Part 18

Not far from Barnard, Streatlam Castle stands in a valley between that town and Raby. It has remained the property of the descendants of the owners in the twelfth century to this day, although it has passed by marriage successively to the Traynes, Boweses, and Lyons. The existing castle includes some portions of the structure erected by old Sir William Bowes. This Sir William is stated on the death of his young wife Jane, daughter of Lord Greystock, under the age of twenty, to have gone to the wars in France, where for some years he was Chamberlain to the Regent, the Duke of Bedford. Sometime about 1450 he pulled down the older castle at Streatlam, and erected a new one from designs he had brought from France. His arms are on the north front of the castle, which has been altered frequently since his time. A good portion of it was pulled down by William Blakiston Bowes, who died in 1721, leaving his alterations incomplete.

Raby Castle, one of the finest baronial piles in the North of England, and for many centuries the great seat of the princely house of Neville, would require, to deal with it in justice, more pages than a volume of limited space can afford. A few of its leading features must, however, be mentioned. Portions of the present building were erected by Ralph, Lord Neville, one of the commanders at Neville’s Cross, who died in 1367. His son John carried on the work, and in 1378 obtained a licence from Bishop Hatfield to embattle and crenellate his manor-house at Raby. In aspect the castle consists of buildings forming a rough square, with towers projecting from three of the corners, the whole enclosing a courtyard. The four outer sides face the cardinal points. Some distance from the main building, a wall 30 feet high with a deep moat on its outer side entirely enclosed it. The main entrance is guarded by a large tower thrown forward in a flanking position, rendering the approach exceedingly difficult to an opposing force. This building is known as Clifford’s Tower. At the south end of a curtain wall running southwards stands the Watch Tower, which has, however, been considerably modernized. Adjoining the great gatehouse,

[Illustration: STREATLAM CASTLE.]

which is the work of at least two builders, is the tower which Leland says bears the name of Joan, wife of the first Earl of Westmorland. East of Joan’s Tower is another stretch of curtain wall now containing the drawing-rooms, and terminating at Bulmer’s Tower, an interesting building in shape an irregular pentagon. On the upper story of this tower is the badge of the builder, a large Old English <f>b</f>, doubtless like the bull, their other badge, derived from the Bulmers.

A block of modern buildings adjoining the Bulmer Tower adjoins a tower, from which a corridor enters the great hall, 90 feet long and 35 feet wide. Close to the hall is the kitchen, which has been preserved in all its original quaintness. Over a passage leading from the east side of the great hall is the chapel. A short curtain wall connects this portion of the building with the Mount Raskelf Tower, evidently named after a manor owned by the Nevilles in Yorkshire. It is rather curious to observe that the Christian names Ralph and Henry, which occur so frequently in old northern families, are the predominating names respectively of the great houses of Neville and Percy.

Walworth Castle, a large, picturesque old house, was erected by the Jenisons in or about the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The north front, flanked by two projecting wings, has a centre three stories high terminating in a balustraded parapet. The south front has a circular tower at each end. The windows were originally decorated with fine old painted glass of heraldic design, which has been almost entirely destroyed in modern times. Some fragments have, however, been gathered together and are preserved in a window in the corridor. Here King James I. was entertained and slept on his progress to the South in 1603.

Inferior to the larger houses, there were in the county several buildings of great strength coming under the same head as the _peel-houses_ or _towers_ on the borders.

One of these, now only represented by a few portions of the outer walls, was Dalden Tower. The buildings appear to have formed a tower rather longer than square, standing on a slight mound. The walls were of rubble, 5 feet thick. In the east wall there is a square-headed niche, surmounted by a pediment within an ogee-headed arch, the space within which is filled with tracery. Two blank shields are upon a cornice over the pediment. The niche seems to point to the room once adjoining having been the private chapel. On the inner side of the curtain facing the west wall there appears to have been a cell with a loophole.

A more recent manor-house was built about the reign of James I., adjoining the tower on the east, and portions of it are built into the present farmhouse. For some generations it was a seat of the Royalist family of Collingwood, and, at an earlier date, of a branch of the great house of Bowes. It was a lady of this family, Maud, wife of Sir William Bowes and heiress of Sir Robert Dalden, who possessed within the old walls a curious library. In her will, made in 1420, she left to Matilda Hilton _one Romaunce-boke_, to Dame Eleanor Washington _the boke with the knotts_, to Elizabeth de Whitchester a book that is called _Trystram_, and to her god-daughter Maud, daughter of the Baron of Hilton, _one Romaunce boke is called the Gospells_. Surtees pertinently writes: "Did a romance ever actually exist under this strange title? or had the lady of Dalden met with one of Wicliffe’s Bibles, and conceived the Gospels to be a series of fabulous adventures, in which our Saviour and His Apostles were introduced to act and to moralize like the goodly personages who figure in the ancient mysteries, or in _Les Jeux du Roi René d’Anjou_"?

