced on that side and fell from the tower.
If you would see how Castle and Cathedral are situated with regard to the
busy modern city, there is no such place as the railway station, whence
they are seen dominating the mass of houses, among the smoke-wreaths of
commerce, like the martyrs of old steadfast amidst their burning faggots.
If again, reversing the order of precedence as seen in the view from
Prebend’s Bridge, you would have the Castle in the forefront and the
Cathedral behind, it is from the Framwellgate Bridge, carrying the Great
North Road over the Wear, that another lovely glimpse is seen, ranging to
Prebend’s Bridge itself.
XXII
BUT time grows short, and we have not long to linger at Durham. Much
else might be said of the Cathedral; of Saint Cuthbert’s Shrine, and of
the vandal Wyatt, who “restored” the Cathedral in 1775, cutting away, in
the process, a depth of four inches from the stonework of much of the
exterior. The work cost £30,000, and resulted in eleven hundred tons
weight of stone chippings being removed from the building. If that
“restorer” had had his way, he would have destroyed the beautiful Galilee
Chapel that projects from the west front, and forms so uniquely
interesting a feature of Late Norman work. His idea was to drive a
carriage road round this way. The work of destruction had, indeed,
already been begun when it was stopped by more reverent men.
[Picture: The Sanctuary Knocker]
A curious relic still remains upon the door of the Cathedral’s north
porch, in the form of a huge knocker, dating back to Norman times. Cast
in the shape of a grinning monster’s head, a ring hanging from its jaws,
it is the identical sanctuary knocker of Saint Cuthbert’s Sanctuary,
which was in use from the foundation of the Cathedral until 1524. All
fugitives, whatever their crimes, who succeeded in escaping to Durham,
and reaching the bounds of “Saint Cuthbert’s Peace,” were safe from
molestation during thirty-seven days. A criminal, grasping the ring of
this knocker, could not be torn from it by his pursuers, under pain of
their being subjected to excommunication; and lest there should be bold
spirits whom even this could not affright, there were always two monks
stationed, day and night, in a room above the porch, to watch for
fugitives. When admitted, the criminal confessed his crime, with every
circumstance attending it, his confession being taken down in writing, in
the presence of witnesses; a bell ringing in the Galilee tower all the
while, giving notice that some one had fled to the protection of Saint
Cuthbert. After these formalities, the fugitive was clothed with a black
gown, bearing a yellow cross on the left shoulder: the badge of the Saint
whose protection he had secured. After the days of grace had expired,
and in the event of no pardon being obtained, ceremonies were gone
through before the Shrine, in which the malefactor solemnly forswore his
native land for ever. Then, safeguarded to the coast, he was shipped out
of the kingdom by the first vessel sailing after his arrival.
[Picture: Durham Castle and Cathedral from below Framwellgate Bridge]
There must have been many an exciting chase along the roads in those
times, and many a criminal who richly deserved punishment must have
escaped it by the very skin of his teeth. Many another, no doubt, was
seized and handed over to justice, or slain, on the threshold of safety.
Other fugitives still—and here Saint Cuthbert appears in better
guise—victims of hatred and oppression, private or political, claimed the
saintly ægis, and so escaped the vengeance of their enemies. So, looking
upon the ferociously grinning mask of the knocker, glaring with eyeless
sockets upon Palace Green, we can reconstruct the olden times when, at
his last gasp, the flying wretch seized the ring and so came into safety.
By night, the scene was more impressive still, for there were crystals in
those sockets then, and a lamp burning behind, so that the fugitive could
see his haven from afar, and make for it.
To-day, Saint Cuthbert avails no man, as the county gaol and the assize
courts sufficiently prove, and Durham city is essentially modern, from
the coal-grit that powders its dirty streets to the awfully grotesque
effigy of a Marquis of Londonderry that lends so diabolical an air to the
Market-place, where the Statute Fair is held, and where he sits, a
coal-black effigy across his coal-black horse, towering over the steam
merry-go-rounds, like Satan amid the revelries of a Walpurgis Night.
