England -- Antiquities, Roman; Hadrian's Wall (England); Walls, Roman -- England
But I have wandered a long way from Peel Crag. I did not need to go
to "Twice Brewed" for tea; I was fortunate in having a friend near by
who had often made tea for me when I was painting on the Wall. And
to her I went now. I found she had visitors. A great event had
taken place in the neighbourhood the night before; there had been a
local subscription dance in the barn of Twice Brewed Farm (or East
Twice Brewed, as it is sometimes called. It was the Inn in Hutton's
time). The people "out-by" had never had such an opportunity before,
though "in-by," at Haltwhistle, there were dances in plenty. Three
of the dancers {136} were calling--bonny young girls whose first
dance it had been, and they were full of it. "It was champion!"--or
"It was terrible nice!" (their highest terms of praise). They had
breakfasted at five o'clock in the morning before going to bed. One
of them had done her hair up for the first time in honour of the
occasion. "There was a pocket of hairpins in it, more hairpins than
hair, and yet it wouldn't keep up!" And so they ran on, while I
enjoyed the "berry-cake" and gingerbread for which my hostess was
famous. She was busy making one of the wadded quilts which one sees
so often along the line of the Wall. And their rag-carpets, or
"stubbed mats," as they call them, are sometimes like bits of stained
glass! They frequently dye the cloth themselves, the exact colour
they want, and make very elaborate and rich designs.
And now we come to Winshields, the highest point to which the Wall
rises, 1230 feet above the sea. Below, on the left, is a farm-house
known as "The Bog," and south of that, very near to Wade's Road, runs
the Vallum.
It is impossible to miss the line of the Wall in the high regions,
for it is always on the ridge. I cycled out one day through Caw Gap
to the hamlet of Edges Green, along one of the little-used roads that
run north into the lonely wastes, in order to make a sketch of
Winshields from "out-by," {137} that is to say, from the country to
the north of the Wall. I had barely finished this sketch when a
brilliant flash of lightning warned me to move, and it was soon
followed by thunder and heavy rain. I found shelter, and a kind
welcome (which included tea, as usual!) in the nearest house. My
good hostess apologized for having "nothing" to give me for tea,
because she lived so far "out-by," but I found an abundant
spread--cheese, jam, scones, two kinds of cake, and white and brown
bread. I wondered what "something" would have been! When it came to
paying, she said: "Oh, it's nothin'; it's just a drink o' tea."
She had lived there twenty-one years, and told me they were often
snowed up in winter and had to dig themselves out. "But we're
nothin' to some folks," she added; "we're 'out-by' to Hautwissel, but
we're 'in-by' to Hope-Alone!" She was referring to a lonely farm 2
miles farther north, standing at a height of 900 feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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