Chapter XVII: Bleatarn to Grinsdale

From Bleatarn the road runs on the Wall for some distance. The undulating pastures are exchanged for a marshy common, covered with gorse, brambles and heather, and known as "White Moss." Here the Vallum is seen to have four mounds instead of only two. The ground was too marshy to allow of the digging of a ditch, so they raised two extra mounds to make a hollow between, the ditch being the objective. At Bleatarn, where they get on to rock again, the four mounds slide into two.

A Roman road crosses White Moss, and digging has shown that it was made by laying grey clay on the original surface, then a layer of coarse gravel, and fine gravel on the top of that.

At Wallhead the ditch is very clearly seen in the pasture-land. The road on to Walby runs between hedges, and beyond it merges into a grassy track, so much overgrown that it is evidently seldom trodden. Near Wallhead it was muddy and full of puddles from last night's rain.

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It had turned out a very hot day, though there was enough wind to make a thunderous sound in the boughs of the still leafless ash-trees. (Why do bare ash-boughs beat all other trees for sound?) As I picked my way among the puddles, a little red squirrel came running along, holding his tail out very straight to keep it out of the mud. I stood like a rock, and he paid no heed to me, but stopped to drink out of a puddle at my feet before running up a tree.

When I reached the untrodden grassy track, I took off my shoes and stockings and walked bare-footed, the grass feeling deliciously cool and soft. Broom in full blossom lined the hedges, almost meeting overhead, and scattered its blossoms to make a yellow carpet for my feet.

It was the drowsiest of days. An old buff hen, asleep by a gate, awoke with a start when a stick snapped under me, but she only opened one eye, and then "dropped off" again. I saw no one else but an Irish terrier, very happy and busy, and out without leave, judging by his expression.

At Walby the Wall-ditch is clearly marked, filled with greenish water.

The grassy lane continues to Wallfoot, and here I had to come out on to the main road, for Brunstock Park lies across the route of Wall and Vallum. A section through both was made in 1894 by Mr. and Mrs. T. H. Hodgson; and the Vallum-ditch was {193} first shown to be flat and not V-shaped. A flag-pavement was found near the Wall. The Roman Military Way was also discovered, with a double kerb in the centre, as for a two-horse chariot.

I passed Draw-dykes Castle, with its three busts on the roof, a very gaunt and unattractive building of red sandstone; and then I turned off on the right, where the road crosses Brunstock Beck, and followed the beck until I struck the line of the Wall once more. The beck forms the western boundary of Brunstock Park.

Some small boys with a fishmonger's truck were collecting firewood in the meadow by the beck, and thought everybody's quest must be the same. "How many sticks have _you_ got, missus?" they cried as I passed.

The wall was easily traceable across the fields, and led me out on to the Scaleby road, across the road into more fields, and so to Tarraby.

Here I turned off to the left, to find the Near Boot Inn, and get some tea. I had met with a small adventure near Tarraby, on my way out in the morning. I had my lunch of sandwiches and biscuits in my pockets, and I was standing by a field-gate, studying my Ordnance-map, when suddenly there sprang upon me, out of the air apparently, five greyhound pups. Pups though they were, their forepaws reached to my shoulders. They were all over me in a moment; and, my {194} hands being encumbered with the map, in saving that I never gave a thought to my pockets. Their noses led them straight there, and before I realized what they were about they had divided my lunch between them, and were coming back for more! They loved me so dearly after that that I could not get rid of them for the distance of several fields.

In consequence of this I had had nothing since breakfast but the "pot o' milk" at Bleatarn, so I sought the Inn at Tarraby very hopefully.

But the landlady was not nearly so sure that she wanted to give me some tea as I was that I wanted to have it. She did not actually refuse, but she did all she could to discourage me. She seemed to think that if she was the _Near Boot_, then I was certainly the "off leg"! She had a bad headache, and she hadn't any cake, nor any cream, nor much of anything apparently.

However, I took "a deal o' discouraging," and I sat on in the parlour and waited, for she had said: "Well, anyhow, I must attend to these men first."

As I looked at the pictures on the parlour walls, an idea suddenly dawned on me.

Every picture represented a prize greyhound!

