Postcards from kinda the area around Beamish, but not, like, Beamish itself, you kn
Posts tagged as âCounty Durhamâ
It canât happen here
Feeling really quite glum over the news of far-right riots near here yesterday. I just keep coming back to the question⌠why Sunderland, of all places?
Not that it would be okay in any situation, but itâs not Leicester, where you have sectarian tensions flaring up. Itâs not Southport, where you just had a mass stabbing. Itâs not even somewhere with a properly substantial Muslim or immigrant population, like a Birmingham or a Boston. Itâs Sunderland. Why here, in what is, pardon my bluntness, the White British1 working-class capital of the UK?
I donât know. I guess i thought it couldnât happen here. That we were nicer up north. Or that the scenery was too nice for people to get angry. Or that we were too left-wing even though Reform beat the Tories in every constituency. Or maybe that we were too deprived, and that we didnât have anyone to scapegoat, because we knew itâd be shit no matter what.
Ach. History will trundle on as always, and in due time iâm sure the internet shit-stirrers and fundie imams will be joining hands and complaining about all those filthy undersea neo-post-BahĂĄâĂ immigrants from Atlantis taking our jobs. Maybe we can set up a football rivalry for everyone to redirect their hate into like they did in Glasgow. Who knows.
Ushaw Hall
Ushaw Hallâs website plays coy about itself. You can learn that guide dogs are welcome, theyâll be exhibiting interactive âHumanimalâ sculptures next month, and that they're very proud of the pun âUshaw inâ, but curiously little about what the place actually is (or was). I went anyway.
To spoil the fun, itâs an old Roman Catholic seminary that was turned into a museum when people stopped being religious enough to care. The entrance makes that well clear; walking up from the car park, the curious visitor is flanked by an ostentatious neo-Gothic chapel on their left and modernist student housing on their right. (The latter remains unmuseumified, too boring to make much out of.)
Right from reception thereâs an interesting historical tidbit with a bust of Abraham Lincoln himself, who a helpful volunteer told me once attended Ushaw before he decided a more secular political career was right for him. (It was that or boxing, i suppose.) Upstairs is the Presidentsâ Hall, whither the stairway looked off-limits enough not to chance it â so never mind that, and letâs instead turn right.1 This takes us down a series of winding hallways with wibbly tiled floor â as of now, an exhibition has lined them with wedding dresses old and new, including replicas of those worn by the royal family, creepy mannequin heads and all.2 More importantly and more permanently, these are the chapels of Ushaw Hall.
They are beautiful, and have seen better days. The paint peels from a dimly-lit mural in a nook i presume is for choirists. In others, light dances in vibrant oranges and blues through expository stained glass. The brightest of them all, seen here to the right, invites its visitors to pray for Ukraine in a solemn reminder of the times.
These smaller shrines have an intimacy to them that reflects the houseâs hush-hush history. First exiled from England, the Catholics settled in the small town of Douai, in the north of France â only to be forced out again by the secular fervour of the French Revolution. Even then, they struggled to find welcome in a staunchly Protestant Georgian England, until a sympathetic aristocrat sold them land in Durhamâs secluded hills. The hall itself was built with the façade of an unseeming terrace, only showing its religious nature to those within.
Onwards, then, into the star of the show â the main chapel. Pews upon pews span the long gap between the entrance and the colossal tabernacle, behind which the walls are adorned with what first looks like simple ornament but reveals itself to be tightly-packed black-lettered Latin. You can tell itâs Catholic by the eagle in the middle, the Vatican having never quite given up its attachment to its Roman roots.
âŚUpstairs is the Presidentsâ Hall, whither the stairway looked off-limits enough not to chance it â so never mind that, and letâs instead turn left. Winding at right angles around the central court we first arrive at the library, or what little you can access of it. Management and the university are promising big things⌠eventually⌠once they restore everything⌠and catalogue it⌠and⌠oh, sod this, letâs go to the cafĂŠ.