Farther to the south an old tower, oblong in shape stood at Little Eden. It was, however, taken down in the early days of last century by Mr. Rowland Burdon, who erected the present castellated house at Castle Eden. At Dinsdale, on the banks of the Tees, the remains of the ancient home of the Surtees family were excavated by the late Mr. Scott Surtees, and showed that a large gatehouse of late twelfth-century work, with vaulted chambers and a newel stair, had once stood there.

The later manor-house of the Place family retains some portions of the older building. With thick walls and low rooms with heavy beams and rafters, and an old oak staircase with a wicket, it still remains a picturesque fragment of former days. A stone originally fixed over a gateway destroyed shortly before Hutchinson compiled his history is now let into the wall on the left of the farmhouse door, and bears the arms of Place quarterly with Surtees.

The home of the Surtees’s neighbours, the allied and equally noble house of Conyers, was at Sockburn, situated on the same sweep of the Tees. Traces of the foundations of gardens and orchards alone point out the site of the old house, where Dugdale in 1666 had noted the family emblazonments in or on the building--the arms of Conyers, Vesci, Scrope, Neville, Dacre, FitzHugh, Lumley, and of the Royal Family. Surtees suggests that seven of the coats seem to have formed a rich armorial window, and that amidst them ran the motto, "REGI SECVLOR I’ MORTALI I’ VISIBILI SOLI DEO HONOR ET GLORIA I’ SECVLA SECVLOR." When the historian wrote, "one old decaying Spanish chestnut" seemed alone to connect the deserted spot with some recollection of its ancient owners. Of the old house not one stone remains. A new house was erected about a century ago by the baronet family of Blackett, who for some generations have owned the manor. Here the far-famed Conyers falchion is preserved. The sword dates from the thirteenth century, and has a blade 2 feet and 5½ inches long. The handle is partly covered with ash, and has on the pommel two shields, the three lions of England, and an eagle displayed. The cross is engraved with decorative foliage of the period.

One of the most interesting specimens of the older fortified residences was Ludworth Tower.[14] The building, which consisted of a three-storeyed oblong tower of common limestone, stands near a brook, on a low hill, at the head of the valley in which Shadforth village lies. A lower vaulted room up till recently still contained a large open fireplace and hearthstone. The only entrance was by a small arched door leading to a spiral stone staircase, projecting from the north-west angle of the tower. Remnants of a curtain wall exist to the east, and on the west the adjoining ground has apparently been levelled by hand.

The whole appearance of the building, which has, unfortunately, in recent years[15] been allowed to fall into a ruinous condition, was dark and gloomy in the extreme. The date of its erection is fixed by the licence obtained in 1422 by Sir Thomas Holden to embattle his manor-house of Ludworth.

At Bellasis, or Belasyse, another old house, with stone walls of great thickness and moated, is now occupied by a farmer.

Hollinside, an old mansion, associated with the Hardings, of whom Ralph Harding the chronicler was a noteworthy member, still stands in ruins on a bank above the River Derwent. Originally three stories in height, and with two wings forming the three sides of a narrow court. The fourth and east side is arched over and surmounted by a tower. On the west side a turret projects in line with the south wall. The interior presents several interesting features, and an outbuilding contains a large fireplace.

Passing from the great homes of the county, and the older fortified towers, we come to the time when, with the greater security accorded to the minor gentry,

[Illustration: RABY CASTLE IN 1783.]

numerous manor-houses and country granges began to rise.

Even at this time, spoiled as the county is for residential purposes, it requires no strong effort of the imagination to picture the county as it was in later Tudor times. The Bishops, greater than ever through the collapse of the Nevilles, still appointed their foresters, and doubtless often made the dales resound with all the view-halloo of a gay hunt. Durham City became a stronghold of great ecclesiastical families, the sons and daughters of the prebendaries intermarrying with one another, and the descendants of successive Bishops allied themselves by cross marriages. In the country better farmsteads became erected, and throughout the shire the landowners began to erect more commodious residences. It is, with one or two exceptions, from this period that the older halls and manor-houses still in existence date. It must not be forgotten that there were at this time no great landowners in the county in the sense that we now understand the term, and almost every village had its own predominating squire.

A few houses still remain, not so strongly built as the peel-towers, yet well adapted to defence. Holmside Hall is one of these. Once one of the principal seats of the great House of Tempest, it was forfeited by Robert of that name, who, with his son Michael, had joined the Earls in their rebellion, and therefore appears in Hall and Humberston’s Survey as a "capital messuage, with all the housings built of stone and covered with slate, with the orchards and gardens, within a park containing three acres." Now sufficient remains to show that once the buildings were ranged round a court and surrounded by a moat. The north side was faced by the chapel containing a still perfect west window of two trefoil-headed lights under a square label, with the cinquefoil of the Umphrevilles and two blank shields in the spandrels. Above the window "a mutilated figure is fixed to the wall, with a full-moony face, and a kind of round helmet," of which Surtees writes: "I should almost conjecture this to be a rude piece of Roman sculpture, removed from the station, which may possibly have furnished the coins and squared stones used in building this chantry."

