Part 1

This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler.

[Picture: Book cover]

[Picture: The “Highflyer,” 1812]

_The_ GREAT NORTH ROAD

The Old Mail Road to Scotland

_By_ CHARLES G. HARPER

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YORK TO EDINBURGH

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_With_ 77 _Illustrations by the Author_, _and from_ _old-time Prints and Pictures_

[Picture: Old-time Coachman]

London: CECIL PALMER OAKLEY HOUSE, BLOOMSBURY STREET, W.C. 1

* * * * *

_First Published in_ 1901. _Second and Revised Edition_—1922.

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Printed in Great Britain by C. TINLING & Co., LTD., 53, Victoria Street, Liverpool. Also at London and Prescot.

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THE GREAT NORTH ROAD YORK TO EDINBURGH

London (General Post Office) to— MILES York 196¾ Clifton 198¼ Rawcliff 200¼ Skelton 201¼ Shipton 202¾ Tollerton Lanes 206½ Easingwold 210¼ White House 211¾ Thormanby 214¼ Birdforth 215 Bagby Common (“Griffin” Inn) 217½ Mile House 218½ Thirsk 220½ South Kilvington 222 Thornton-le-Street 223½ Thornton-le-Moor 224¾ Northallerton 229¼ Lovesome Hill 229¾ Little Smeaton (cross River Wiske) 231¾ Great Smeaton 232¾ High Entercommon 233¾ Dalton-on-Tees 236¾ Croft (cross River Tees) 237¾ Oxneyfield Bridge (cross River Skerne) 238 Darlington 241¾ Harrogate 243½ Coatham Mandeville 245¾ Aycliffe 246¾ Traveller’s Rest 248 Woodham 249¼ Rushyford Bridge 250½ Ferryhill 253 Low Butcher Race and Croxdale 255 Sunderland Bridge 255¾ Browney Bridge (cross River Wear) 256 Durham (cross River Browney) 260 Durham Moor (Framwellgate) 261 Plawsworth 263½ Chester-le-Street 266 Birtley 269 Gateshead Fell 271 Gateshead (cross River Tyne) 273½ Newcastle-on-Tyne 274½ Gosforth 277 Seaton Burn 280¾ Stannington Bridge (cross River Blyth) 284 Stannington 284½ Clifton 286½ Morpeth (cross River Wansbeck) 289¼ Warrener’s House 291¼ Priest’s Bridge 293¼ West Thirston (cross River Coquet) 299¼ Felton 299¾ Newton-on-the Moor 302½ Alnwick (cross River Aln) 308½ Heiferlaw Bank 310 North Charlton 314¾ Warenford 318¾ Belford 323 Detchant Cottages 325¼ Fenwick 328 Haggerston 331 Tweedmouth (cross River Tweed) 337½ Berwick-on-Tweed 338 Lamberton Toll 341 (ENTER SCOTLAND) Greystonelees 343½ Flemington Inn and Burnmouth (cross River Eye) 344 Ayton 346 Houndwood 351¾ Grant’s House 354½ Cockburnspath 358 Dunglass Dene 359¼ Broxburn 363½ Dunbar 365 Belhaven 365¾ Beltonford 367½ Phantassie 370 East Linton 370½ Haddington 376 Gladsmuir 379¾ Macmerry 381½ Tranent 383¾ Musselburgh (cross North Esk River) 387¼ Joppa 389¼ Portobello 390 Jock’s Lodge 391½ Edinburgh 393 _Via_ FERRYBRIDGE, WETHERBY, AND BOROUGHBRIDGE. Doncaster (cross River Don) 162¼ York Bar 164 Red House 167¼ Robin Hood’s Well 169¼ Went Bridge (cross River Went) 172¾ Darrington 174½ Ferrybridge (cross River Aire) 177½ Brotherton 178½ Fairburn 180 Micklefield 184 Aberford 186½ Bramham Moor 186½ Bramham 190¼ Wetherby (cross River Wharfe) 194¼ Kirk Deighton 195¼ Walshford Bridge (cross River Nidd) 197¼ Allerton Park 200¾ Nineveh 202½ Ornham’s Hall 204¼ Boroughbridge (cross River Ure) 206¼ Kirkby Hill 207¼ Dishforth 210½ Asenby 212¼ Topcliffe (cross River Swale) 212¾ Sand Hutton 217 Newsham 219 South Otterington 220¾ North Otterington 222¼ Northallerton 225¼ Edinburgh 389

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Picture: Decorative heading]