[One hot chocolate laterâŚ]
As we were. Further along we find find the mess hall, where aspiring clergy once ate in silence, with only the wet sopping of a hundred English breakfasts reverberating back and forth across the walls. These days itâs used for noisier conferences and school trips, fitted with identikit metal and plastic tables and seats which donât do much to complement the nineteenth-century dĂŠcor.
Some time later, past the temporary exhibition of inkjet printouts of old maps3, our trip comes full circle. As i walk home through the well-kempt garden and around the reedy old pond, i might not have been convinced by the seminaryâs faith, but i have been convinced of their taste in interior decoration.
Information for visitors
- Admission: ÂŁ10 per adult, ÂŁ6 per child, free for under-fives
- Address: Ushaw Historic House, Chapels & Gardens; Ushaw Moor; Durham DH7 9RH
- Accessibility: An accessible entrance is available, and the gardens have paths suitable for wheelchairs.
- Arriving there: Accessible by car along the A167, and the 52 bus also intermittently stops.
A despatch from Consett
Hello. Iâve been to Consett. I thought you might like to hear about it. (Gosh, iâve missed writing that.)
Itâs been a miserable year so far weather-wise, so wind-swept, cold-nipped, and rain-soaked that it took until April for me to look outside and go, ah, not a bad day, letâs go for a jaunt.
The plan was simple: get a bus into Consett and head straight for the nearest hill. A short and sweet saunter through woods and farmland; short compared to some of my previous odysseys from Newcastle to the Wansbeck, sweet compared to the scenery in the more populous parts of the palatinate. (It was not to be.)
We start in the centre of town, a humble lower-middle-class affair whose high street would strike southerners as horrifyingly dilapidated and northerners as above average â nice enough, at least, for the areaâs local MP to choose it as his base of operations. Around the corner from the cinema1, the pedestrianised and sensibly named Middle Street plays host to (in decreasing order of classiness) a provider of musical instruments, an independent sweet shopâgift shopâpet shop, a building society, a Greggs, a Superdrug, an animal rescue shelter, a frozen food emporium, a Turkish barber, Ladbrokes, a vape shop, another vape shop which also sells computer parts and repairs your phone (my lawyers say i canât call it a mob front), and Barryâs Bargain Superstore.
This dumps us onto a crossing onto Parliament Street, where the Galileanically inclined can attend the charming parish church (with âmessy churchâ every month for the tots). I follow it down its procession of historic terraces, in a rather literal sense: Briton Terrace, Saxon Terrace, Norman Terrace, and then to spite me they finish it off with the pattern-breaking Tudor Terrace. I suppose it could have been a later addition, going with Stuart Court across the road, as well as Georgia and Edwardia Courts, two small cul-de-sacs i only noticed on Google Earth after the fact⌠but that sequence gets thrown off yet again by the road whence those two branch off, Romany Drive, which unless they meant to write âRomanâ but hired a dyslexic cartographer has sod all to do with the other streets.
A path bearing at its mouth a welcoming sign (all caps, âno part of this land is dedicated to the public, any use of this land is entirely at the userâs own risk, et cetera, et ceteraâ) marks a liberating end to our onomastic confusion, funneling us down a sloping green crescent of parkland into a reclaimed steelworks. (Itâs always a reclaimed steelworks.)
Finally, we reach the end of the funnel, where the light pours from the sky, the buildings abruptly stop, and any wayward ramblers are left with only a gorgeous view of Durhamâs rolling hills stretching out before them. This exact moment, this exact view â this is why i get out. To sit on the edge of a hill, the dull traces of modernity firmly behind you, and see the country not devoid of manâs presence, but shaped by it, over hundreds and thousands of years, from hunting-grounds to cleared forest to farmland to steelworks to grass for grassâs sake, a place where, like the terraces of Parliament Street, you can hear Englandâs history sing in your veins.
