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Submitted by The March Warden on Wed, 05/12/2010 - 22:26
From the News & Star:
A Carlisle artist has launched an exhibition aimed at lifting the 500-year-old “curse” laid on the city.
 Lindsay McWilliams, 21, of Scotch Street, has explored the myth surrounding the cursing stone installed at Tullie House Museum in 2001.
Blamed for misfortunes including the 2005 Carlisle floods, it is inscribed with a curse from a 16th-century Archbishop of Glasgow.
The new exhibition, called Uncursed, was produced as part of Lindsay’s final project for her degree in photography at the University of Cumbria.
She said: “I wanted to do something I really cared about for my last major project, so I was doing some research into the City of Culture bid. One of the things that came up was the way people like to blame everything on the cursing stone.
“A lot of the cultural venues in Carlisle have fallen into disrepair or aren’t being used properly, so I thought I could do something around that.”
Her photographs of Carlisle cultural landmarks were all taken at around five o’clock in the morning, to keep light levels consistently low. Behind each one, she has layered an image of words from the cursing stone, altered to give them the opposite meaning.
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Submitted by The March Warden on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 16:04
From Hawick Today
THE eighth Reivers Festival was blessed with clear skies and a whole host of highlights as Teries once again stepped back in time for the annual event.
Organisers have praised the way townsfolk came out in their droves to support the two-day festival – which from a busy High Street along which the opening procession took place, to the spectacular firework display and Sunday's literary high tea – has been hailed a great success.
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Submitted by The March Warden on Tue, 03/23/2010 - 11:28
From the Hawick News
AS organisers put the finishing touches to this weekend's Hawick Reivers Festival, budding photographers are being invited to focus their talents on a competition to record what promises to be an action-packed two days.
The busy programme will offer no shortage of subject matter for keen snappers, and a contest, which is supported by Derek Lunn, will be divided into three categories for primary school entrants, those at the high school and adults.
Festival chairman Cath Elliott-Walker said: "We very much hope that our many local photographers will take this opportunity to support the festival."
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Submitted by The March Warden on Sat, 02/13/2010 - 12:29
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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Submitted by The March Warden on Wed, 02/10/2010 - 12:22
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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Submitted by The March Warden on Fri, 02/05/2010 - 12:16
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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Submitted by The March Warden on Thu, 01/28/2010 - 12:06
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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Submitted by The March Warden on Wed, 12/30/2009 - 20:59
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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Submitted by The March Warden on Sat, 12/05/2009 - 20:24
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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Submitted by The March Warden on Fri, 11/20/2009 - 12:45
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.
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