Borderlands, no man's land, the Scottish border. The remoteness of the Cheviots combined with often bad weather and featureless terrain made these hills a treacherous place to cross, but also a great place for those who preferred to live away from the eye of the law. The notorious Border Reivers roamed this country from the 13th to the 17th century, operating a complex clan system of alliances and feuds, raiding and stealing cattle on both sides of the border, irrespective of their victim's nationality. From autumn to spring, when the nights were long, was the season for raiding; the summer months were for husbandry, and although raiding occurred then also, it was less systematic. Tillage took place in spring and summer, and the crops were mainly oats, rye and barley, but the main effort went into cattle and sheep raising.” Night-time was the most popular time to raid… The Scott family had a slogan, “There’ll be moonlight again.” George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: The story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers (London: Pan Books, 1972), 35 & 70.
Their reach extended as far as the outskirts of Edinburgh and south to Yorkshire. Their activities led to the farmers and landowners fortifying their houses against the raiders which resulted in tower houses, bastle houses and peel towers which are dotted around the landscape to this day. The 74 family names in surviving documents about the Border Reivers are Archbold, Armstrong, Beattie, Bell, Burns, Carleton, Carlisle, Carnaby, Carrs, Carruthers, Chamberlain, Charlton, Charleton, Collingwood, Crisp, Croser, Crozier, Cuthbert Dacre, Davison, Dixon, Dodd, Douglas, Dunne, Elliot Fenwick, Forster, Graham, Gray Hall, Hedley, Henderson, Heron, Hetherington, Hume Irvine, Irving; Johnstone, Kerr, Laidlaw, Little, Lowther Maxwell, Milburn, Musgrove, Nixon, Noble; Ogle, Oliver; Potts, Pringle, Radcliffe, Reade, Ridley, Robson, Routledge, Rutherford, Salkeld, Scott, Selby, Shaftoe, Simpson, Storey, Tailor, Tait, Taylor, Trotter, Turnbull, Wake, Watson, Wilson, Woodrington, Yarrow, and Young and are still very prevalent in the North East.
The ancient drove roads used by the Reivers have been used for centuries and are still present in the landscape. These include old Roman roads such as the Dere Street, ancient pilgrimage routes (St Cuthbert's Way), and The Street, Clennell Street and Salter's Road which are marked on the attached map. Today, the area is full of traces of abandoned settlements and medieval villages (marked with blue triangles on the map) and disused farms (marked with green squares) which offer glimpses into the distant past.
Clennell Street travels from Alwinton over the border and then on to Town Yetholm on the Scottish side. There are several historic and prehistoric settlements along this route and evidence that it may have been in use in medieval times and known as "Ermspeth" or "Eagle's Path". On Clennell Street near the Windy Gyle summit stands a fingerpost marker which marks the location of Hexpethgate. This ancient crossing point on the border between England and Scotland was a neutral meeting place for the March Wardens. It was during a meeting at Hexpethgate on 27th July 1585 that Lord Francis Russell, son of the 2nd Earl of Bedford, was killed by a single gunshot. This unfortunate event gave name to the Russell's Cairn on top the nearby Windy Gyle. The event was initially reported as accident but subsequently the Scottish March Warden for the Middle Marches, Sir Thomas Kerr of Ferniehirst was accused of orchestrating the murder and was committed to a ward in Aberdeen, where he died that same year. Kerr was an ardent supporter of Mary Queen of Scots' and it is possible his imprisonment was political and that he was in fact framed to discredit the Scots.
The Street runs from Barrowburn to Hownam in Scotland. At the start of it, at the junction of Rowhope Burn and the River Coquet stood the notorious Slymefoot Inn, a meeting point for smugglers, reivers and raiders, famous for the sales of illicit whisky, which stayed open until the 1860s. The deep Cheviot valleys and the remoteness of the hills lent themselves to illicit trades, including distilling whisky without a licence. Traces of the illicit whisky stills (marked on the map with the yellow circles) as well as their owners (the notorious Black Rory) can still be found in the Scottish hills by Usway Burn, Blind Burn and Wholehope Burn.
Salter's Road in Northumberland is one of the several medieval salter's tracks, created to bring the salt inland from the coast. In the past, salt was a great commodity, and salting meats and fish was one of the ways to preserve them before the invention of refrigeration. There are no salt mines or rock salt deposits in the North East, and salt was created by desalination of sea water, which was heated up in coal fired vats until salt was obtained. It would have taken 32 tons of seawater to produce one ton of salt by continual firing of 9+ tons of coal over a period of 22-28 hours *. Salter's Road would also have been used by drovers and cattle thieves transporting livestock across the border. At the border it joins with Clennell Street, and continues across to Hownam and Kelso.
St Cuthbert's Way in its current form was opened in 1996. Named after the Northumbrian saint who lived in the 7th century CE, it was a popular pilgrimage route for two centuries after the Saint's death, until the Viking raids prompted the removal of Cuthbert’s remains from Holy Island to a safer site inland. The 100km (62 mile) St Cuthbert's Way starts in Melrose, where St Cuthbert started his religious life in the beautiful Melrose Abbey and weaves its way through the Scottish borders and the rugged Cheviot hills to finish at the Holy Island of Lindisfarne where he was the bishop and then hermit, and where he died. After the Danish raids, St Cuthbert's remains travelled the lands for seven years, carried by a dedicated group of monks, finally finding rest at the St Cuthbert's church in Chester-le-Street, and then , after another Viking raid, in Ripon. His final resting place, as legend has it by his own post-mortem request, is in the Durham cathedral.
Dere Street is an old Roman road that led from Eboracum (York) through Stanegate in Corbridge and on to Scotland. The route was created to allow easy movement of troops and supplies in the North. It continued to be used as a major transit route in the medieval times. There are several Roman roads including the Military Road, Devil's Causeway and a road linking Bremenium on the Dere Street with Devil's Causeway near Low Learchild. We will cover these and the stories surrounding them in more detail in the future.
Today, these ancient roads offer a great way to explore the Northumberland's valleys and hills. Several of them are maintained as bridleways and can be visited by horse or bicycle, a great way to truly experience what it was like to travel across the Border ridge in the past.
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