Anyway then thereâs a really steep path downhill where i almost slipped and fell like Super Mario going down a slide.
Traipsing down steps iâm not 100% sure were public and over a road made of more pothole than asphalt
i wind up following a burn to the River Derwent. This is where our routeâs industrial past makes
itself seen. Every few yards a worn sign pops up warning of a âdrainage
ditchâ, or a graffiti-blanketed pipe crosses the rain-cleaved dene;
at the very end, a picnic table by a former pump house grants me some respite.
I take stock of myself. My phoneâs battery, always surprising me with innovative ways to run out, is in danger of crossing the ten-percent mark. Itâs the first nice day of the year, but that also means iâm out of shape and out of practice: i wonât be able to make it all the way.
Equally, iâd be a fool to clamber back up all that. I keep walking. The rushing burn has become a tranquil river, its waters still enough to see your reflection. I think to myself that if youâre going to name a pencil company after a river, this oneâs not a bad choice.2
Civilisation creeps back in with the tell-tale sounds of power tools. This is Allensford Holiday Park, a modest gathering of caravans proudly advertising itself as ânear the outstanding Northumberland National Parkâ. (It isnât.) When i get there itâs thronged by teen schoolboys freshly out, chattering about video games and lining up for ice cream. (Something, something, nature is healing.) Checking Google Maps with what power i have left reveals my worst fear: thereâs nowhere to go but up.
The distance is short, but the slope is grueling. I convince my legs to heave themselves up along the side of pavementless roads, ducking into fallow fields and passing places wherever i can find them. It gets worse the further i get. By the first field, iâm a little out of it. By the Catholic boarding school, iâm utterly exhausted. When i climb what i think is the final hill, only for perspective to cruelly show yet more around the corner, i wonder if this is what hell is like. But i make it â sweating and breathless, hydrating myself sip by sip, i make it to the bus stop, and wait. The driver, when he comes, must think iâm a zombie, but iâm glad to be on my way home. Note to self: donât take that big a break again.
A dispatch from Barnard Castle
Hello. Iâve been to the Bowes Museum. I thought i might tell you about it.
Housed in a gloriously incongruous French mansion in the small town of Barnard Castle1, it was built to house the art collections of the noble Bowes-Lyons â a family lucky enough to count the Queen Mother herself among their members.
Its collection lies largely parallel to the âmainâ visual arts: ceramics, fashion, textiles, furniture, and other such things which must account for function as much as form. Most of it plunges headfirst into the latter, a bit frilly even for my often anti-modernist tastes, but i did like this caduceus-adorned wooden cabinet:
The star of the show here is the Silver Swan, a gorgeous eighteenth-century automaton which preens and sways on a bed of glass water. Unfortunately, itâs broken, and the closest youâll get to see it is its dismembered corpse awaiting restoration, so [raspberry noise]. You can, however, see their exhibition on its legacy, which houses a wonderful collection of modern animatronics made by crafters and tinkerers from all over the world, like this 10/10 pianist:
There are a few items which donât fit into the above. Theyâve managed to snag some real Goyas, Canalettos, and El Grecos. (Los Grecos?) They even have Charles Babbageâs Difference Engine, somehow â i assume itâs on loan from London?
Information for visitors
- Admission: ÂŁ15.50 for an annual membership; ÂŁ13.50 for locals â donât be fooled by the eye-watering ÂŁ18 day ticket for shmucks!
- Address: The Bowes Museum, Newgate, Barnard Castle, DL12 8NP
- Accessibility: The museum has an accessible entrance and a lift serving all three floors.
- Getting there: Bus networkâs fucked at the minute. Sorry.
