Border Reivers

From: Hexham Courant

FANS of BBC's Lark Rise to Candleford will have seen the villagers fretting recently about collecting "leazes" to see them through the winter.

Apparently, "leazing" is gleaning corn dropped by the reapers. Well it may be so in Oxfordshire, but not in Northumberland.

We have plenty of leazes here, but they are not spare ears of grain shared among the poor, though the word does mean community co-operation.

North-East "leazes" were small, communal hay fields. Each villager had rights to a portion of the leazes’ fodder, and could graze a set number of his beasts on the leazes after mowing.

It was a popular idea copied by almost every settlement in the region. Newcastle has its Leazes Park, Allendale has Thornley Leazes, Corbridge has Leazes Terrace, and Hexham has Shaftoe Leazes.

Today, Shaftoe Leazes is a street of substantial Victorian town houses, with hanging baskets and walled flower beds providing scarcely a mouthful of fodder.

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From: Journal Live

A RESCUE mission has been launched to protect four historic landmarks.

In the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Shildon Engine House near Blanchland, Ninebanks Tower in Northumberland, Muggleswick Grange in County Durham and the remains of Whitesyke and Bentyfield Lead Mines near Alston, Cumbria, are all scheduled ancient monuments.

All four sites are currently on English Heritage’s at-risk register but will be removed once the restoration work is done.

Jon Charlton, of the AONB Partnership, said: "These buildings taken together really tell the story of the North Pennines, how our ancestors down the ages lived and worked in the area".

"Over time they would have crumbled and disappeared. We want to protect what remains so that we and future generations can see these legacies in the landscape of what it was like to live those past lives".

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From Hexam Courant

Work is getting under way to remove Shildon Engine House and Muggleswick Grange near Blanchland, Ninebanks Tower in the West Allen Valley, and the remains of Whitesyke and Bentyfield lead mines near Alston from English Heritage’s list of shame, the Heritage at Risk Register.

Work should have started last month, but snow and freezing temperatures caused a four week delay.

The work is being carried out by the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Partnership’s Living North Pennines project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

First up for a facelift are Shildon and Muggleswick, where centuries of icy weather have taken a toll.

Muggleswick Grange was built during the mid-1200s for the Prior of Durham and originally lay in the grounds of an enclosed park.

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From Whitehaven News

Undoubtedly, Birdoswald, built in 122 AD, is one of the best-preserved and most interesting examples of Roman rule to be found in the Hadrian’s Wall area. Almost 2,000 years of history are on display. The remains of the Fort can be found on a high spur of land overlooking the Irthing Gorge. One of the large grain storage areas was used by local chieftains following the departure of the Romans.

Following Roman occupation, Birdoswald became the homes or lairs of a variety of Chieftains during the incorrectly described ‘Dark Ages’ (the period 500 AD - 1,000 AD), followed by clans of the infamous Border Reivers. In later, more peaceful days, farmers pursued their livelihood in the area - mainly during the Victorian era.

Birdoswald, being situated along Hadrian’s Wall, became effectively one of the first lines of defence of civilised Britannia Province against the barbarians from the North. Its importance to the Romans cannot be under-stated, as Hadrian’s Wall was the limit of Rome’s incursion into Britain and it was vital to the Romans to defend its borders, the Northernmost part of the Empire.

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From The Scotsman

The Scotsman has learned that Borders Forest Trust, which owns a 1,580-acre site at Corehead Farm near Moffat in Dumfries and Galloway, is hoping to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds of funding next year to pay for a mass tree planting scheme and a series of other regeneration measures at the site.

The farm, bought by the trust earlier this year with £700,000 raised from the public, includes the iconic Devil's Beef Tub – a huge, deep hollow where the Border Reivers once hid stolen livestock.

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From Hexham Courant

ONE of Haltwhistle’s hidden secrets is once more to be exposed to the public’s gaze.

