Chapter XIV: Walltown to Gilsland

Walltown farm-house is built on the site of the Tower where lived John Ridley, the brother of the martyred Bishop, who writes to him as "My beloved brother, John Ridley, of the Walltown."

The farmer came and spoke to me while I was making a drawing of the house from the Walltown mile-castle.

"This is a very historic place. John Ridley lived here four hundred years ago, and here am I, John Ridley, living here still."

In Haltwhistle Church, only 3 miles away, there is a very interesting tombstone to the memory of John Ridley, with a long rhyming epitaph (_see facing page_).

Near the farm-house there is a very beautiful avenue of old trees, beech, sycamore, ash and a few Scotch firs. A park-like meadow lies in front, in which also are fine trees. Range after range of hills sweeps away to the south, the most distant being Cross Fell.

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IHON REDLE
THATE SVM
TIM DID BE
THEN: LAIRD OF THE WALTON
GON IS HE OVT OF THES VAL OF MESRE
HIS BONS LIES VNDER THES STON
--------------------------------------------
WE MVST BELEVE BE GODS MERSE
INTO THES WORLD GAVE HES SON
THEN FOR TO REDEM AL CHRESNTE
SO CHRIST HAES HES SOVL WOVN
--------------------------------------------
AL FAETHFVL PEOPLE MAY BE FAEN
WHEN DATH COMES THAT NON CA FLE
THE BODE KEPT THE SOVL IN PAEN
THROVGH CHRIST IS SET AT LEBERTE
--------------------------------------------
AMONG BLESSED COMPANE TO REMANE
TO SLEP IN CHRISTE NOWE IS GON
YET STEL BELEVES TO HAV AGAE
THROVGH CHRIST A IOYFVL RESVRRECCION
--------------------------------------------
AL FRENDES MAY BE GLAD TO HAER
WHEN HIS SOVL FROM PAEN DID GO
OVT OF THES WORLD AS DOETH APPER
IN THE YEER OF OVR LORD
A · 1562
XX

The farm-house sounds kept coming up to me as I sat on the hill painting, till at last everything seemed to be asleep, even the farm-carts, which were turned with their shafts up in a row in the yard.

One evening, while I was sitting here, there was a wonderful effect of rainbow-coloured clouds above the sun. I never saw anything like it before. {150} These clouds were in rays, radiating upwards from the sun as a centre, and they were just like wisps of rainbow. I can't describe them in any other way. They would form and then vanish, and form again, and one spot immediately above the sun always seemed more brilliant than all the rest.

The most modern version of "John Ridley" showed me the chives which are supposed to date back to Roman times, and which look like patches of fine grey grass growing on the flat rocks on the hillside below the mile-castle. I should never have found them without help. I pulled some up, and ate some of the tiny onion-like roots with my bread-and-cheese lunch, just to see how they must have tasted to the Roman sentries, who probably ate them on the same spot when they were off duty.

I had finished my sketch of Walltown, and it was still in my painting-case when I was sitting working late one evening on Sewingshields Crags. The case lay on the grass by my side. When it was time to go home, I strapped it up tight as usual. Next morning, when I looked at the sketch, there was a large, round, dry yellow patch spread out over it! A slug had walked into my painting-case, and in strapping it up I had compressed it on the middle of the picture. I removed it carefully with a pen-knife, and every scrap of colour came with it. The (probable) birthplace of the slug and the actual {151} scene of its death are two of the pictures which are not included in this book.

I passed another Wall turret, with only the back wall standing. Just after that came a wide nick, full of trees, alders and hawthorn, still dripping from the recent rain. The sweet smell of wet young bracken greeted me all the time. Before the next nick there are some good bits of Wall, seven or eight courses high.

So up and down went the Wall, and I with it, clinging to the sides of the steepest nicks, with unswerving loyalty to plan! Sometimes its northern face, overhanging the cliffs, presented an unbroken surface of facing-stones for 5 or 6 feet; sometimes there was but a mere mound.

