Northumberland Yesterday and To-day Part 6

The Stanley Burn, which enters the Tyne close to Wylam railway station, divides this part of the county of Durham from Northumberland, so that from Wylam to the sea the south side of the Tyne is in the county of Durham. The most noteworthy object at Wylam, or, to be precise, a little way along the old post-road, leading to Newcastle from Hexham, is the red-tiled cottage in which George Stephenson was born in 1781. It stands on the north bank of the Tyne, where it can be distinctly seen from pa.s.sing trains. Its neighbour cottage has been repaired and re-roofed, but Stephenson's cottage remains unaltered.

Mr. Blackett, who owned Wylam Colliery at the beginning of the nineteenth century, took the keenest interest in the question of locomotives, and had tried more than one on his estate before George Stephenson brought them to the point of practical use. At Newburn, just four miles down the Tyne, George Stephenson pa.s.sed many years of his youth; here he learned to read and write, when he was old enough to earn a man's wage and could afford the few pence necessary; and here, in the parish church, may be seen, with an interval of twenty years between them, the entries of his two marriages.

Newburn is important nowadays for its steel works, within whose workshops is incorporated an old building formerly known as Newburn Hall; but in days long past its importance arose from its being on the ford of the Tyne nearest to Newcastle. This ford was frequently made use of, notably by the Scots in the reign of Charles I. Their chief camping ground is pointed out to us by the name of Scotswood, which also describes what Scotswood was like in those days--a great contrast to its present appearance, when the lines of brick and mortar stretching out uninterruptedly from Newcastle make it practically one with that town.

In 1640, the Scottish army, under General Leslie, faced the Royalist troops, under Lord Conway, on the south side of the river. The Scots mounted their rude cannon on Newburn Church tower, and the English raised earthworks along the bank of the river, which was here fordable in two places. The two armies calmly watered their horses on opposite banks of the stream all the next morning, but a shot at a Scottish officer from the English ranks precipitated the battle; and the Scottish army, having made a breach in both earthworks with their artillery, waded across the fords and drove the Royalist troops up the bank, after one spasmodic rally, which, however, failed to check the Scottish advance. The way was now open for the Scottish army to continue down the south bank of the Tyne and attack Newcastle from Gateshead. It had been Lord Conway's task to prevent this, but owing to his incapacity or want of whole-hearted enthusiasm for his cause, he failed entirely.

Not until 1644, however, was a Scottish attack on Newcastle actually made, for on this occasion Leslie, as we have already seen, led his men across the fords higher up the river and marched southwards. The earthworks thrown up by Conway's troops may still be seen on Stella Haughs.

It is supposed that the Romans had a fort here, commanding the pa.s.sage of the river; indeed it would have been strange had this not been the case, for the Romans were not the people to disregard any point of strategical importance, especially one so near their stations of Pons Aelii and Conderc.u.m. Many stones of Roman workmanship have been used in the building of the Newburn church.

From this point to its mouth, nearly fifteen miles away, both banks of the Tyne present an unbroken scene of industry. Between the steel works of Newburn and the iron and chemical works, the brick and tile works of Blaydon and past the famous yards of Elswick, down to the wharves and shipyards of North and South Shields, the Tyne rolls its swift dark waters through a scene of stirring activity; the air is dusky with soot and smoke, and reverberant with the clang of hammers and the pulsing beat of machinery. Some old and world-famed works have been closed or removed, like Hawks' and Stephenson's, but others, many others, have opened; and the map of the positions of Tyne industries, published under the auspices of the Newcastle and Gateshead Chamber of Commerce, is a record of resolute toil and brilliant achievement in the many aspects of industrial life represented on the river.

And, apart from the mere prosperity and commercial supremacy of the district, there is another cause for pride in the many notable inventions which hail from Tyneside; from the locomotive and the "Geordie" lamp of Stephenson, the hydraulic machinery and the big guns of Armstrong, to the wonderful turbine engines of Parsons; the invention of water-ballast, too, belongs to the Tyne, for it was the idea of a Gateshead man, and first used at Jarrow.

