St Cuthbert's Way Part VII

The last lap. Across the Pilgrim's Path to Holy Island.

Before crossing the A1, a slight diversion to Grizel's Clump. In 1685, Grizel Cochrane, disguised herself as a man to hold up the mail coach and steal the order for the execution of her father. The delay this caused allowed time for his appeal and subsequent pardon. A group of trees still marks the spot of her daring exploit.

After checking the crossing times, I set out across the wet sands to Holy Island, following in the footsteps of thousands of previous walkers.

The Way

Solitary, evocative, enigmatic

Ahead of me was one who had decided to make a real pilgrimage as the bare footprints on the freezing cold wet mud showed.

Pilgrim's footprints

There is a tranquillity about the crossing that cannot be had on the busy, car-carrying causeway. The wind, the cries of the gulls, the flap of a heron's wings, all add to the atmosphere. The crooning and lowing of the crowds of seals at the tidal margin was especially evocative given St Cuthbert's legendary affinity with "the creatures of the sea".

Bamburgh Castle on the horizon

By contrast, Holy Island itself is a disappointment with crowds of people milling about all seeking something but, it would seem, not knowing what that thing is. 

A couple of fellow walkers who were staying on the island were looking forward to the turn of the tide when all the cars and buses would have to leave and they and the locals could have the place to themselves.

Meadow salsify seedhead seen beside the path

Journey over, a pleasant walk through Borders country, both sides, and through Borders history.

I think I get a certificate... I'll certainly buy a badge for the sun hat!

St Cuthbert's Way Part VI

Wooler to Fenwick, the penultimate lap. It had to be easier than the last. Only eleven or so miles. It started with a pleasant stroll by the Wooler Water but soon it was climbing again up on to Weetwood Moor. This must have been a place of significance in Neolithic times with its boulder strewn heather slopes and its enigmatic cup and ring carvings. A gathering place... perhaps, a place of ritual or social functions. 

The piles of stones bear witness to previous structures long since gone, their components recycled into walls and sheep-folds.

http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/weetwood3.htm 

As Macdiarmid says " There are plenty of ruined buildings in the world but no ruined stones"

The stones survive.

Coming down from the moor, I crossed the Till, the only English tributary of the Tweed, at the Weetwood bridge and climbed steadily past the Hortons - West and East, to cross the Devil's Causeway, part of another old Roman road to Hazelrigg.
Looking back, Wooler could be seen nestling in the Cheviots.

 From here the Way follows the contours of the last ridge before the coast, then ascends to St Cuthbert's cave.

An arresting sight, the overhang where it is said, the monks rested with the saint's body as they fled from the Norse raiders at Lindisfarne. The cave is disfigured by centuries of graffiti gouged into the soft sandstone but is still a place to stir the imagination.

Two of the approach stones have vertical grooves on them, probably caused by water rivulets running down them, reminiscent of those on the "singing" Duddo stones.  On one, a horizontal crack creates a cross shape no doubt regarded as spiritually significant by pilgrims.

From the cave another climb took me to the top of the ridge and a view of my destination - Holy Island.

Holy Island with its castle

Downward into Fenwick, through the woods and picking up the signs for St Oswald's Way that goes to Hadrian's Wall, I realised that time was running out to make a connection with the bus service on the A1.

Not a squirrel in sight

 

 Hurrying along Dolly Gibson's Lonnen, surely a local version of loaning, then into the village itself, I could only manage a passing glance as I broke into a jog to get me to the bus stop. I caught it with four minutes to spare.

Only one short lap to do, the Pilgrim's Way, across the sands to Lindisfarne.

Passing through Ednam...and stopping for a moment

Ednam Kirk

Ednam's just a wee place. A slow-down road sign, a school, a bend, an old smiddy, another bend then a bridge...and it's past...maybe a minute of your journey. Population - one hundred and fifty or so and some sheep.

Originally, Eden-ham from the Eden Water that flows beneath the bridge, it has become, with typical Borders economy of expression - Ednam.

Most folk wouldn't give it a passing thought when passing through.

Ednam has imprinted itself on the nation's consciousness in a different way.

Anyone who has been to a funeral, especially, it would seem, a cremation, has been influenced by the village. The hymn books in the chapel almost fall open automatically at one particular hymn.