Several of the nicks are little groves of trees. Sheep were grazing everywhere, and rabbits still abounded. You might see them sitting up on the Wall, the evening sun shining through their transparent ears, with a (literally) blood-red glow; or playing all sorts of pranks, apparently without fear of intrusion.

The Wall finally runs straight to the edge of Greenhead Quarry, where an iron fence is placed, to keep the unwary (or too-faithful!) follower of the Wall from tumbling over the cliff, as, alas! the Wall has already done.

In the 1884 edition of Dr. Bruce's Handbook, there is an interesting picture of a Wall turret standing {152} on the very edge of the quarry. Now it has gone; it has simply been quarried away!

Not only was the rain over, but the sun was sending long level golden rays over the tops of the hills as I came to the quarry; and this was the end of my Wall-walk for the day. They were standing at the door looking out for me when I arrived at the house where I was to spend the night, for I had been delayed by the storm.

I had felt indignant about that Wall turret, but the next day I realized the necessity of forgiving my enemies (in the shape of the Greenhead Quarry Company), for I accepted an invitation to visit the quarry before continuing my walk.

It is a whinstone quarry, needless to say, for it is busy cutting a large slice out of the basaltic ridge on which the Wall has clung for so many miles. I had previously been puzzled by the appearance of the Cawfields Quarry, which is quite a landmark for miles, making a rich yellow patch in the landscape. If basalt is a dark blue-grey stone, how can it make a yellow patch? Now was my opportunity to inquire. The manager told me that although whinstone is a dark blue-grey stone, yet it has a yellow "skin" which forms on it under certain conditions, as, for example, when the earth has got in through cracks. It is not a good building-stone, apart from its colour and the difficulty of dressing it, for capillary attraction draws the water {153} up through it very freely, so that it always seems damp. "The Romans were not able to work it, as it can't be worked with wedges."

But somehow they _did_ manage to cut deep ditches through it at the top of Limestone Bank! The great heaps of grey whin-dust (as it is called) lying at the quarry were waiting, I was told, to be made into blocks of artificial stone, being subjected to great pressure, and thus forming an artificial "conglomerate."

Before I left they gave me a practical illustration of how the stone is brought down by blasting.

The Wall continues its course along the fields opposite the quarry, forming a boundary wall between them. It is not in good condition (having so recently tumbled over the cliff, a frivolous person might say!), but its ditch is magnificent, and was full of primroses, very late for the time of year.

The Roman fort of MAGNA is just here, lying to the south of both Wall and Vallum, which now draw near together again, after their long separation. No doubt this fort was originally built by Agricola, long before the Wall was thought of. A recent discovery, given below, goes to prove that.

The site of the fort is to the west of the farm-house of Carvoran. I had no difficulty in tracing the north rampart and the north ditch. The Stanegate came up to the fort, direct from {154} Corstorpitum and Cilurnum; and another Roman road, the Maiden Way, coming from the south, joined it near the south-east angle. The two roads are one as far as Gilsland, where they separate, the former aiming for Carlisle, and the latter for Birdoswald and Bewcastle.

During the recent war, a very interesting bronze vessel was found at Carvoran. "Like a bucket, only the top was where the bottom should be," was the graphic description given me locally, and when I saw the vessel at Chesters Museum, I felt how well it described it. It was a measure for corn, of the time of Domitian, the last emperor under whom Agricola served, but the emperor's name had been erased. It therefore dates from about 82 A.D., but it looks as if it had been made yesterday. The inscription is as clear and clean as ever, except where it has been erased.

"IMP*/*/*/***** CAESARE
AVG · GERMANICO · XV · COS
EXACTVS · AD · S · XVIIS
HABET · P · XXXIIX"

It states that the vessel was measured and tested to hold 17½ pints. It really holds 20 pints.

No doubt the garrison at Magna received a tribute of British corn in this measure.

It had long lain near the surface of the ground at Carvoran, and the postman had kicked at it many a time as he passed, thinking its rim was {155} an old horseshoe. At last a boy on the farm had the curiosity to get a spade and dig it up.