And, in connection with ships and seafarers, though not in any commercial sense, we may proudly recall the fact that the first Lifeboat was launched on the Tyne and named after the river; and the first Volunteer Life Brigade was formed at Tynemouth. The Worth Eastern Railway is carried across the Tyne by the Scotswood Bridge; and it was on this part of the river that the boat-races, for which the Tyne was once famous, were rowed. At Newcastle, the river is bridged by four huge structures--The Redheugh Bridge, the new King Edward VII. bridge, the High Level, and Swing Bridges,--all connecting Newcastle with the sister town of Gateshead. An interesting sight it is to see the Swing Bridge gradually turning on its central pivot, until it lies in a straight line up and down the stream, allowing some huge liner to pa.s.s, or some new battleship, fresh from Elswick, to sail down the river, on its way to make its trial trip over the "measured mile" in the open sea at the mouth of the river, and thereafter to take its place among the armaments of the nations.

The High Level Bridge allows ships of any height to pa.s.s under its lofty and graceful arches, which look so light, but are yet so strong. This splendid bridge is an enduring monument of Robert Stephenson, whose work it was; and the story of its erection, at the cost of nearly half a million of money, makes most interesting reading. It took nearly two and a half years to build, and was opened for traffic in 1849--little more than three years after the first pile was driven in. A few months later, in 1850, the newly built Central Station, with its imposing portico, was opened by Queen Victoria.

Pa.s.sing down the Tyne from Newcastle, which requires separate notice, and Walker, with its reminiscences of "Walker Pit's deun weel for me,"

we arrive at Wallsend, which in twenty-five years has grown from a colliery village with a population of 4,000 to a town of 23,000 inhabitants. Here are great shipbuilding and repairing yards, chemical works and cement works; here, too, are Parsons' Steam Turbine Works, where was designed and built the little "Turbinia," on which tiny vessel the early experiments were made with the new engines; and here are the famous mines which have made "Best Wallsend" a synonym for best household coal all over the land. These mines, after having been closed for many years, were reopened at the beginning of the century, and now turn out upwards of one thousand tons of coal per day.

The church of St. Peter, at Wallsend, is little more than a hundred years old; the old Church of Holy Cross, now long disused, was built towards the end of the twelfth century. But Wallsend itself, as all the world knows, is of much greater antiquity, for was it not, as its name proclaims, situated at the end of the Great Wall? Its name then, however, was not Wallsend but Segedunum.

Willington Quay, further down the river, was, for a time, the home of George Stephenson, and here his son, Robert, was born. At Howdon, which used to be known as Howdon Pans, from the salt-pans there, the painter John Martin and his brothers once worked when boys, being employed in some rope-works. Here, too, the Henzells, a family of refugees who settled in the district in the days of Elizabeth, founded some gla.s.s works, for which industry the Tyne has been famous from that day to this.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RIVER TYNE AT NEWCASTLE (showing Swing Bridge open).]

Before the railway on the south side of the river was laid down, pa.s.sengers who wished to reach Jarrow had to alight at Howdon and cross the river; and a racy dialect song--"Howdon for Jarrow" with its refrain of "Howdon for Jarra--ma hinnies, loup oot"--commemorates the fact.

Willington Quay and Howdon carry on the line of shipbuilding yards to Northumberland Dock and the staithes of the Tyne Commissioners, where the waggon ways from various collieries bring the coal to the water's edge. Tyne Dock, just opposite, and the Albert Edward Dock near North.