Henry Francis Lyte was born in the Brewer's Cottage. Ednam in 1793 and was boarded out to school in Ireland at an early age. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, took holy orders and ministered in the south-west of England and Wales. I don't think he ever returned to Ednam.
 An able musician, he wrote several religious works as well as paraphrases and well known hymns, the most enduring of which is that favourite of the FA cup final crowds and  funerals - "Abide with me.

F.A cup finals and....last nights of the Proms...yet another British institution that owes something to Ednam.

In 1700, James Thomson was born in Ednam, a son of the manse. Educated at Jedburgh and graduating from Edinburgh, he published several poems before taking, like so many of his contemporaries, the high road to London where he became highly successful, his long tetralogy of verse "The Seasons" being well received.
Eventually, he gained the patronage of the then Prince of Wales. It was in a masque "Alfred", written for the prince's entertainment, that the verses of "Rule Britannia" first appeared.

Obelisk to James Thomson

Not bad for a wee place. Birthplace of two purveyors of verses still to the forefront today!

...and Ednam's not finished. It can claim two further poets, minor ones it's true. but still published men o'letters.

William Wright born in 1782 was an invalid who was carried out to the local kirkyard where he wrote nature poems such as "To a Thrush". It also says much for the eighteenth century Scottish education system that enabled the crippled eighth child out of thirteen children of an agricultural labourer, an orra-man, to have the academic grounding that enabled him to do so.

A restful place to write poetry

...with macabre reminders of mortality

John Gibson Smith, born in 1852, who later emigrated to New Zealand, eventually published a large number of poems which are quite enjoyable if derivative. Some in the Scots dialect were obviously influenced by Burns.

Given its population, the output of Ednam's sons must make it, statistically, one of Scotland's literary powerhouses!

I'm glad I stopped.

St Cuthbert's Way Part V

 Well, that's the hardest bit past.    Kirk Yetholm to Wooler, across the moors, across the Cheviots, across the Border, across a landscape marked by the stones of ancient sites, by paths taken through the hills for thousands of years by countless feet...and mine.

The climb to the Border fence was not as steep as anticipated and the legs were still fresh. As the day wore on the uppy and downy bits became a bit more trying on the knee joints.

The Border

This part of the walk is the end of the Pennine way, little do the weary walkers know the last mile or so is a steep hill into Kirk Yetholm.

 Pressing on in the other direction, I dropped down to the Elsdon burn then through a wood giving thanks to the helpful soul(s) who had tied red marker tapes to the trees as the path wasn't that easy to find.    Elsdonburn farm led on to a bit of road walking past low slopes that still showed the marks of cultivation terraces used from prehistoric times.

Cultivation terraces on White Hill

 Every hill top seemed to have the ruins of its own Iron Age fort or Bronze Age burial cairn.

 The road led down the valley and to the beautiful College Burn at Hethpool. 

College Burn

A restful moment leaning on the bridge was rewarded by a dipper bobbing on a stone before plunging into the stream

Another climb from the valley was broken by a diversion to the get a recharge of negative ions from the cascade of Hethpool Linn, a great addition to my collection of wee waterfalls.

- and to see the marsh orchids blooming on the path to the burn.

Another break - I was beginning to take more of these - gave me a chance to explore the remains of a Neolithic settlement whose stones had been pillaged in the past to build a sheepfold.

Onwards, towards Yeavering Bell, with its huge hill-fort and then another climb up on to the moors and a long slog past the prominence of Tom Tallon's Crag.

Tom Tallon's Crag

A missed marker resulted in a deviation from the Way and an annoying detour to pick it up again as it came off Coldberry Hill. Still, nothing lost, except a few views.

I had noticed the occurrence of large boulders at intervals all the way along the route and wondered if they were way-marks from earlier times when these hills were more populous and travellers tended to keep to the higher, drier ground away from the marshy valley bottoms.

Marker stone

A bridle way and a woodland walk, clearly marked this time, took me past yet another hill-fort, Kettles Fort, and down from Wooler Common into the town itself. 

Kettles hill-fort

A seat on the Terrace and a pot of tea were the perfect antidote to weary limbs and sore feet.

A story on a stone

Wandering about as ever, this time in Bowness-on-Windermere while LotH ascertained the range and accessibility of the local retail sector, I was drawn to the splendid St Martin's church.

Built in the 13^th century, burnt down and restored in 15^th century, added to in 19^th and restored again in the 20^th, it has pre-reformation murals, the original font and some ancient stained glass.

