Three miles from "the Quaker town," and a much greater distance from High Coniscliffe, as the river winds, is the ancient village of Croft, occupying both banks of the Tees. On the Yorkshire side is the famous spa, to which invalids resort to drink the waters and to take the baths, and where marvellous cures are said to have been effected in times past. There are four sulphureous springs, of a much more decided character than the one already visited at Gainford, and owing, it may be, some part of their attractiveness to the sweetness of their situation. Croft is very commonplace on the Durham and very lovely on the Yorkshire side. The stone bridge which connects the two portions of the village, built in 1676, is the finest which crosses the Tees at any part of its course. It is on the site of an older structure, which was deemed greatly important by Henry VIII., as "the most directe and sure way and passage for the king our Sovereign Lord's army," when it was necessary to march against the Scots. The present bridge has a series of seven ribbed arches of fair width, and is so substantial that it is likely to endure until it can boast a more than respectable antiquity. Croft Church is a half-brown, half-grey old building of mixed materials and of most evident age. It has an appearance more worn and dilapidated even than its years warrant, though it was built at least as early as the fifteenth century, seeing that it contains a tomb of one Richard Clervaux, who died in 1492. The interior of the church has great architectural interest, and the exterior is, in its quaint way, one of those "things of beauty" which deserve to remain "joys for ever." In this church Bishop Burnet may have listened to his first sermon, for it was at Croft that he was born. The Lord of the Manor of Croft, by the way, formerly held his lands on the peculiar condition that he should meet every newly-appointed Bishop of Durham on Croft Bridge, and, presenting him with a rusty old sword, declare--"My lord, this is the sword which slew the worm-dragon, which spared neither man nor woman nor child." Traditions of these worm-dragons are plentiful in the north of England. There was, for example, "the Lambton worm," slain by an ancestor of the present Earl of Durham, which used to devour a maiden at a meal; and there was "the loathly worm of Spindleston Haugh," with a similarly voracious appetite. The lands of Croft had evidently been given to some supposed dragon-slayer, and were continued to his descendants by the yielding up and the immediate return of the famous sword.