Shields, provide abundance of shipping accommodation, besides what is afforded by the river itself; and now the river flows between the steep banks of North and South Shields. As the names declare, these two growing and prosperous towns once consisted of a few fishermen's huts, or "shielings"; but that was long ago, when the north sh.o.r.e of the Tyne was owned by the Prior of Tynemouth, and the southern sh.o.r.e by the Bishop of Durham, and the citizens of Newcastle complained to King Edward I. that these two ecclesiastics had raised towns, "where no town ought to be," and that "fishermen sold fish there which ought to be sold at Newcastle, to the great injury of the whole borough, and in detriment to the tolls of our Lord the King." These quarrels between Newcastle and the other settlements on the Tyne continued with varying results, until in the days of Cromwell, Ralph Gardiner of Chirton, a little village close to North Shields, took up the cudgels for the growing towns; and by dint of great perseverance, and in spite of much persecution and ill-will, succeeded in getting most of the unjust privileges of their stronger neighbour abolished.

There were salt-pans, too, on both sides of the mouth of the Tyne, which were worked in connection with the monasteries from very early days; and Daniel Defoe, when he visited the north in 1726, declared that he could see from the top of the Cheviot "the smoke of the salt-pans at Sheals, at the mouth of the Tyne, which was about forty miles south of this."

North Shields clings haphazard to the steep bank of the Tyne, and spreads away up and beyond it, reaching out towards Wallsend on the river sh.o.r.e and Tynemouth along by the sea, the older parts by the river looking black and grimy to the last degree; but there is a silver lining to this very black cloud--not visible, it is true, but distinctly audible--in the great shipbuilding and repairing works known as Smith's Dock, one of the largest concerns of the kind in Great Britain, where so many hundreds of men earn their daily bread; and in the fishing industry, which was the foundation of the town's prosperity, and bids fair to be so for many years to come, as it is increasing year by year.

The Fish Quay at North Shields is a sight worth seeing; and, in the herring season, it is increasingly frequented by Continental buyers.

The fortunes of South Shields and Jarrow, though these towns are not in Northumberland, are yet so bound up with the story of the Tyne that no one would ever think of that river without them. Especially is this the case with Jarrow, which "Palmer's" has raised from a small colliery village to a large and flourishing town. In those famous yards, everything that is necessary for the building of the largest ironclad, from the first smelting of the ore until the last rivet is in place, can be done. All Northumbria--Northumbria in the ancient and widest sense of the word--owes a debt of grat.i.tude to Jarrow, for was it not the home of Bede? The monk of Jarrow, who spent all his long life in the same monastery by the Don, coming to it when he was a child of ten, made that spot of Northumbrian ground famed to the farthest limits of the civilized Europe of his day; and scholars from all over the Continent came to learn at the feet of the Northumbrian teacher. Beloved and revered by all, and in harness to the last hour of his busy life, he died in the year 735, just one hundred years after the coming of Aidan to Lindisfarne. "First among English scholars, first among English theologians, first among English historians, it is in the monk of Jarrow that English literature strikes its roots."--_J.R. Green_.

The Jarrow of to-day, and all its neighbours of industrial Tyneside, possess no beauty of aspect such as the towns that are more fortunately situated on the upper reaches of the river; they are m.u.f.fled in clouds of smoke and soot, and darkened by the necessities of their toil in grimy ores and the ever-present coal. But no one who has ever looked on these smoky reaches of the Tyne with a seeing eye, or steamed down the river on a day either of gloom or sunshine, can refuse to acknowledge that it has a certain grandeur, a stern beauty of its own, that can stir the heart and the imagination more deeply than any mere prettiness.

From the numberless hives of activity on both sides of the river clouds of smoke roll heavily upward, and jets of steam from panting machinery leap up in momentary whiteness on the dark background; the white wings of flocks of wheeling gulls flash in the occasional sunshine which lights up the scene, and between the clouds there are glimpses of blue sky. Towards sunset, the evening mists drape the darkening banks and crowded shipping in a soft robe of gray, which, together with the glowing sky behind, produces most wonderful Turneresque effects; and the fall of night on the river only changes the aspect without diminishing the interest of the scene. The blaze from a myriad workshops and forges glows against the darkness, the lamps twinkle overhead on the steep banks, and the lights from wharf and steamer are reflected in a thousand shimmering lines on the dark water, which flows on soundlessly, like the river of a dream.

