To Sir Francis Douglas Blake, this book is inscribed in admiration of an eminent Northumbrian. Bamburgh Castle....

The following book makes no pretensions to be a mine of deep historical research or antiquarian lore; its object will have been achieved, and its existence to some extent justified, if haply by its aid some of the dwellers in this northern county of ours, with its past so full of action, and its present so rich in the memorials of those actions, may pass a pleasant hour in becoming acquainted through its pages with the happenings which have taken place in their own particular fields, their own s

Wild and bleak it may be, hard and cruel at times it undoubtedly is, but, nevertheless, this north-east coast of ours is at all times inspiring, whether half-hidden by storm-clouds, its cliffs and hollows lashed by the “wild north-easter,” or seen calmly brooding in the warm haze of a summer’s day, its grey-blue water smiling beneath the grey-blue sky, and its stretches of sand and bents edging the sea with a border of gold and silver. In keeping with either mood of nature, the ancient Priory of

Between Peel Fell and Mid Fell, almost the farthest western heights of the Cheviot Hills, a little mountain stream takes its rise, and flows to the south and east. This little burn is the North Tyne, the beginnings of that stream which, deep, dark, and swift at its mouth, bears the mighty battleships there built to carry the war-flags of the nations round the world. In the wild and lovely district where the North Tyne takes its rise, is Kielder Castle, a shooting box belonging to the Duke of Nor

The town of Hexham, standing on hilly ground overlooking the Tyne, immediately below the point at which the North and South Tyne unite, and spreading from thence down to the levels all round, is one of the most ancient in the kingdom. To write of Hexham with any measure of fulness would require much more space than can be given to it within the limits of a small book; only a mere summary can be offered here. Britons, Romans, and Saxons, in turn, have dwelt on and around the hill which, in Saxon

The outward signs of “by-gone days,” in the Newcastle of to-day, with the one notable exception of the Castle, must be diligently sought out amongst the overwhelming mass of what is often called “rampant modernity,” of which the town to-day chiefly consists. The modernity, however, is not all bad, as this favourite phrase would imply; much of it is doubtless regrettable and a very little of it perhaps inevitable; but no one will deny either the modernity or the beauty of Grey Street, one of the

For a mile and a quarter, along the north bank of the Tyne, stretch the world-famed Elswick Works, which have grown to their present gigantic proportions from the small beginnings of five and a half acres in 1847. In that year two fields were purchased as a site for the new works about to be started to make the hydraulic machinery which had been invented by Mr. Armstrong. In this undertaking he was backed by the wealth of several prominent Newcastle citizens, who believed in the future of the ne

From the crowded, bustling scenes of Tyneside to the solitude of the Cheviot Hills is a “far cry,” even farther mentally than in actual tale of miles. Yet the two are linked by the same stream, which begins life as a brawling Cheviot burn, having for its fellows the head waters of the Rede, the Coquet, and the Till, with the scores of little dancing rills that feed them. Nowhere in this land of swelling hills and grassy fields can one get out of either sight or sound of running water. Every litt

Of all the abundance of treasure which Northumberland possesses, from a historical point of view—of all its wealth of interesting relics of bygone days—ancient abbey, grim fortress, menhir and monolith, camp and tumulus—none grips the imagination as does the sight of that unswerving line which pursues its way over hill and hollow, from the eastern to the western shores of the north-land, visible emblem, after more than a thousand years, of the far-flung arm of Imperial Rome. From Wallsend on the

Northumberland is fortunate in the number of rivers which, owing to the position of the Cheviot Hills, flow right across the county from west to east. These Northumbrian streams have a distinct character of their own, and are of a different breed from those of the southern; counties. They are neither mountain torrents nor placid leisurely rivers, such as are met elsewhere in Britain, but busy, bright, joyous, and sparkling, never sluggish, never silent, even when deep and full, as is the Tyne in

“The history of Northumberland is essentially a drum and trumpet history, from the time when the buccina of the Batavian cohort first rang out over the moors of Procolitia down to the proclamation of James III. at Warkworth Cross”— Cadwallader J Bates . This sentence of the historian of Northumberland sums up the story of our northern county no less admirably than tersely, and it would be difficult to find one which should more clearly bring before us the whole atmosphere of north-country histor

Northumberland, as might be guessed from its wild history, is rich in tales of daring and stories of gallant deeds; there are true tales, as well as legendary ones, which latter, after all, may be true in substance though not in detail, in spirit and possibility though not in a certain sequence of facts. Now-a-days we look upon dragons as fabulous animals, and stories of the destruction they wrought, their fierceness and their might are dismissed with a smile, and mentally relegated to a place a

The ballads of Northumberland, as all true ballads should do, partake of the characteristics of the district which is their home. As we should expect, they treat chiefly of warlike themes, of the chieftain’s doughty deeds, the moss-trooper’s daring and skill, of the knight’s courtesies and gallant feats of arms, and the feuds of rival clans; in fact, they portray for us vividly the time of which they treat, and in a few graphic touches bring before us the very spirit of the period. In direct and