For hotelier David Taylor is set to re-open the mysterious tunnel he discovered when he developed the Centre of Britain Hotel 13 years ago.

During extensive renovation work at the dilapidated Red Lion Hotel, a boarded up door attracted the attention of David and co-owner Grethe Kirkebjerg.

Loose rubble behind the hidden door was ex-cavated, and significant lengths of a tunnel, with several branches, were unearthed.

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From: JournalLive

POET Pippa Little was drawn to the Border Ballads and their stories of the raiding Reiver clans and lawless times.

But she was taken by the way women were relegated to the background in the tales of days more than 400 years ago when families were forced to live in bastles, or fortified farmhouses.

Around 1,000 bastles were built in Northumberland, of which about 200 survive.

From: The Telegraph

Once, says Brian Jackman, Northumberland was England's Afghanistan. Now it is the quietest county under the sun.

Winter is coming to Northumberland. Down on the coast at Lindisfarne the brent geese have already arrived from Spitzbergen. Inland, the leaves have turned to gold, piling up in deepening drifts under the trees of Howick Hall. The bracken lies rusting on the Simonside Hills and everywhere, from Tyne to Tweed, the fires are lit, the scones are baking, ready to welcome any visitor canny enough to know what off-season pleasures await in this emptiest of English counties.

For anyone searching for fresh air and space, Northumberland has plenty of both to spare. A long haul from the south it may be, but how rewarding to recapture the long-lost joys of motoring on near-deserted roads, to go swooping for miles over switchback hills that still have the look of frontier country and to feel the past closing in around you.

That is what happens when you follow the B3618 on its way west from Newcastle beside Hadrian’s Wall. For nearly 2,000 years its forts and mile-castles have lain across the throat of Britain, marking the outermost limits of the Roman Empire.

The view from Steel Rigg sums up the best of it. Here, high above Crag Lough, the hills fall sheer in a frozen wave of Whin Sill rock with the Wall on its rim, snaking away towards Sycamore Gap where the opening scenes of Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves were filmed. Look north and, apart from the black smudges of conifer plantations, the rolling landscape of bentgrass moors and boggy turf would be still recognisable to the men who manned the mile-castles.

From: The Berwickshire News

HUNDREDS of cheering well wishers lined Coldstream's High Street on Thursday, as a 300-plus cavalcade began the annual ride out to Flodden Field to commemorate the notorious bloody battle of 1513.

After last year's ride was greeted by torrential rain, strong winds and flooding, the highlight of Coldstream's civic week was due some good weather, and with bright sunshine and temperatures soaring into the 20s, they certainly got it.

The ceremonial duties began when the 2009 Coldstreamer, Craig Telford, and his attendants - right-hand man Ricky Hope and left-hand man Gareth Watson, followed pipers into the town's Market Square. There the 15th Earl of Home, whose ancestors led the Borders into battle in 1513 at Flodden, charged Craig to carry the Home colours to Flodden and to return it "unsullied and untarnished".

The Earl, flanked by two Coldstream Guards and with the Countess by his side, also charged Craig to cut a sod of earth from the battlefield and return it safely to Coldstream, to commemorate the actions of those who brought back the bodies of the Scots noblemen to be buried in consecrated ground.

This year's Flodden Day marked a special occasion for two of the riders taking part - Peter Scott made this year's pilgrimage 50 years after winning the Smail Cup in 1959 for the youngest rider, and Hamish Brown also took part, making it his 50th annual Flodden Day ride-out.

From: BBC

The historic clock bells of a Borders town have been silenced at night after an investigation by environmental health officers.

It followed a complaint by a bed and breakfast owner about the sound coming from the Galashiels war memorial.

The head of the town's Royal British Legion branch said that stopping the bells was "frankly ridiculous".

However, Scottish Borders Council said it had decided the complaint about the chimes was "not unreasonable".

The local authority received a complaint from a local guest house about the noise.

It has now decided to take action and ordered the bells to be stopped between midnight and 0715 BST.