On a day of wind and sun all these beauties are intensified a thousandfold; the smoke is blown hither and thither in flying clouds, the current seems to rush more swiftly, and a sense of vigorous life permeates the whole scene, giving to the beholder a feeling of keen exhilaration, as of new life rushing through his veins. Especially is this the case on reaching the mouth of the river and meeting the dancing waters of the open harbour, where the twin piers of South Shields and Tynemouth reach out sheltering arms. Within the wide bay they enclose, the storm-driven vessel may always find comparatively smooth water, how wildly soever the waves may rage and roar outside.

It is difficult to believe that so lately as the years 1858-60, the "bar" at the mouth of the Tyne was an insuperable obstacle to all but vessels of very moderate draught; and that ships might lie for days, and sometimes weeks, after being loaded, before there came a tide high enough to carry them out to sea. The river was full of sand-banks, and little islands stood here and there--one in mid-stream, where the ironclads are now launched at Elswick. Three or four vessels might be seen at once b.u.mping and grounding on the "bar" unable to make their way over. Well might the old song say--

"The ships are all at the bar, They canna get up to Newcastle!"

An old map of the Tyne shows a number of sand-banks down the lower reaches of the river, with ships aground on each, of them.

But the River Tyne Commissioners have changed all that, and their implement of warfare has been the hideous but necessary dredger. No longer need vessels of heavy tonnage desert the Tyne for the Wear, as they were perforce driven to do during the first half of the nineteenth century, for the Wearsiders had set about deepening and widening their river long before the Tynesiders did the same by theirs. Considerable and continuous pressure had to be brought to bear on the civic authorities at Newcastle before they finally took action; but having once done so, the future of the Tyne was a.s.sured. Now it ranks second only to the Thames in the actual number of vessels entering and leaving, and owns only the Mersey its superior in the matter of tonnage.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IV.

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.

"Her dusky hair in many a tangle clings About her, and her looks, though stern and cold, Grow tender with the dreams of by-gone days."

--_W.W. Tomlinson_.

The outward signs of "by-gone days," in the Newcastle of to-day, with the one notable exception of the Castle, must be diligently sought out amongst the overwhelming ma.s.s of what is often called "rampant modernity," of which the town to-day chiefly consists. The modernity, however, is not all bad, as this favourite phrase would imply; much of it is doubtless regrettable and a very little of it perhaps inevitable; but no one will deny either the modernity or the beauty of Grey Street, one of the finest streets in any English town; or the fine appearance of Grainger Street, Blackett Street, Eldon Square, or any other of the stately thoroughfares with which Grainger and Dobson enriched the town within the last eighty years--no one, that is, who has learned to "lift his eyes to the sky-line in pa.s.sing along a thoroughfare" instead of keeping them firmly fixed at the level of shop windows.

The grim old building which, when it was new, gave its name to the town, is one for which no search needs to be made; its blackened and time worn walls are seen from the train windows by every traveller who enters the city from the south. So near is it to the railway, that in the ultra-utilitarian days of sixty or seventy years ago, it narrowly escaped the ign.o.ble fate of being used as a signal-cabin. It was rescued, however, by the Society of Antiquaries, and carefully preserved by them--more fortunate in this respect than the castle of Berwick, for the platform of Berwick railway station actually stands on the spot once occupied by the Great Hall of the Castle.

The site of the New Castle, on a part of the river bank which slopes steeply down to the Tyne, had been occupied centuries before by a Roman fort, constructed by order of the Emperor Hadrian, who visited Britain A.D. 120. He also constructed a bridge over the Tyne at this spot, fort and bridge receiving the name of Pons Aelii, after the Emperor (Publius AElius Hadria.n.u.s). This became the second station on the Great Wall erected by Hadrian's orders along the line of forts which Agricola had raised forty years before. This station shared the fate of others on the abandonment of Britain by its powerful conquerors, who had now for more than two hundred years been its no less powerful friends and protectors.

