Northumberland Yesterday and To-dayTerry, Jean F. (Jean Finlay)
History
Northumberland Yesterday and To-day
Terry, Jean F. (Jean Finlay)
Northumberland (England) -- Guidebooks; Northumberland (England) -- History
This little burn is one of the prettiest of mountain streams; and
in the district surrounding it are perhaps more points of interest
than any other stream of such inconsiderable dimensions can show,
saving only its neighbour, the Till. The whole of the surrounding
country, wild, lonely, and romantic, teems with memories and
reminders of the past. Sir Walter Scott, while on the visit already
referred to, found an additional pleasure in the presence of so
many relics of ancient days in the neighbourhood. “Each hill,” he
wrote to a friend, “is crowned with a tower, or camp, or cairn, and
in no situation can you be near more fields of battle.”
Indeed, the whole district of the Cheviots, and the lower lines of
swelling hills into which the land subsides as it nears the sea, is
crowded with the memorials of an earlier race; from every hill-top
and rocky height they speak with tantalising half-revelations of
that race which the Romans found here when their galleys brought
them to the land which was to them Ultima Thule. No convincing
explanation has yet been found of the concentric circular markings,
with radiating grooves from the cup-shaped hollow in the middle,
which are scored on the rocks wherever traces of an ancient camp
are found; and the numbers of these traces are proof that this
district was once a very thickly populated part of Britain.
And when Angle and Saxon were driving the early inhabitants before
them, westward and southward, these hills and valleys still
sheltered a considerable population; and Bede tells us of a royal
residence not far away, at the foot of the well known Yeavering
Bell, one of the more important hills of the range. It rises to a
height of more than 1,100 feet, and then abruptly ends in a wide,
almost level top, grass-grown and boulder-strewn, and crowned near
the centre with a roughly-piled cairn. The ancient name of
Yeavering Bell, as given by Bede in his account of the labours of
St. Paulinus, was Ad-gefrin.
To recall the days when King Edwin and his queen, Ethelburga, came
here from the royal city of Bamburgh, we must go back to a time
nearly forty years after the Bernician chieftain, Ida, established
himself in that rocky fortress, from whence he ruled a district
roughly corresponding to the present counties of Durham and
Northumberland, and known as Bernicia. One of Ida’s successors,
Ethelric, overcame the tribe of Angles then established in the
neighbouring district of Deira—the Yorkshire of to-day. His
successor, Ethelfrith, ruled over the united district, and married
the daughter of Ella, the vanquished chieftain. Her brother, Edwin,
he drove into exile, and the young prince found refuge at the court
of Redwald of East Anglia, where he remained for some years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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