The murals on the spandrels of the arches are texts believed to be from a book by Robert Openshawe published in 1590. Whitewashed over, they were discovered at restoration. complete with idiosyncratic spelling.

Catechisms on the arches

In the graveyard surrounding the church is the grave of Rasselas Bellfield, "native of Abyssinia".

A few enquiries elicited the story of this man's remarkable life.

Attitudes to slavery were very different  in the eighteenth and nineteenth  centuries even after the work of Wilberforce in late 1700's.

John Bolton was a Cumbrian who made a fortune as a Liverpool slave trader. He bought nearby Storrs Hall with some of the proceeds and used the residence to entertain in style, holding regattas on the lake which were attended by Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott amongst others. The hall is now a luxury hotel.

So much for Wordsworth's championing of Liberty!

As John Bolton's wealth indicates, the slave trade was a profitable business. Against the wall of the south aisle is a white veined marble slab to the same John Bolton, the slave trader and plantation owner who died in 1837.

According to W. Sayer's 'History of Westmorland', written in 1847, the young man, Rasselas, commemorated by the headstone was brought to England by a Major Taylor, who had bought him as a child from his mother for the equivalent of about £5. Taylor is said to have been engaged, with his regiment, in the campaign of the East India Company Army against Tippu Sahib, celebrated ruler of Mysore, South India, which culminated in Tippu's death in 1799.

The headstone's inscription describes Rasselas as 'A Native of Abyssinia', suggesting that he was born there, and it may be that Taylor travelled back to England by way of Abyssinia and acquired Rasselas then. On the other hand, Abyssinian slaves and solders - 'Habshis' - had been brought to India from the 15th century onwards.

It is possible that Rasselas entered Taylor's service whilst the soldier was still in India; the boy, still very young, may have been employed by the army.

One way or another, Taylor and his companion had arrived at Bowness-on-Windermere by 17 April 1803, when the baptism is recorded of 'Rasilais Bellefield, Captain Taylor's servant of Bellefield'. Rasselas would then have been aged about 13.

Like many in Britain, the Taylor family had slaves and plantations in the Americas from which they derived great wealth.

Rasselas's master was Peter Taylor who joined the army in 1794. When he returned from the East with the Abyssinian boy, he joined his mother and sister, Isabella, at Bellfield. Isabella, then aged had literary tastes - it is possible that she had a hand in choosing the stranger's first name.

'The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia' was a popular novel by Samuel Johnson. That such a name was chosen for the young servant suggests the Taylors enjoyed his exotic heritage, and the cachet it gave the household.

It would be interesting to know whether they thought of the Abyssinian as having anything in common with the slaves of South Carolina and the West Indies to whom their fortune was indebted. The inscription on Rasselas's headstone demonstrates that by 1822 at least, the Taylor family had been convinced of the iniquity of slavery.

In 1807, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act had been passed on a wave of popular support, largely engendered by William Wilberforce. Wilberforce may personally have influenced the Taylors as, between 1780 and 1788, he spent his summers at Rayrigg Hall, a mile or two from from the family.

It is evident from the quality of Rasselas Belfield's headstone, with its poetic inscription, that Rasselas was valued by the Taylor family. He is likely to have served Peter Taylor in a capacity similar to that of a valet.

A Slave by birth I left my native Land / And found my Freedom on Britannia's Strand: / Blest Isle! Thou Glory of the Wise and Free, / Thy Touch alone unbinds the Chains of Slavery.

The epitaph raises all sorts of questions about attitudes to slavery in England in the early 19th century  despite having been abolished in 1807. Was Rasselas Belfield a slave, and if so, at what stage in his life? "Born a slave" would be unacceptable now but ideas regarding slavery would have been even more uncertain on the African and Indian subcontinents at that time than in England.

To us, the idea that Rasselas had won his freedom by being sold, and taken to another country to work as a servant, may seem a contradiction in terms but the inscription seems to suggest that slavery was almost  regarded as the natural condition of an Abyssinian and celebrates the enlightened government and people of Britain!

Poor Rasselas succumbed at the age of thirty two, possible to pneumonia. 

He is buried next to the Bishop of Llandarff. The worms recognise no social order!

It's always seems worthwhile when a chance finding leads to a story otherwise missed.

Oak chest