Pons Aelii fell into ruins; but so advantageous a site could not long be overlooked, and we read of a Saxon settlement there, apparently that of a religious community, from which fact it was known as Monkchester. All the records of this period seem to have perished, for we hear nothing of the settlement during the Danish invasions; but a Saxon town of some kind was evidently in existence at the time of the Conquest, though in 1073 three monks from the south who came to York, and, obtaining a guide to "Muneche-cester," sought for some religious house in that settlement, could find none, and were prevailed upon by the first Norman Bishop of Durham, Walcher, to stay at Jarrow. The years from 1069 to 1080 were evil years for Northumberland, for at the first-named date the Conqueror devastated the North, and left neither village nor farm unscathed; and, as the desolated land was beginning to recover again, Odo of Bayeux and Robert of Normandy relentlessly laid it waste once more, partly in revenge for the murder of Bishop Walcher at Gateshead, and partly to punish Malcolm of Scotland for his invasion of Norman territory.

It was on his return from this expedition, which had penetrated as far north as Falkirk, that Robert, by his father's orders, raised a stronghold on the Tyne on the site of the old Roman fort, in the year 1080. His brother, William Rufus, erected a much stronger and better one, the Keep of which, re-built by Henry II., stands to-day dark and grim, looking out over river and town, as it has stood since the Red King ruled the land, and, like his father, the Conqueror, found it desirable to have a stronghold at this northern point of his turbulent realm, around which a town might grow up in safety.

The roof and battlements of the Keep are modern, but the rest of it--the walls, 12 to 18 feet thick; the dismal dungeon, or guard chamber, with iron rings and fetters still fastened to the walls and central pillar; the beautiful little chapel, with its finely-ornamented arches; the little chambers in the thickness of the walls; the well, 94 feet deep, sunk through the solid masonry into the rock beneath; the arrow slits in the walls; the stones in the roof scored with frequent bolts from the besiegers' crossbows, one of which bolts is firmly embedded in the wall opposite one of the narrow windows; the ancient weapons and armour--all these breathe of the days when the Red King's castle took its part in the doings of our hardy ancestors in those stormy times in which they lived and fought.

The last time the old Keep was called upon to act as fortress and refuge in time of war was in Stuart days, after the ten weeks siege of Newcastle by the Scottish General Leslie, Earl of Leven, in 1644, when brave "Governor Marley" and his friends held out in the castle for a few days longer, after the town was taken. In memory of this stout defence and long resistance King Charles gave to the town its motto--_Fort.i.ter defendit triumphans_, which Bates gives as having originally been _Fort.i.ter defendendo triumphat_--"She glories in her brave defence."

Two of the original fireplaces still remain in the Castle, and there are besides many objects of great interest which have been bestowed there from time to time for safe keeping; and many more are to be seen at the Black Gate, formerly the chief entrance to the Castle Hall and its surroundings. The Great Hall of the Castle, in which John Baliol did homage to Edward I. for the crown of Scotland, stood on the spot now covered by the Moot Hall. The Black Gate, the lower part of which is the oldest part of the building, which has many times been altered and repaired, is now used as a museum. There were nearly a dozen rooms in it, and not so many years ago the Corporation of Newcastle let these out in tenements, until this building also was rescued from degradation by the Newcastle Society of Antiquaries, who took down most of the dividing walls, and converted it into a museum. Here may be seen stored many sculptured stones, altars, and statues, which have been brought from the various Roman stations in the north.

Around the walls of one room are to be seen facsimiles of the famous Bayeux tapestry; there is also a model of the Castle as originally built, and there are many more exhibits and loans of the very greatest interest.