This bronze effigy is probably the most grotesque statue in the British
Isles, and loses nothing of that quality in the noble Marquis being
represented in a hussar uniform with flying dolman over his shoulders,
and a busby, many sizes too large for him, on his head, in an attitude as
though ferociously inviting the houses on the other side of the street to
“come on.”
That diarising Scotswoman, Mrs. Calderwood of Coltness, travelling south
in 1756, wrote:—
“We dined at Durhame, and I went to see the cathedrall; it is a
prodigious bulky building. It was on Sunday betwixt services, and in the
piazzas there were several boys playing at ball. I asked the girl that
attended me, if it was the custome for the boys to play at ball on
Sunday: she said, ‘they play on other days, as well as on Sundays.’ She
called her mother to show me the Church; and I suppose, by my questions,
the woman took me for a heathen, as I found she did not know of any other
mode of worship but her own; so, that she might not think the Bishop’s
chair defiled by my sitting down in it, I told her I was a Christian,
though the way of worship in my country differed from hers. In
particular, she stared when I asked what the things were that they
kneeled upon, as they appeared to me to be so many Cheshire cheeses.”
[Picture: Framwellgate Bridge]
They were hassocks: articles apparently then not known to Presbyterians.
And so she continued southward:—
“Next day, the 7th, we dined none, but baited at different places, and
betwixt Doncaster and Bautry a man rode about in an odd way, whom we
suspected for a highwayman. Upon his coming near, John Rattray pretended
to make a quarle with the post boy, and let him know that he keept good
powder and ball to keep such folks as him in order; upon which the felow
scampered off cross the common.”
The Great North Road leaves Durham over Framwellgate Bridge, built by
Bishop Flambard in Norman times. Although altered and repaired in the
fifteenth century and later, it is still substantially the same bridge.
There was once a fortified gateway on it, but that was taken down in
1760. Bridge, River, Castle, and Cathedral here form a majestic picture.
XXIII
AND now to take the open road again. The chief features of the road
between Durham and Newcastle are coal-pits, dismal pit villages, and
coal-dust. Not at once, however, is the traveller introduced to these,
and the ascent out of Durham, through the wooded banks of Dryburn, is
very pretty. It is at Framwellgate Moor, a mile and a half from the
city, that the presence of coal begins to make itself felt, in the rows
of unlovely cottages, and in the odd figures of the pitmen, who may be
seen returning from their work, with grimy faces and characteristic
miner’s dress. Adjoining this village, and indistinguishable from it by
the stranger, is the roadside collection of cottages known as “Pity Me,”
taking its name from the hunted fox in the sign of the “Lambton Hounds”
inn.
Framwellgate is scarce left behind before there rises up in the far
distance, on the summit of one of the many hills to the north-east, a
hill-top temple resembling the Athenian Acropolis, and as you go
northward it is the constant companion of your journey for some seven or
eight miles. This is “Penshaw Monument,” erected on that windy height in
1844, four years after his death, to the memory of John George Lambton,
first Earl of Durham. It cost £6,000, and commemorates the championship
of the Reform movement in its earlier and precarious days by that
statesman. Like many another monument, impressive at a distance, a near
approach to it leads to disillusion, for its classic outlines are allied
to coarse workmanship, and its eighteen great columns are hollow.
Penshaw, deriving its name from Celtic words, signifying a wooded height,
still has its woodlands to justify the name given nearly a thousand years
ago.
[Picture: Penshaw Monument]
The little town of Chester-le-Street lies three miles ahead, past the few
cottages of Plawsworth, once the site of a turnpike-gate, and by Chester
Moor and the pretty wooded hollow of Chester Dene, where the Con Burn
goes rippling through the undergrowth to join the river Wear, and a
bridge carries the highway across the gap. Approaching
Chester-le-Street, the bright yellow sandstone mass of Lumley Castle, the
ancient seat of the Earl of Scarborough, is prominent in the valley to
the right, while beyond it rise the woods of Lambton Castle, the Earl of
Durham’s domain. The neighbourhood of Chester-le-Street yet preserves
the weird legend of the “Lambton Worm,” and Worm Hill is still pointed
out as the home of that fabulous monster who laid the country under
contribution for the satisfying of his voracious appetite, and was kept
in good humour by being provided with the milk of nine cows daily. Many
had essayed to slay the serpent and had fallen victims instead, until the
heir of Lambton, returned from the red fields and hair’s-breadth escapes
of foreign wars, set forth to free the countryside from the terror. But
before he started, he was warned (so the legend runs), that unless he
vowed, being successful in his enterprise, to slay the first living thing
he met on his return, the lords of Lambton would never, for nine
generations to come, die in their beds. He took that vow, and, armed
with his trusty sword and a suit of armour made of razor-blades, met and
slew the Worm, who coiled himself round the knight in order to crush him
as he had the others, and so was cut in pieces against the keen edges.
