Places of Interest
Welcome to places of interest. Here I want to tell you about places on and around the border where the Reivers once rode. Some places have not changed much over the years but others have. For each place I talk about I will list a link to one of their websites so you can look at it more indepth.
Liddesdale
Once a valley of Border raids and warfare. Now a quiet land, where birds such as the tawny owl and flowers like the butterfly orchid flourish among the farms and woodlands.The Armstrongs as we all know by now were notorious thieves, and mostly came from here but could be found anywhere in the border area. But Liddesdale is said to have been their main area. The remains of a Roman camp would be a welcoming site for anyone visiting these parts. The area was rich in resources of limestone and coal. You could also visit the abandoned quarries, lime-burning kilns, spoil heaps, and the former miners' village of Rowanburn, unique in the Borderland. Armstrongs also lived at Hollows, beside the river Esk. Today tower remains in the Armstrong hands and reminds us of the violent past, while nearby the fine water-powered grain mill, still in use is a sign of more peaceful rural life. The Esk River at Hollows and the Liddel River at Penton Linns can be rewarding for the geologist and the fossil collector as well as those who like history and a walking along the riverbanks. If you visit the North of England or the South of Scotland in search for Border Reiver history I would strongly recommend a Visit to Liddesdale.
Solway Firth
Battle Of Solway Moss
In August 1542 James V gathered an army of ten thousand men and sent them to war with the English, under the command of Oliver Sinclair of Pitcairn’s. The reason was he wanted his men to push as far into England as they could. Sir Thomas Wharton and his three thousand men met them at Solway Moss. In this battle the English were out numbered by at least 3 to 1 and even though James V thought highly of Sinclair, it emerged that the nobles he was to command did not. It was believed that some internal politics turned to in-fighting and even nobles leaving the field before the battle. But however was happened was most of the men fighting on the Scottish side was the Armstrongs and they had respected friends with other families that also fought in the battle. Turn and walk away from the battle, some joined the English other returned home but the reason for this was to pay back the King of Scotland for his involvement with the death of the much loved Johnnie Armstrong. James V, who had waited for news of a victory, fled to Edinburgh after hearing that his army had lost. However, King Henry VIII of England did not retaliate as he thought this victory to be an easy one. King James V of Scotland died a fortnight after the battle at Linlithgow.
Today Solway is a flat large expanse of countryside, rarely above 100 feet. It has a bird sanctuary on marshes. A lot of good sites to view, including the historic Roman Wall and remains through the Reivers and more recent local history.
Morpeth
Morpeth, the County town of Northumberland, which lies fifteen miles to the north of Newcastle upon Tyne. Situated within a U bend of the River Wansbeck, Morpeth grew in importance as a coaching stop and market town on the Great North Road between London and Edinburgh. The name of the town could in fact take its name from this road, which leads north across the moors, as the name is said to derive from `moor path'. An alternative suggestion is that it derives from `Murder Path', which is not unlikely when we consider the bloody border history of Northumberland. Like many Northumbrian towns Morpeth suffered regularly at the hands of Scottish attacks, although when the town was sacked and burned in 1216 it was King John of England and not the Scots who were responsible. This raid on the town followed disagreements between the king and local barons. Morpeth was never a walled town like Newcastle or Berwick, but it did once have a castle, of which only the mound remains at the Ha' Hill overlooking the town's park. The castle was occupied by the Scots under General Lesley during the Civil War, when a garrison of 500 Scots held out against the Royalists for twenty days. In 1715 Morpeth was involved in the first Jacobite Rising, in which most Northumbrians supported the attempt to put James Stuart, the `Old Pretender' on the throne. Supporters of the Jacobites did not include the `Geordies' of Newcastle who supported the claim of King George. The centre of Morpeth is dominated by the town hall and the fifteenth century clock tower, which stands in the centre of the street called Oldgate. This street is the site of Colingwood House, where the famous Northumbrian sailor, Admiral Lord Collingwood (1750-1810) once lived. In Bridge Street you will find the Morpeth Chantry, which was formerly All Saints Church, but is now a Tourist Information Centre and the site of the Northumbrian bagpipe museum. For a county town Morpeth is fairly small, with a population of only around 15,000, but perhaps its size is not surprising, for the most thinly populated county in England. Most of Northumberland's population is in fact concentrated in a number of small towns between Morpeth and Newcastle upon Tyne that is within that South Eastern portion of the county, which once formed part of the Great Northern Coalfield. Many of the towns in this part of Northumberland, have coal mining origins such as Blyth, Bedlington and Ashington, while others such as Ponteland, Darras Hall and Cramlington have grown mainly as modern dormitory suburbs of Newcastle upon Tyne. Beyond Morpeth and South East Northumberland, the main towns of the county are Hexham, Alnwick, and Berwick Upon Tweed, and all three of these are smaller than Morpeth. In fact the next major centre of population to the north of Newcastle upon Tyne, is the Scottish capital of Edinburgh.
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