PAGE The “Highflyer,” 1812 Frontispiece Old York: The Shambles 6 The Walls of York 9 York Castle: Clifford’s Tower 14 York Minster, from the Foss 33 All Saints’ Pavement 41 Jonathan Martin, Incendiary 45 York Minster on Fire 49 Bootham Bar 52 Skelton Church 53 The “Spotted Dog,” Thornton-le-Street 60 York Bar 63 Robin Hood’s Well 64 The Battlefield of Towton and surrounding country 70 Saxton 71 Towton Dale 72 Lead Chapel 74 Ruined Mill overlooking Aberford 76 Barwick-in-Elmete 77 Moor End 80 Nineveh 81 The Edinburgh Express, 1837 85 Croft Bridge 93 Sockburn Falchion 94 “Locomotion” 98 “The Experiment” 99 “I say, fellow, give my buggy a charge of coke, 101 your charcoal is too d—d dear” The Iron Road to the North 105 Traveller’s Rest 108 Rushyford Bridge 109 Ferryhill: The Abandoned Road-Works 111 Merrington Church 113 Road, Rail, and River: Sunderland Bridge 115 Entrance to Durham 117 Durham Cathedral, from Prebend’s Bridge 121 The Sanctuary Knocker 125 Durham Cathedral and Castle from below Framwellgate 127 Bridge Framwellgate Bridge 130 Penshaw Monument 132 The Coal Country 137 A Wayside Halt 138 Travellers arriving at an Inn 145 Modern Newcastle: from Gateshead 153 Old Newcastle: showing the Town Bridge, now 157 demolished “The Drunkard’s Cloak” 162 “Puffing Billy” 165 The Gates of Blagdon Park 167 Morpeth 169 The Market-place, Morpeth 173 Felton Bridge 174 Alnwick 175 Alnwick Castle 185 Malcolm’s Cross 188 Bambrough Castle 192 The Scottish Border: Berwick Town and Bridge from 197 Tweedmouth Lamberton Toll 203 Off to the Border 205 Cockburnspath Tower 213 The Tolbooth, Dunbar 215 Bothwell Castle 220 Haddington Abbey, from Nungate 221 Edinburgh, from Tranent 223 Musselburgh 228 Calton Hill 232 The “White Horse” Inn 235 “Squalor and Picturesqueness” 238 Canongate 239 Old Inscription, Lady Stair’s House 241 The “Heave Awa” Sign 242 A Tirle-pin 243 Greyfriars 245 The Wooden Horse 247 Stately Princes Street 249 Edinburgh, New Town, 1847, from Mons Meg Battery 251 Skyline of the Old Town 255

[Picture: Chapter Heading: The Great North Road]

I

AT last we are safely arrived at York, perhaps no cause for comment in these days, but a circumstance which “once upon a time” might almost have warranted a special service of prayer and praise in the Minster. One comes to York as the capital of a country, rather than of a county, for it is a city that seems in more than one sense Metropolitan. Indeed, you cannot travel close upon two hundred miles, even in England and in these days of swift communication, without feeling the need of some dominating city, to act partly as a seat of civil and ecclesiastical government, and partly as a distributing centre; and if something of this need is even yet apparent, how much more keenly it must have been felt in those “good old days” which were really so bad! A half-way house, so to speak, between those other capitals of London and Edinburgh, York had all the appearance of a capital in days of old, and has lost but little of it, in these, even though in point of wealth and population it lags behind those rich and dirty neighbours, Leeds and Bradford. For one thing, it has a history to which they cannot lay claim, and keeps a firm hold upon titles and dignities conferred ages ago. We may ransack the pages of historians in vain in attempting to find the beginnings of York. Before history began it existed, and just because it seems a shocking thing to the well-ordered historical mind that the first founding of a city should go back beyond history or tradition, Geoffrey of Monmouth and other equally unveracious chroniclers have obligingly given precise—and quite untrustworthy—accounts of how it arose, at the bidding of kings who never had an existence outside their fertile brains.

When the Romans came, under Agricola, in A.D. 70, York was here. We do not know by what name the Brigantes, the warlike tribe who inhabited the northern districts of Britain, called it, but they possessed forts at this strategic point, the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss, where York still stands, and evidently had the military virtues fully developed, because it has seemed good to all who have come after them, from the Romans and the Normans to ourselves, to build and retain castles on the same sites. The Brigantes were a great people, despite the fact that they had no literature, no science, and no clothes with which to cover their nakedness, and were they in existence now, might be useful in teaching our War Office and commanding officers something of strategy and fortification. They have left memorials of their existence in the names of many places beginning with “Brig,” and they are the sponsors of all the brigands that ever existed, for their name was a Brito-Welsh word meaning “hill-men” or “highlanders,” and, as in the old days, to be a highlander was to be a thief and cut-throat, the chain of derivative facts that connects them with the bandits of two thousand years is complete.