The house itself is a curiously confused building of many different periods of architecture. The original gables were pulled down and the house enlarged to the south. The windows are mullioned and narrow and guarded with iron bars.

After the Tempests’ fall the estate became the property of William Whittingham, the bigoted Calvinist Dean, whose name deserves perpetual execration as the destroyer of much that was old and beautiful in Durham Abbey. It is possible that in the austere gloom that even now pervades the old house at Holmeside, he might find something sympathetic with his own strange faith.

The Isle, another Tempest residence, stands on low ground, surrounded by marshes caused through risings of the Skerne. It is a picturesque place, with projecting gables and narrow mullioned lights. It was the residence of Colonel John Tempest, first M.P. for Durham County, and still belongs to the Marquess of Londonderry as representative of his family.

Sledwish Hall, standing lonely and sequestered, is a place of "ghastly grey renown." Upwards of a hundred years ago the bones of an infant were found interred in a stone coffin in the field adjoining. The house, too, like most of these old mansions, is supposed to contain secret passages and rooms. Portions of the present building, more particularly the south front, date back to Plantagenet times, but the house as it now stands is an interesting specimen of Tudor architecture. It was rebuilt by John Clopton, Queen Elizabeth’s Receiver, his great work being the ceiling in the Orchard Chamber. This is divided into compartments by deep mouldings, ornamented by numerous crowned roses, fleurs-de-lis, and pomegranates. In the centre is a shield bearing his family arms, a quarterly shield, first and fourth, _paly a lion rampant_, and second and third _a cross pattee fitchée_, over all a crescent for difference. The arms are reversed through the artist having formed his mould without considering that the impression was the final result. Two other shields impressed from the same mould bear the initials E. C. (evidently for the builder’s wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Ralph Ashton of Great Lever, in Lancashire), the date 1584, and "a _tun_ with a rose _clapt on_."[16] Above this shield is a rose surrounded by three crowns. At the four corners of the room are large decorative groups; two are falcons with pomegranates, the third is a swan, and the fourth a boar under an oak-tree devouring an acorn. A deep cornice running round the whole ceiling is decorated with repeated devices of the Royal lion and the Welsh dragon supporting the crowned rose, the whole evidently symbolic of Good Queen Bess. There are several other good rooms, and a large chimney at the south-west is supported outside by three double brackets.

There are several other interesting mansions in this district. At Cleatlam the old mansion of the Ewbankes still stands, gable-ended, with mullioned windows. It was sold by them in the troublous times of the great Civil War to the Somersets of Pauntley in Gloucester, and later was a seat of the Wards. Another old home of the Ewbanke family was Staindrop Hall, at the east end of the village of that name. The family arms, _three chevronels interlaced and on a chief three pellets_, are on one of the ceilings. Still another old house, once belonging to the same race, was Snotterton Hall, which stood about a mile to the west of Staindrop. Here the walls were embattled with crocketed pinnacles at the corners, and the windows were triple mullioned lights under square labels. Over the entrance the arms and crest of the Bainbridges, who sold the estate to the Ewbankes in 1607, were sculptured. A portion of the house which was pulled down in 1831 is preserved in the present Raby Grange.

Westholme Hall is another existing good specimen of Jacobean architecture. It consists of a main building, with two gabled wings and mullioned windows. The date 1606, and the name IOHN DOWTHET on a chimney-piece in the hall, points to its erection by the Douthwaites, who purchased the estate from the Boweses in 1603. Erected about the same period, Gainford Hall still stands at the west end of the village. It, too, has gable ends and mullioned windows, and several of the rooms are wainscotted. One of the latter has a stuccoed border of flowers and fruit. Over the door is the three-garbed chevron of the Cradocks and the inscription IOHN : CRADOCK 1600.

At Bishop Middleham a large old gable-ended house has a doorway with jambs and a pediment of carved freestone. It stands on the west side of the road leading to the church, and was originally the property of the Wards, one of whom was Master of Sidney-Sussex College at Cambridge. In 1738 it was the residence of Thomas Brunskill, whose daughter or granddaughter married Edward Watson, of Ingleby Greenhow, in Yorkshire.

Another picturesque fragment of the past is the old house now standing at the western end of Thorpe Thewles village. It is built of brick, with low rooms, and is locally stated to have been visited by Queen Anne. The tradition may possibly be a survival of one of our sovereigns’ passage through the county, but it is impossible that any crowned head can ever have rested in this old mansion. A few fields away a wing of the once great house at Blakiston still stands. It alone remains to show where the birthplace of one of our great old families once stood, and is the only remnant of the later home of the loyal house of Davison, two of whom were slain at the storming of Newcastle in 1644.