Of the walls of Newcastle only fragments remain, the most considerable portion being found between Westgate Road and St. Andrew's Churchyard; here are also remains of several of the watch-towers that stood at intervals around the walls--the Heber Tower, the Mordaunt or Morden Tower, and the Ever Tower. Between the two first named towers may be seen a little doorway, walled up, once used by the Friars, who obtained from Edward II. permission to make the doorway in order that they might the more easily reach their gardens and orchards outside; but they had to be ready to build it up at a moment's notice on the approach of an enemy. One of the towers--the Carliol or Weaver's Tower--was pulled down to make room for the Central Free Library, opened in 1881. Many little fragments of the Castle wall are to be seen near the High Level Bridge, incorporated in other walls, as far as the South Postern of the Castle, which is said to be the only remaining Norman postern in England and is the oldest remaining part of the Castle.

The old streets of Newcastle are fast disappearing to make room for the ever-increasing needs of commerce; at the moment of writing it is being proposed to pull down more of the historic street called the Side, to make room for new printing offices. At the head of this curious old street, which curves downward from the Cathedral to the river, stood the birthplace of Cuthbert Collingwood, who was to become Admiral Lord Collingwood, and second in fame only to Nelson himself. Both this house and the one where Thomas Bewick had his workshop, near the Cathedral, have gone to make room for new buildings.

At the foot of this street, where it curves to the river front, is the Sandhill, facing the Swing Bridge. Here are several old houses remaining, with many-windowed fronts, looking out on the river. One of these was the house of Aubone Surtees, the banker, whose daughter Bessie, in 1772, stole out of one of those little windows, and gave herself into the keeping of young Jack Scott, who was waiting for her below. The adventurous youth became Lord Chancellor of England, and is best known as Lord Eldon; his brother William became Lord Stowell, and was for many years Judge of the High Court of Admiralty.

Opposite the old houses of the Sandhill, close to the river bank, is the old Guildhall, greatly altered in appearance from the time when John Wesley preached from its steps to the keelmen and fishermen of the town.

It was here that a st.u.r.dy fishwife put her arms round him, when some boisterous spirits in the crowd threatened him with ill-usage, and, shaking her fist in their faces, swore to "floor them" if they touched her "canny man."

This spot, where the Swing Bridge unites the lower banks of the stream, seems always to have been the most convenient point for crossing the river, for the present bridge is the fifth that has spanned the Tyne at this point: Hadrian's bridge, Pons Aelii; a mediaeval bridge destroyed by fire in 1248; the Old Tyne Bridge, swept away in the flood of 1771; the successor of this, which was found too low to allow of the pa.s.sage of such large vessels as were able to sail up the Tyne after the deepening of the river bed; and the present Swing Bridge, which is worked by hydraulic machinery, the invention of Lord Armstrong. We do not know how long Hadrian's bridge lasted, but William the Conqueror, when returning from his expedition into Scotland in 1071, was obliged to camp for a time at "Monec-cestre," as the Tyne was in flood, and there was no bridge.

Some ancient houses are to be found in Low Friar Street, one of which, with winged heads and dolphins carved on it, is said to be the oldest house in Newcastle. Turning up an opening on the west side of this street, all that is left of the ancient Blackfriars' Monastery may be seen; some of its rooms are used as the meeting places of various Trade Guilds, and the rest form low tenement houses, in the walls of which are many Gothic archways and ancient window-openings built up. Over the door of the Smith's Hall is a carving of three hammers, and the inscription:--

"By hammer and hand All artes do stand."

This Hall was formerly the Great Hall of the monastery; and here Edward Baliol did homage to Edward III. for his crown of Scotland. Nun Street, leading out of Grainger Street, reminds us of the days when the Nunnery of St. Bartholomew stood in this part of the town, and the Nun's Moor was part of the grounds belonging to the establishment. In High Friar Street, which was not then the dilapidated lane it now appears, Richard Grainger was born.