When the landlady returned, I remarked casually that I was very hungry because my lunch had been stolen by five greyhound pups, and of course I avoided showing the least tinge of resentment or annoyance (having felt none!) She did not say {195} much, but I noticed a change in her manner, and when the tea did appear there were eggs and cake and pastry, to say nothing of cream, and home-made bread and butter and jam. And, to crown all, when I inquired for the headache, she said, "Do you know, it has gone!"

So I did full justice to her tea, while the men in the next room were telling each other what horses they had backed for the Derby, and how much they had lost.

Later, I learned that the landlord of the _Near Boot_ was a noted breeder of greyhounds.

From Tarraby the path along the Wall leads through a wicket-gate into a pasture, with a cinder-path along the hedge, and in this hedge Wall-stones are clearly seen. Then we go between two close-clipped hedges of hawthorn and beech, with growing crops, or plantations of baby trees, on either side. This brings us out at Stanwix (Stane-wegges: a place upon the "stone way").

Here we are on the site of another Roman fort, occupying a commanding situation. The church and churchyard now indicate its position. The ground slopes down steeply on three sides, and the river Eden draws a semi-circle round it, making thus an additional protection on the east, south and west. No inscriptions have been found to tell us what troops the Romans placed here, and no remains of the Wall or the fort are to be seen. The interesting {196} stone-figure of a Roman playing the bagpipes, which Hutton saw here used as a horseblock in the street, and which is now in the Tullie House Museum, Carlisle, was seen by a writer of 1794 "upon a door at Stanwix," and his illustration shows the bagpipes much more clearly than the stone does now.

Stanwix is now practically a suburb of Carlisle. Here I saw a funny sight. A baby in petticoats, certainly not so much as two years old, was sitting on his father's knee on a doorstep. An old country-woman was passing, lame in one leg, and with a very irregular gait. The baby looked at her, and began to call out: "Left ... left ... left ..." at regular intervals; and the old woman laughed heartily at being thus drilled, pulled herself up, and walked (as I fancied) rather less lame in consequence.

The Wall can be traced again near the Eden. I went down the road towards the famous Eden Bridge, and through the iron gate on the right, which is almost on the Vallum. This brought me into what seems to be the playground of Carlisle, along the banks of the river,--a playground so spacious that though half the city seemed to have come out to play this lovely evening, there still seemed any amount of room. The turf was very fresh and green and beautiful on the undulating slopes which run down to the river. Two stone posts on the bank above Hyssop Holme Well have {197} been placed to mark the site of the Wall and its ditch in this region, but there is nothing to show exactly where it crossed the Eden.

In order to trace its farther course as closely as possible, I referred the next morning to the 6-inch Ordnance-map in the Tullie House Museum. This shows how the Wall, after crossing the river, passed to the north of the Castle Hill, while the Vallum curved round to the south of it. Guided by the map, I followed the Wall as closely as I could, picking up traces here and there.

Starting from in front of the Castle, I went down Annetwell Street and Bridge Street, turning off by Bridge Lane on the right to Willowholme, where there is a disused mill. Leaving the mill on the right, I crossed a footpath, and then a footbridge over a stream, and bore round to the left, following this diminutive tributary of the Eden. The path soon crosses under the railway, and now we are again on the site of the Wall!

I found this a very unfrequented route, and the sluggish, gnat-beset little stream was not very attractive; but I was out to follow the Wall wherever it led me, no matter where. To-day it led me past the sewage-works, to a footpath by the Eden. The old disused bone-mill of Rattlingstones, with its high chimney and its still busy mill-race, was on my left. I stopped to look at the frothy water. What was that it was toying with, tossing backwards {198} and forwards, hiding and then revealing? I could hardly believe my eyes. It was a _mattress_, a nice large double-bed mattress, in excellent condition! Now how _did_ it get there? Mattresses are not the sort of thing one leaves about by mistake, or drops when one is out for a walk. I was obliged to go on without solving the problem.

Under the wide stone railway-bridge I passed next, and so came to the engine-sheds mentioned by Dr. Bruce. I crossed a footbridge, with steam from the engine-sheds puffing all round me, and so came to a stile which brought me out into the open fields which lie above the Eden--and here once more is Wall!

The left bank of the river is very high and precipitous, while the right bank is a gentle slope. I had no difficulty in finding the site of the Wall in these fields, nor in walking along it; and the Vallum runs parallel, a short distance to the south.

