Part 18
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,
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
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,
dating from the Stuart period. It has the Greenwell arms over the entrance, and is now fast falling into a ruinous condition.
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.
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.
A packet of old letters suggests many questions as to the writers, whom they have long survived. Nor is this curiosity diminished when one of the correspondents has achieved a world-wide fame, so that there is no portion of the globe where his name is not known. For then one desires to know who were the people whom he honoured with his friendship, and to scan the letters closely to see if they throw any new light upon the character of the writer. There are in existence seventeen letters written by John Wesley to a member of a family once well-known in the county of Durham. Originally there were thirty letters, as appears from the numbering of those which remain, but where the other letters are the writer does not know.[19] These seventeen letters, two of them being only copies of the originals, came into the possession of the Rev. Thomas Dale, Canon of St. Paul’s from 1843-70, and from him passed to his eldest son, the Rev. Thomas Pelham Dale (1821-92), at one time well-known as the Rector of St. Vedast in the city of London.[20] They were written to Miss Margaret Dale, second daughter of Edward Dale[21] of Tunstall, who, owing to the extinction (as it seems) of the elder branch of the family in the male line, was head of the family of Dale, first of Dalton le Dale, and then of Tunstall. This Edward Dale was the son of Thomas Dale by his wife Margaret, daughter and co-heiress of George Middleton of Silksworth. Through her Burke, who was far too amiable a genealogist to doubt the assertions of any one respecting his ancestors, however remote, traces the descent of Edward Dale from Gundreda, daughter of William the Conqueror. The curious will find the descent set out at length in Burke’s _Royal Family_, Pedigree XVI. Edward Dale married Eleanor, youngest of the three daughters of the Rev. John Lawrence, Rector of Bishop’s Wearmouth. Mr. Lawrence (1668-1732) was in his day a well-known writer on horticulture, and has, as a consequence, a niche in that temple of fame--the _Dictionary of National Biography_. It is related that when in 1721 he was appointed to the Rectory, he was so obnoxious to the principal inhabitants of his parish, owing to his Hanoverian proclivities, that when he was "reading himself in" the three chief landowners of the place--John Goodchild of Pallion, John Pemberton of Bainbridge Holme, and Thomas Dale of Tunstall--walked out of the church as a protest against his appointment.[22] By a kind of poetic justice, his three daughters married into the families of the three protesters. His eldest daughter married the above-named John Goodchild, his two younger daughters the sons and heirs of John Pemberton and Thomas Dale. Only unfortunately for the completeness of the tale, the two last marriages did not take place till after the death of John Lawrence.
By Eleanor Lawrence, Edward Dale had three daughters--Mary, Margaret, and Anne--and one son, also called Edward. He died when his eldest daughter was only eleven and his son still an infant.
Margaret Dale no doubt made the acquaintance of John Wesley through his devoted adherent, Margaret Lewen. Miss Lewen, the only child of Thomas Lewen of Kibblesworth, while still a girl of about twenty-two, was attracted by the preaching of John Wesley during his visit to the North in the year 1764. Wesley, in his famous "Diary," speaks of her as being "a remarkable monument of Divine mercy. She broke through all hindrances, and joined heart and hand with the children of God." She was "a pattern to all young women of fortune in England." Margaret Lewen was certainly exceedingly liberal. "In works of benevolence and Christian zeal, she cheerfully expended an ample income" (Stamp: Orphan House of Wesley, London, 1863). Wesley says she had about £600 a year "in her own hands." On one of his visits to the North she gave him a chaise and a pair of horses. Now, Margaret Lewen was very intimate with the Dale girls, and it was probably through her influence that they came into contact with the great preacher. Whether any letters were written to the other sisters is not known, but they can hardly have been so numerous or more intimate than those written to Margaret Dale.
The first letter extant is written from Portpatrick, and is dated June 1, 1765, when Margaret Dale was still two or three months short of twenty-one. It begins: "My Dear Miss Peggy," and ends, "I trust you will be happier every day; and that you will not forget, my Dear Sister, your Affectionate Brother, J. Wesley." The letter is occupied with spiritual counsels, and questions about her spiritual health. He inquires: "How far do you find Power over your Thoughts? Does not your imagination sometimes wander? Do those imaginations continue for any time?" It is clear, from Wesley’s next letter, written from Kilkenny, dated July 5, 1765, that Miss Peggy had found she was guilty of wandering thoughts, for the letter begins: "My dear Sister,--Altho’ it is certain the kind of Wandering Thoughts wch you mention, are consistent with pure Love, yet it is highly desirable to be delivered from yᵐ, because (as you observe) they hinder profitable thoughts." Miss Lewen is mentioned. "I hope Miss Lewen and you speak to each other, not only without Disguise, but without Reserve." The letter ends, "My Dear Sister, your affectionate Brother."
Letters 4 and 5 are missing. The next, numbered 6, is dated from London, November 6, 1765. Peggy has a fixed idea that she will not live beyond the age of three and twenty. Wesley, in this letter, asks many questions about this conviction. He wants to know when it began, and whether it continues the same, whether her health is better or worse. The subject is continued in the next letter, written December 31 in the same year. This letter begins "My dear Peggy," and ends, "I cannot tell you how tenderly I am, my Dear Sister, your affectionate Brother, J. Wesley."