History In Your Back Yard – Northumberland Videos
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Coast & Castles
The Anglo-Saxons built in timber, with the exception of churches, which they modelled in a loosely Roman style using arches and pilasters to lend permanence and provenance to the structures. Woodhorn Church near Ashington dates from this time, but it’s not in great shape now…
Wall & Tynedale
Housesteads Roman Fort. The famed 9th Legion vanished without a trace possibly while on campaign in the North in the early part of the 2nd century. Their fate has puzzled historians for centuries. Here’s a theory as I’m hiking the Wall at Housesteads with the lads.
Between Newburn and Wylam is the Tidestone at what was once a rapid called Hedwin (Heddon) Streams. This stone marked the boundary of the Corporation of Newcastle’s jursidiction over the Tyne, and thus the Town’s wealth was entirely based on maintaining this claim, which the aldermen did through an annual procession up the river.
Father of the Railways, George Stephenson’s Birthplace in Wylam, Northumberland. Wylam is the birthplace of the railways, but the earliest engines made here were slow, loud, leaky and unreliable. It took George Stephenson’s genius to perfect the design that would be the blueprint for all future steam trains
The Hagg Bank Bridge in Wylam is the first of its type in the world and served as a model for the Tyne and Sydney Harbour bridges. But this design was itself inspired by the use of arches on Robert Stephenson’s High Level Bridge, also built by Hawks Ironworks of Gateshead.
Borders & National Park
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