But the victor on returning was met by his father, instead of by the
favourite dog who had been destined for the sacrifice. The sword dropped
from his nerveless hand, and he broke the vow. What mattered it where
the future generations died; in their beds, or, as warriors might wish,
in their boots?
As a matter of fact, the next nine heirs of Lambton did die more or less
violent deaths; a circumstance which is pointed to in proof of the
legend’s truth. If other proof be wanting, one has only to visit Lambton
Castle, where the identical trough from which the Worm drank his daily
allowance of milk is still shown the curious tourist!
Chester-le-Street bears little in its appearance to hint at its great age
and interesting history. A very up-to-date little town, whose prosperity
derives from its position as a marketing centre for the surrounding
pitmen, it supports excellent shops and rejoices in the possession of
Co-operative Societies, whose objects are to provide their subscribers
with whatever they want at cost price, and to starve the trader, who
trades for profit, out of existence. That shops and societies exist side
by side, and that both look prosperous, seems remarkable, not to say
miraculous. Let the explanation of these things be left to other hands.
The name of Chester-le-Street doubly reveals the Roman origin of the
place from the castle on the road which existed here in those distant
times, and has easily survived the name of Cunecaster, which the Saxons
gave it. At Cunecaster the ancient bishopric of Bernicia, forerunner of
the present See of Durham, had its cathedral for a hundred and thirteen
years, from A.D. 882 to 995; having been removed from the Farne Islands
on the approach of the heathen Danes, the monks carrying the coffin of
their sainted bishop, St. Cuthbert, with them on their wanderings. The
dedication of the present church to Saints Mary and Cuthbert is a relic
of that time, but the building itself is not older than the thirteenth
century. It preserves an ancient anchorites’ cell.
The finest surviving anchorage in England is this of Chester-le-Street.
It is built against the north wall of the tower, and is of two storeys
with two rooms on each. Two “low-side” windows communicating with the
churchyard remain, and a smaller opening into the church is close by.
Through this, food and offerings were passed to the anchorite, together
with the keys of the church treasure-chest, left in his custody by the
clergy. From this orifice the holy hermit could obtain a view all over
the building, and an odd hagioscope or “squint,” pierced through one of
the pillars, allowed of his seeing the celebration of Mass at a
side-chapel, in addition to that at the High Altar. This was no damp and
inconvenient hermitage, for when the anchorite was kicked out at the
Reformation, and bidden go and earn an honest living, his old home was
let to three widows. Eventually, in 1619, the curate found the place so
desirable—or, as a house-agent would say, so “eligible”—that he took up
his abode there.
The church also contains fourteen monumental effigies ascribed, without
much truth in the ascription, to the Lumleys. John, Lord Lumley,
collected them from ruined abbeys and monasteries in the neighbourhood
some three hundred years ago, and called them ancestors. He was
technically right; for we all descend from Adam, but not quite so right
when, finding he could not steal a sufficient number of these
“ancestors,” he commissioned the local masons to rough-hew him out a few
more. They are here to this day, and an ill-favoured gang they look,
too.
The town of Chester-le-Street found little favour with De Foe, who,
passing through it, found the place “an old dirty thoroughfare town.”
The modern traveller cannot say the same, but it is possible that if he
happened to pass through on Shrove Tuesday, he would describe the
inhabitants as savages; for on that day the place is given up to a game
of football played in the streets, the town taking sides, and when the
ball is not within reach, kicking one another. With a proper respect for
their shop fronts, the trades-folk all close on this day.