Now the walk is really beautiful, all the way to Grinsdale. Trees grow in profusion on the steep river bank, and the blue river below gleams up through their branches.

On the opposite bank a ploughman was cheering on his horses, and fishers were spreading out their nets to dry.

At a bend in the stream, Grinsdale came into view, and soon the path entered a delicious fir-plantation, with the resinous smell brought out by {199} the hot sun. Two men carrying huge sacks of firewood reminded me again of the coal-strike.

Just about here the Vallum and the Wall begin to diverge, the Wall following the river to Grinsdale, and the Vallum striking straight across the lower ground through Millbeck to Kirkandrews.

The railway-line to Silloth comes very close to the river here; in fact, the two have been running more or less alongside all the way from Rattlingstones, but I never knew a river so clever in hiding itself as the Eden. A traveller by train to Silloth would not guess he was quite close to a large river, so shyly does it conceal itself behind its steep southern bank.

After flowing in a northerly direction towards Grinsdale, it makes a sharp right-angled turn just at the village, and flows eastward past the church.

Grinsdale is a very pretty village, standing high up on this loop of the Eden, with the gardens of the houses sloping steeply down to the water. It seemed half asleep as I reached it. I came out into the road by a farm-house, making a mental note for future use of the sign it displayed: "Aerated Waters." I met no one in the village street but a farmer in his shirt-sleeves, who took his pipe out of his mouth to ejaculate, "Hot!" I took the opportunity before he put it in again to ask about the Roman Wall. He said he had heard there was a bit standing near the church, but he had never {200} seen it. So I turned off to the right, into fields which led to the church, following the bend of the river.

It seemed hotter and quieter than ever. A swan was standing asleep on one leg on the gravelly flat by the water's edge. In the churchyard the rooks were cawing drowsily, and dropped dead branches on me as I passed. It is a tiny church, with a tiny tower, all rough cast, and it stands on the very brink of the steep river bank. It is protected on the river-side by a strong stone wall into which Wall-stones have been built. A breakwater, also containing Wall-stones, runs down into the river, to protect the church wall. But as for Wall itself, I saw I was quite off the track.

Still, I was not sorry to sit and rest for a while in the cool of the churchyard.

On the opposite bank of the river, where it had encroached on the land, men were busy sinking piles--long, long rows of them--and bringing up loads of brushwood to build up the bank, and prevent further inroads.

Seeing them working so hard in the sun made me feel quite thirsty, and, remembering the sign I had seen at the farm, I turned back to find it. Such a comely farmer's wife answered my knock that I ventured to ask for tea instead of aerated water. She said: "Yes, if ye can wait a bit till I have made up the butter." Of course I could wait, so I went {201} off to explore the village a little more. A pleasant-faced elderly woman was driving a herd of cows out of a gate, so I asked my eternal question about the Wall. She said: "If ye want to know aught aboot Grinsdel, go to that hoose there," pointing with her finger. "_He'll_ tell ye; I'm a newcomer."

Just then "he" came into his front garden, so she hailed him, and passed me on. He told me where to pick up the line of the Wall again, and then he invited me in, to look at some old books etc. that he had, apologizing for "the litter" (which was invisible to me) because the housekeeper was away, and he and his brother were "doing for" themselves. He showed me an old Malacca cane, such as Joey Bagstock must have carried, with an ivory handle and a silver ring. It was inscribed: "David Stagg, 1701," and its pointed iron end looked as if David had been a heavy man, and had leant heavily upon it. Finally he left me in his parlour, happily absorbed in Hutchinson's _History of Cumberland_ (1794), and with his assurance that I should be "well oot o' the road there" for as long as I pleased. So if there is a Sherlock Holmes amongst my readers, when he notices hereafter the date 1794, he may possibly guess whence the facts that go with it were obtained.

The butter was on the very point of coming out of the churn when I reappeared at the farm. "Come and look at it!" cried the guidwife; "it's just {202} beautiful." And she picked up a jug of water and poured it into the churn. But, alas! she had left the cork out, and the water was splashing all round us on the stone floor of the dairy. I flew into the kitchen, where I had noticed the cork, and returned in triumph with it, to be met with an approving, "Why, ye'll mak' a farmer's wife yet!"

Then I had to "taste" the butter, to see if it was salt enough; and finally to taste it in a more satisfactory way, in the form of bread and butter with my tea.

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