The Wall-ditch runs along the fields, in splendid condition, down to the valley of the Tipalt. The path lies along the north margin of the ditch. It led me over a fence at the bottom of the second field into a beautiful little tree-filled glade, with great swelling undulations in the surface of the ground as it sloped rapidly down to the Tipalt. At the bottom of this glade Thirlwall Castle came suddenly into view, and I must confess I was greatly struck by the beauty of its situation.

Thirlwall Castle (shown in the Frontispiece) dates from the Middle Ages, and has figured largely in border warfare. It is built entirely of Roman stones from the Wall. It is now in a very ruined state, all its eastern side having fallen into the river Tipalt, above which it stands. A little wooden bridge crosses the stream just below the Castle, and on this I sat to paint the picture. Behind me was Holmhead farm-house where there is a Roman inscribed stone built upside-down into the back premises, and where a dear old lady lives, the patter of whose wooden clogs I could hear most of the time as she went about her work. She used to visit me at intervals, and brought me cushions to sit upon every day I was there.

I spent some happy times on the bridge, with the life of the little hamlet going on around me: {156} the sound of the dirling-pin on washing-day, the beating of the bucket to summon the calves to be fed, the laughter of the children as they played in the stream, and the tap, tap of the hammer of the old man at the cottage of Dooven Foot opposite. He was busy making an erection by the side of the stream to keep his fowls within bounds.

One evening I saw something white, high up on the walls of the Castle, and went to see what it was. Two little girls, about nine years old, had climbed adventurously up the walls. They came down and talked to me; told me how some day "teacher" was going to take them to the source of the Tipalt, where it rose in the hills. We got out my map and studied it. We talked of the lonely farms "out-by," with their picturesque names, such as Far-Glow, and Hope-Alone, and Seldom-Seen; and we pictured the solitary lights shining out in the darkness, and the long, quiet winter evenings they must spend, sometimes cut off by snow from all communication with the outer world; until at last a voice from below called, in shocked tones, "Nora, don't ye know it's nine o'clock?" And so they hurried off to bed.

Holmhead is a typical Northumbrian farm-house, built of Roman stones from the Wall.

I painted a picture of it in August, when hay-making was going on. To our southern eyes, the method of carting hay in these parts seems {157} very slow and laborious. The hay-wain is dispensed with altogether. Each hay-cock, or "pike," as they call them, is dragged separately, by means of chains and a windlass, on to a flat cart with low iron wheels, called a "bogie." The trundling of the iron wheels of the bogie on the stony roads becomes a very familiar sound in the hay-season. We timed the work as I sat painting on the hill, and we found it took three men one and three-quarter hours to bring in one pike and unload it, though it came from only two fields away! They call the process "leading" hay. The hilly character of the ground, no doubt, accounts for the method employed.

Continuing my walk, I crossed the little wooden bridge over the Tipalt, and then bore round to the left, past cottages, keeping now alongside the tawny little river, a true tributary of the "tawny Tyne."

A heron flew low down across my path, and dived between the low bushes on the river bank quite close to me. I peeped through them, and there he was, standing majestically on a stone in the middle of the river, fishing, looking very beautiful with his blue-grey plumage and dull yellow legs.

Soon I came to the railway; the Wall is quite lost in these low-lying fields, and one has to cross the railway by the only path, almost on the site of the Vallum. Passing a row of new cottages, called Thirlwall View, I came out into the road {158} leading to Gilsland, and now I could see the Vallum in the fields across the road. I entered the nearest field-gate, and was now almost on the site of the Wall again, as far as Wallend Farm. Then the Wall-ditch appeared again, very conspicuous indeed, of great size and interest. I pursued it through grassy meadows, which seemed to be all ditch and rampart, and over stone walls, till I came to a thick group of trees beside a stream. Here were the farm-houses of Chapel House and Foul Town. A troop of young black cattle saw in me a hope of getting through the farm-gate, and followed me closely, even licking my hands as I opened the gate! But they did not get through. I could not find the "Hadrian" stone at Chapel House which Dr. Bruce refers to, and they could tell me nothing of it at the farm; but I understand it has been taken to the Black Gate Museum, Newcastle. I crossed a bridge over the stream and continued westward, Orchard House, Gilsland and the Shaws Hotel coming into view on the green slopes on the right.