The three miles between Chester-le-Street and Birtley afford a
wide-spreading panorama of the Durham coal-field. Pretty country before
its mineral wealth began to be developed, its hills and dales reveal
chimney-shafts and hoisting-gear in every direction, and smoke-wreaths,
blown across country by the raging winds of the north, blacken
everything. Birtley is a typical pit village and its approaches
characteristic of the coal country. The paths are black, the hedges and
trees ragged and sooty, and tramways from the collieries cross the road
itself, unfenced, the trucks dropping coal in the highway. One coal
village is as like another as are two peas. They are all frankly
unornamental; all face the road on either side, each cottage the exact
replica of its unlovely neighbour, and the footpaths are almost
invariably unpaved. These are the homes of the “Geordies,” as the pitmen
once were invariably called. They were rough in their ways, but very
different from the more recent sort: the trade-unionist miner: the better
educated but more discontented and unlovable man. But “Geordie,” the
old-type typical pitman, was not a bad fellow, by any means. If any man
worked, literally, by the sweat of his brow, it was he, in his eight
hours’ shift down in the stifling tunnels of the coal-mine. He earned a
high wage and deserved a higher, for he carried his life in his hand, and
any day that witnessed his descent half a mile or so into the black
depths of the pit might also have seen an accident which, by the fall of
a roof of coal, by fire or flood, explosion, or the unseen but deadly
choke-damp, should end his existence, and that of hundreds like him.
The midday aspect of a coal village is singularly quiet and empty.
Scarce a man or boy is to be seen. Half of them are at work down below,
in the first day shift to which they went at an early hour of the
morning: and those of the night, who came up when the others descended,
are enjoying a well-earned repose. A coal-miner just come to bank from
his coal-hewing, looks anything but the respectable fellow he generally
is, nowadays. With his peaked leathern cap, thick short coat, woollen
muffler, limp knickerbockers, blue worsted stockings, heavy lace-up boots
and dirty face, he looks like a half-bleached nigger football-player.
When washed, his is a pallid countenance which the stranger, unused to
the colourless faces of those who work underground, might be excused for
thinking that of one recovering from an illness. And washing is a
serious business with “Geordie.” Every pitman’s cottage has its tub
wherein he “cleans” himself, as he expresses it, while the women-folk
crowd the street. What the cottages lack in accommodation they make up
for in cleanliness and display. The pitman’s wife wages an heroic and
never-ending war against dirt and grime, and both have an astonishing
love of finery and bright colours which reveals itself even down to the
door-step, coloured a brilliant red, yellow, or blue, according to
individual taste. Nowadays football claims “Geordie’s” affections before
anything else. That rowdy game, more than any other, serves to work off
any superfluous energy, and there are stories, more or less true, which
tell of pitmen, tired of waiting for “t’ ball,” starting “t’ gaame” by
kicking one another instead! Coursing, dog-fancying, and the breeding of
canaries are other favourite pitmen’s pastimes, and they dearly love a
garden. Where an outdoor garden is impossible, a window garden is a
favourite resource, and even the ugliest cottages take on a certain
smartness when to the yellow doorstep are added bright green
window-shutters and a window full of scarlet geraniums. Very many pitmen
are musical. We do not in this connection refer to the inevitable
American organ whose doleful wails wring your very heart-strings as you
pass the open cottage doors on Sunday afternoons, but to the really
expert violinists often found in the pit villages.