The Penshaw monument
On a hilltop in County Durham sits the Penshawi monument, a nineteenth-century folly built to commemorate the late Earl of Durham. Itâs always been on my bucket list, but itâs a bit of a pain to get to via public transport, and iâd never found the time â last week, though, i found myself with some time off and decided to make the trip. Iâll let the pictures do the talking from hereâŚ
Information for visitors
- Address: Chester Rd, Penshaw, Houghton le Spring DH4 7NJ .
- Accessibility: Getting up to the monument requires a steep hike up a hill; if you have impaired mobility, you may want to think twice before going.
- Getting there: The hill is served by the A183 road and the 2, 2A, and 78 buses. The nearest train station is Chester-le-Street, five miles away.
- The National Trust sometimes offers tours of the top of the monument, though those are currently suspended.
High Force
Verborgen tussen de heidevelden en Penninsche pieken van County Durham ligt de machtigste waterval in Engeland. Het water van High Force tuimelt over 22 meter en 300 miljoen jaar rots naar het poel beneden. De waterval is ontstaan waar de rivier de Tees de Whin Sill kruist, een harde plaat van stollingsgesteente die een groot deel van het noorden van Engeland bedekt.
Als het waterpeil hoog genoeg is splitst de kracht zich in twee stromen, waarvan er een de andere kant op gaat rond de rotsenâââna stormen kan het zelfs het hele plateau overstromen. Helaas, mijn groep had niet zoveel geluk, ondanks recente regenbuien.
De familie Raby, de eigenaars van het landgoed, vragen £5 om het uitzicht vanaf de voet van de waterval te mogen bewonderen. De waterval torent boven degene die durft naar beneden te gaan⌠en die niet zal missen dat er enkele mensen staan boven aan de rotsen. Die hebben helemaal niets betaald, want zij wandelde langs de gratis Penninische Weg. Verdorie.
Informatie voor bezoekers
- Adres: High Force, Forest-in-Teesdale, Barnard Castle, County Durham, DL12 0XH, Verenigd Koninkrijk.
- Bereikbaarheid: Openbaar vervoer is schaars in dit deel van het land, dus u kunt het beste een schilderachtige autorit maken door de Pennines en het negentiende-eeuwse dorp Middleton-in-Teesdale.
- Prijs: Het Raby landgoed rekent ÂŁ5 voor toegang via de bodem, maar de top is gratis toegankelijk door een wandeling langs de Penninische Weg.
- ToeÂganÂkeÂlijkÂheid en faciliteiten: Het pad is, voor zover ik weet, niet rolÂstoelÂtoeÂganÂkeÂlijk. De familie Raby houden toiletten en een hotel voor wie wil overnachten.
High Force
Nestled amongst County Durhamâs moors and Pennine peaks lies Englandâs mightiest waterfall. The waters of High Force tumble over 22 metres and 300 million years of stone, down into the plunge pool below. The falls were formed where the river Tees meets the Great Whin Sill, a tough slab of igneous rock covering much of the north of England.
When the water level is high enough, the force splits into two streams, one going the other way around the rocksâââafter storms, it can even overflow the plateau entirely. Alas, despite recent showers, my group were not so lucky.
The Raby family, owners of the estate, charge ÂŁ2 to see the view from the base of the falls. The falls tower over any mere human who dares navigate down, demanding oneâs respect and attention⌠and making it unmissable that, at the top of the falls, there are several people who walked their on their own via the Pennine Way, not having to pay a single dime. Drat.
Information for visitors
- Address: High Force, Forest-in-Teesdale, Barnard Castle, County Durham, DL12 0XH.
- Getting there: Public transit connections are few and far between this far into the countryside, so your best bet is to take a scenic drive via car through the Pennines and the nineteenth-century village of Middleton-in-Teesdale.
- Price: The Raby estate charges ÂŁ2 to access via the bottom, but the top can be freely accessed by a hike along the Pennine Way.
- Opening times: 10:00â16:00.
- Accessibility and facilities: The trail is not, to my knowledge, wheelchair-accessible. The site contains toilets and a hotel for anyone wanting to stay the night.