Cotham Conyers, or Cotham Stob, derives its affix name

[Illustration: GAINFORD HALL.]

[Illustration: THE OLD HALL AT THORPE THEWLES.]

from its erstwhile owners, the Conyers, and is another old gable-ended manor-house. It stands, surrounded by elms, near to a brook. The rooms are wainscotted, and over the fireplace in one of the rooms there was a hunting scene on the panel, depicting a stag at bay. One of the upper rooms was hung with tapestry. The estate was forfeited by the Conyers through Ralph Conyers having taken part in the Earls’ rebellion in 1569. Lying almost midway between the two Conyers’ seats of Cotham and Sockburn stands the old home of the Killinghalls and Pembertons, at Middleton St. George. The house formerly contained a painting, by Francis Place, of "A Pointer and Pheasants." An old cross in the garden is said to have been brought from Neasham Abbey.

Passing to the west of Darlington again, near the highroad leading to Staindrop, stands Thornton Hall, for many years the residence of a branch of the baronial family of Tailbois. It is a stone house, with high pitched gables, old-world red tiles, and mullioned windows, and has long been used as a farmhouse. Above the window over the main entrance are two gargoyles. An interesting account of this house, with a number of good sketches, may be found in Mr. G. A. Fothergill’s _Sketch-book_.

Several miles north of Thornton, a small old mansion with gables and mullions may be seen at School Aycliffe, and not very far away, in a north-westerly direction, the old grange of Midridge stands within an old walled garden, with a row of old elms leading along the road from the south. The house is a large treble-gable-ended building, and is said to have been garrisoned by the Loyalist owner, Anthony Byerley, who was a Colonel in the Royal army. His troopers are still locally known as "Byerley’s Bull Dogs." A little to the south-west, the old house of Newbiggin stands low, with solid stone walls, and the main staircase of the same substantial material. There was formerly a tower on the west end of the house.

The hall at Coxhoe, erected about the year 1725 by John Burdon, has a richly decorated interior of contemporary date. In this house Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on March 6, 1806.

The northern portion of the county does not contain so many houses of interest as the southern; there are, however, a few interesting mansions.

Fen Hall, near Lanchester, is an interesting old house,

[Illustration: FEN HALL.]

dating from the Stuart period. It has the Greenwell arms over the entrance, and is now fast falling into a ruinous condition.

[Illustration: A CORNER OF WASHINGTON HALL.]

Washington Hall, a large, old stone mansion, built in the form of an E, with high-pitched roof and gable-ends, stands to the south side of the low hill on which the church is built. The lights are divided by stone mullions and transoms. It was erected by the family of James, possibly by the Bishop, and was, in Hutchinson’s time, the seat of the Bracks.[17] It is now, like the old hall at Rainton, in a pitiable state, and let in tenements.

In the neighbourhood of Sunderland there are several interesting houses. High Barnes, for long the home of the Ettricks, is now a convent, and has been considerably altered. Low Barnes, the Pembertons’ old home, is let to a laundry company. Ford Hall is a comparatively modern house, but is interesting as having been the birthplace of General Havelock. Pallion Hall, an old stone mansion, has recently been pulled down.

The old hall at West Boldon is more modern, having been erected in 1709 by the Fawcetts. The house has the arms of that family over the main entrance, and several of the rooms are wainscotted. A quaint record of another generation may well be noted in the late Mr. Boyle’s own words: "On one of the window-panes in a bedroom, in a neat hand of the early part of last century, someone has written with a diamond:

"Beautifull Grace Andrew."

On the next pane, in equally delicate script, another hand has added:

"Fair written Name, yet fairer in my heart, No Diamond cutts so deep as Cupid’s Dart."

Travelling by railway from Boldon to Newcastle, the house now known as the Mulberry Inn is a familiar object, just outside of Felling station. It has been a picturesque building, and for long was the residence of the Brandlings. It is now undergoing a serious alteration. A small stone summer-house, once in the garden, still stands on one of the station platforms.

[Illustration: THE DOORWAY, WEST RAINTON HALL.]

Kibblesworth Hall, a few miles south of Gateshead, is a solid Jacobean brick house, with stone-mullioned, square-headed windows. It has a fine oak staircase, and some of the fireplaces and cornices are of contemporary date. The house has been let in tenements to the pitmen of the adjoining colliery, the stables turned into cottages, and the gardens into allotments. Another old house that has undergone a similar fate is West Rainton Hall, erected about 1690 by Sir John Duck, Bart. It stands on the main street of the village, shorn of the battlements mentioned by Surtees, but still retaining a fine old doorway, reminiscent of its better days.