At the Red House, Gap, a pet lamb with a garland round its neck, made overtures to me. At the White House, I turned into the farm-yard, and went to examine the centurial stone mentioned by Dr. Bruce. It was thickly whitewashed over, and quite illegible. I had seen it so on a previous visit, and had begged to be allowed to remove {159} the whitewash, much to the amusement of the farmer's wife. However, she humoured me, and brought me a bowl of warm water and a sponge. It was all the kinder of her, because it was Gilsland show-day, a great occasion, and she was busy sending off the men and the animals in all their bravery, with coats being brushed, and manes and tails properly combed out--all in the farm-yard.

I left the stone looking beautifully clear, though it made what the farmer probably thought was an ugly dark patch in the white wall; but I begged them to keep it so when next the wall was whitewashed.

So I was disappointed to find they had forgotten. No wonder Dr. Bruce himself failed at first to find it on his last visit; that is what I was told had happened.

After leaving White House, I found the Wallditch again magnificent between Gap and Gilsland Station, and the mounds of the Vallum running on a higher level than the Wall, for a wonder.

The line of the Wall crosses a side-road to the south of Gilsland Station, and continues through fields to the Poltross Burn, which is the boundary between Northumberland and Cumberland. I followed it, but coming to a stone wall, with piggeries and bee-hives set up close against it, blocking my path, I had to climb the wooden fence on to the railway embankment, and so came without difficulty {160} to the edge of the burn, just where the Wall must have crossed it.

There is a curious stratification of the rocks here; sloping ledges, from 4 to 6 feet high, make a series of great natural steps down. There must be a drop of some 20 feet from the bed of the stream, where the Wall crossed it to the point where the railway arch crosses it, only a few yards away.

Farther to the south, the banks of the stream are lined with Roman stones, where the Vallum crossed it; also the sides of the Vallum-ditch. This is not found elsewhere.

Crossing the burn, I climbed the steep bank on the opposite side, which is planted thick with trees, and came out just at the site of the mile-castle which is known as Poltross Burn mile-castle. It was evidently placed here to guard the passage of the stream. It was excavated by the late Mr. J. P. Gibson and Mr. F. G. Simpson in 1910, but has been covered up again, and only a cairn of stones between the stream and the railway-line marks its situation. Locally, it was known as "The King's Stables" by the country people. The discovery in this mile-castle of a flight of stairs leading up to the rampart-walk is especially valuable, because from them a calculation of its height could be made. It was found to be 12 feet above the first-period floor, thus confirming previous calculations of its probable height. There was also a complete {161} arrangement of inner buildings with walls 2 feet thick.

The Wall can be seen from here running through the Vicarage garden, the other side of the railway.

I crossed the line opposite the Vicarage, and then cut across the fields, past the schools, into the road.

Calling at the Vicarage, I was most kindly received by the Vicar, who is always willing to welcome pilgrims of the Wall. He showed me the fine piece of Wall in his garden, the most striking feature of which is the unusually wide foundation which has been laid bare. There were also two Roman altars, which had long formed part of the altar-steps at the little Saxon Church of Over Denton, 2 miles away; and some centurial stones, ballista balls and mill-stones. He pointed out where the Vallum also ran through his garden, for Vallum and Wall are very near together here.

At Over Denton Church the original chancel arch is a Roman gateway brought from Amboglanna, and the font is formed from the capital of a Roman pillar.

Close by Gilsland Vicarage lives Miss Ewart, of Raise House, a favourite resort of archæologists, and students of the Wall, and to her I appealed for lunch.

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