[Picture: The Coal Country]
XXIV
AT Harlowgreen Lane, where a little wayside inn, the “Coach and Horses,”
stands beside a wooded dingle, we have the only pleasant spot before
reaching Gateshead. Prettily rural, with an old-world air which no doubt
gains an additional beauty after the ugliness of Birtley, it looks like
one of those roadside scenes pencilled so deftly by Rowlandson, and might
well have been one of the roadside stopping-places mentioned in that book
so eloquent of the Great North Road, Smollett’s _Roderick Random_. No
other work gives us so fine a description of old road travel, partly
founded, no doubt, upon the author’s’ own observation of the wayfaring
life of his time. Smollett himself travelled from Glasgow to Edinburgh
and London in 1739, and in the character of Roderick he narrates some of
his own adventures. For a good part of the way Roderick found neither
coach, cart, nor wagon on the road, and so journeyed with a train of
pack-carriers so far as Newcastle, sitting on one of the horses’
pack-saddles. At Newcastle he met Strap, the barber’s assistant, and
they journeyed to London together, sometimes afoot; at other times by
stage-wagon, a method of travelling which, practised by those of small
means, was a commonplace of the period at which Smollett wrote. It was a
method which had not changed in the least since the days of James the
First, and was to continue even into the first years of the nineteenth
century. Fynes Morrison, who wrote an _Itinerary_—and an appallingly
dull work it is—in the reign of the British Solomon, talks of them as
“long covered wagons, carrying passengers from place to place; but this
kind of journeying is so tedious, by reason they must take wagon very
early and come very late to their innes, that none but women and people
of inferior condition travel in this sort.” Hogarth pictured these
lumbering conveyances, which at their best performed fifteen miles a day,
and Rowlandson and many other artists have employed their pencils upon
them.
[Picture: A Wayside Halt. After Rowlandson]
Smollett is an eighteenth-century robust humorist, whose works are
somewhat strong meat for our times; but he is a classic, and his works
(unlike the usual run of “classics,” which are aptly said to be books
which no one ever reads) have, each one, enough humour to furnish half a
dozen modern authors, and are proof against age and change of taste. To
the student of bygone times and manners, _Roderick Random_ affords (oh!
rare conjunction) both instruction and amusement. It is, of course, a
work of fiction, but fiction based on personal experience, and
palpitating with the life of the times in which it was written. It thus
affords a splendid view of this great road about 1739, and of the way in
which the thrifty Scots youths then commonly came up to town.
Their first night’s halt was at a hedgerow alehouse, half a mile from the
road, to which came also a pedlar. The pedlar, for safety’s sake,
screwed up the door of the bedroom in which they all slept. “I slept
very sound,” says Roderick, “until midnight, when I was disturbed by a
violent motion of the bed, which shook under me with a continual tremor.
Alarmed at this phenomenon, I jogged my companion, whom, to my amazement,
I found drenched in sweat, and quaking through every limb; he told me,
with a low, faltering voice, that we were undone, for there was a bloody
highwayman with loaded pistols in the next room; then, bidding me make as
little noise as possible, he directed me to a small chink in the board
partition, through which I could see a thick-set, brawny fellow, with a
fierce countenance, sitting at a table with our young landlady, having a
bottle of ale and a brace of pistols before him.” The highwayman was
cursing his luck because a confederate, a coachman, had given
intelligence of a rich coach-load to some other plunderer, who had gone
off with £400 in cash, together with jewels and money.
“But did you find nothing worth taking which escaped the other gentleman
of the road?” asked the landlady.
“Not much,” he replied. “I gleaned a few things, such as a pair of pops,
silver-mounted (here they are); I took them, loaded, from the charge of
the captain who had charge of the money the other fellow had taken,
together with a gold watch which he had concealed in his breeches. I
likewise found ten Portugal pieces in the shoes of a Quaker, whom the
spirit moved to revile me, with great bitterness and devotion; but what I
value myself mostly for is this here purchase, a gold snuff-box, my girl,
with a picture on the inside of the lid, which I untied out of the tail
of a pretty lady’s smock.”
Here the pedlar began to snore so loudly that the highwayman heard him
through the partition. Alarmed, he asked the landlady who was there, and
when she told him, travellers, replied, “Spies! you jade! But no matter,
I’ll send them all to hell in an instant.”
The landlady pacified him by saying that they were only three poor
Scotchmen; but Strap by this time was under the bed.
The night was one of alarms. Roderick and Strap awakened the pedlar,
who, thinking the best course was not to wait for the doubtful chance of
being alive to see the morning dawn, vanished with his pack through the
window.
After having paid their score in the morning, the two set out again.
They had not gone more than five miles before a man on horseback overtook
them, whom they recognised as Mr. Rifle, the highwayman of the night
before. He asked them if they knew who he was. Strap fell on his knees
in the road. “For heaven’s sake, Mr. Rifle,” said he, “have mercy on us,
we know you very well.”