A hundred and twenty years or so after the Romans had captured the Brigantes’ settlement here, we find York suddenly emerging, a fully-fledged Roman city, from the prehistoric void, under the name of Eboracum. This was in the time of the Emperor Septimus Severus, who died in A.D. 211 in this _Altera Roma_, the principal city of Roman Britain. For this much is certain, that, as Winchester was, and London is, the capital of England, so was York at one time the chief city of the Roman colony, the foremost place of arms, of rule, and of residence; and so it remained until Honorius, the hard-pressed, freed Britain from its allegiance in A.D. 410 and withdrew the legionaries. Two hundred years is a considerable length of time, even in the history of a nation, and much happened in Eboracum in that while. Another Roman emperor died here, in the person of Constantius Chlorus, and his son, Constantine the Great, whom some will have it was even born here, succeeded him. Both warred with the Pictish tribes from the North; that inhospitable North which swallowed up whole detachments; the North which Hadrian had conquered over two hundred years before, and now was exhausting the energies of the conquerors. Empire is costly in lives and treasure, and the tragedy of Roman conquest and occupation is even now made manifest in the memorials unearthed by antiquaries, recording the deaths of many of the Roman centurions at early ages. Natives of sunny Italy or of the south of France, they perished in the bleak hills and by the wintry rivers of Northumbria, much more frequently than they did at the hands of the hostile natives, who soon overwhelmed the magnificence of Eboracum when the garrisons left. The civilisation that had been established here, certainly since the time of Severus, was instantly destroyed, and Caer Evraue, as it came to be called, became a heap of ruins. Then came the Saxons, who remodelled the name into Eoferwic, succeeded in turn by the Danes, from whose “Jorvic,” pronounced with the soft J, we obtain Yorvic, the “Euerwic” of Domesday Book, and finally York. But whence the original “Eboracum” derived or what it meant is purely conjectural.

Christianity, fulfilling Divine promise, had brought “not peace, but a sword” to the Romans, and the Saxon king, Edwin of Northumbria, had not long been converted and baptized at York, on the site of the present Minster, before he was slain in conflict with the heathen. It was Paulinus, first Archbishop of York, who had baptized Edwin in 625. Sent to the North of England by Gregory the Great, as Augustine had already been sent for the conversion of the South, it was the Pope’s intention to establish two Archbishoprics; and thence arose centuries of quarrelling between the Archbishops of Canterbury and those of York as to who was supreme. York, indeed, only claimed equal rights; but Canterbury claimed precedence. In the Synod of 1072 the Archbishop of York was declared subordinate to Canterbury, but half a century later, in order to make peace, Rome adjudged them equal. Even this did not still the strife, and Roger Pont l’Évêque, the Archbishop of York, who was contemporary with Becket, and aided the king in his struggle with that prelate, was especially bitter in the attempt to assert in all places and at all seasons this equality. He renewed the contention with Becket’s successor, and provoked an absurd scene at the Council of Westminster in 1176, when, arriving late and finding the Archbishop of Canterbury present and already seated, he sat down in his lap. The result was, that the Council of Westminster immediately resolved itself into a faction fight, in which my lord of York was jumped upon and kicked, for all the world like a football umpire who has given an unpopular decision. Even this did not settle either the Archbishop of York or the strife, and so at last, in 1354, it was decreed that each should be supreme in his own Province, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury should be “Primate of All England,” while his brother of York should bear the title of “Primate of England”; but whenever an Archbishop of York was consecrated he should send to the Primate of All England a golden jewel, valued at £40, to be laid on the Shrine of St. Thomas. “Thus,” says Fuller, in his inimitably humorous manner, “when two children cry for the same apple, the indulgent father divides it between them, yet so that he gives the better part to the child which is his darling.” Rome has long since ceased to have part or lot in the English Church, but this solemn farce of nomenclature is still retained.

In such things as these does York retain something of its old pride of place. Even its Mayor is a Lord Mayor, which was something to be proud of before these latter days, now Lord Mayors are three a penny, and every bumptious modern overgrown town is in process of obtaining one. The first Lord Mayor of York, however, was appointed by Richard the Second, and thus the title has an honourable antiquity.

In its outward aspect, York is varied. It runs the whole gamut, from the highest antiquity to the most modern of shops and villas; from the neatest and tidiest streets to the most draggle-tailed and out-at-elbowed courts and alleys. From Clifton and Knavesmire, which is a great deal more respectable and clean than its evil-sounding name would lead the stranger to suppose, to the Shambles, Fossgate, and Mucky Peg’s Lane (now purged of offence as Finkle Street) is a further social than geographical cry, and they certainly touch both extremes. “Mucky Peg” and the knaves of the waste lands outside the city are as historic in their way as Roman York, which lies nine feet below the present level of the streets, and for whose scanty relics one must visit the Museum of the Philosophical Society in the grounds of the ruined St. Mary’s Abbey. In those grounds also the only fragment of the Roman walls may be seen, in the lower stage of the Multangular Tower, once commanding the bank of the river Ouse.

York is perhaps of all English towns and cities the most difficult place to explore. Its streets branch and wind in every direction, without any apparent plan or purpose, and thus an exploration of the Walls, of which the city is, with reason, extremely proud, becomes the best means of ascertaining its importance and the relative positions of Castle and Minster. It is no short stroll, for, by the time the whole circuit is made, a distance of nearly three miles has been covered. These medieval walls form, indeed, the most delightful promenade imaginable, being built on a grassy rampart and provided with a paved footpath running on the inner side of the battlements, and thus commanding panoramic views within and without the city.

[Picture: Old York: The Shambles]