Old Bewick village is 4.3 kilometres (2.7 mi) west-north-west of Eglingham, and 4.6 kilometres (2.9 mi) south of Chillingham in Northumberland, England, on a south-west facing slope of the River Breamish valley at approximately 322 feet (98 m) above sea level.[2] The village is 0.75 kilometres (0.47 mi) west of the 765-foot-high (233 m) Bewick Hill, the site of an Iron Age hill fort known as Bewick Hill Camp and comprising two adjacent semi-circular multivallate enclosures.[3][4] The village is on a minor road forming a western extension of the B6346 road, as that road turns south-west, west of Harehope Hall, to join the A697 road.[5]
The village's situation, within the Scottish Marches, the Anglo-Scottish border area of the late medieval and early modern eras, which was characterised by violence and cross-border raids, is of significance to Old Bewick insofar as its church was damaged by Scottish invaders in the 13th-century, and it was selected as the location of one of the many defensive towers erected in Northumberland in the 15th-century.[6]
The village's name – Old Bewick, rather than merely Bewick – seems to go back into antiquity, reflecting the development of a distinct settlement, New Bewick, 1.3 kilometres (0.81 mi) to the south and on the other side of River Breamish. Joan Blaeu's 1662 map, Comitatvs Northvmbria, shows Bewick Great and Bewick Little in positions approximating to Old and New Bewick,[7] and both are listed in a 1663 rent roll for the district.[8]
History
John Charles Langlands, tenant of Old Bewick Farm from May 1823,[9] wrote and presented a detailed history of Old Bewick to the Berwickshire Naturalists Club on 30 May 1866.[10]
Langlands starts by noting that in times before documented history, Old Bewick must have been the centre of a very considerable population, given the extensive remains of camps and dwellings of the race by whom it was occupied prior to the Roman period; and asserts that foundations of buildings of later periods found in surrounding fields indicate that its inhabitants continued to be numerous after the Roman period, drawn together probably for protection, to a fortified tower which had taken the place of the ancient camp.[10]
The village is surrounded by hillforts, including Bewick Hill Camp noted above; Bewick Hill Moor camp, a partial contour fort 2.15 kilometres (1.34 mi) to the east-north-east;[11] and Bewick Bridge East, a hillslope fort 0.86 kilometres (0.53 mi) to the north-west.[12] Other prehistoric features in the vicinity of the village include cup and ring marked rocks to the east of Bewick Hill Camp;[13] and slightly further east, round cairns north of Tick Law.[14]
Cup and ring marked stones
Sketch of the largest of the five cup and ring marked stones discovered by Langlands on Bewick Hill
Langlands discovered five cup and ring marked stones on the east top of Bewick Hill in the 1820s; these are amongst the earliest to be documented in Britain, notably in George Tate's 1865 The Ancient British Sculptured Rocks of Northumberland.[15] Upon the discovery in 1852 of similar stones near Roughting Linn, near Doddington, Tate took it on himself to investigate the occurrence of these 'singular and mysterious inscriptions', using the platform of his presidency of the Berwickshire Naturalists Club to promulgate interest in the subject.[16]
Two of Langlands' stones are found within Bewick Hill Camp. One, near to the outer rampart and eastern entrance, has five figures traceable, one of which is as deeply cut as 3/5 of an inch (15 mm); the centre appears as a raised boss, and the whole figure looks like the impression of a horse's foot. The other is about 20 yards (18 m) northward of the first, close to the rampart, and has two figures.[17]
A large block, 9+1⁄2 foot (2.9 m) by 6+1⁄2 foot (2.0 m), stands about 30 yards (27 m) eastward of the camp, and has six figures traceable on its rough sloping surfaces, the largest of which is 10 inches (250 mm) in diameter. Another block, about 100 yards (91 m) from the camp, presents two figures.[17]
The chief group of sculptures, 27 in number, is found on the first stone discovered by Langlands, about 100 yards (91 m) east of the camp; an irregular quadrangular shape, 10 foot (3.0 m) by 8 foot (2.4 m), sloping northward, and rising where highest 4+1⁄2 foot (1.4 m) above the ground.[18]
Land ownership
Throughout the period of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, and into the Norman period, the manor of Old Bewick was holden to the Court leet of Bamburgh Castle and tenanted under a drengage system peculiar to the kingdom, amounting to a feudal free tenantry with military duties.[10]
Around or before 1107 the manor – termed the lands of Archi Morell – was given to Tynemouth Priory by Matilda of Scotland, daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland and wife of Henry I of England. Malcolm III had been killed in 1093 whilst campaigning near Alnwick, by Morell of Bamburgh, a steward of Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, and was interred at Tynemouth Priory. Langlands suggests that the land formed part of Matilda's dowry.[19] J. C. Hodgeson, writing in 1905, specifies that Bewick and Eglingham were lands owned by Morell of Bamburgh, confiscated in 1095 after a conspiracy to depose William II of England and place Stephen of Aumale on the English throne.[20]
Philip C. Hardwick, in a letter to Langlands read to the Berwickshire Naturalists Club in May 1857, suggests that Old Bewick's 12th-Century[21] Church of the Holy Trinity, situated at a distance to the north-west of the village, is mainly the work of the monks of Tynemouth starting from the date of Matilda's grant; albeit Hardwick opines that the apse may predate the rest of the structure.[22]
In 1138 Old Bewick and lands around Eglingham were granted by the Priory to Edgar, son of Gospatric II, Earl of Lothian, but were later seized as forfeit by Henry II of England after Edgar opposed him, and later restored to the priory in recognition of Matilda's grant.[23]Henry III of England in 1253 granted the monks of Tynemouth the right to hold a market in Old Bewick, weekly, on a Thursday. A 1292 valuation of the manor is recorded as £30 15s 6d.[24]
A most remarkable picture of the desolate and barbarous condition of the North of England has been left by Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II, who passed through it disguised as a merchant in 1486, on his return from a mission to Scotland. The entire male population of the town in which he spent the night after crossing the Border made off, he tells us, at the end of his protracted supper, for a tower at some distance for fear of the Scots, who were accustomed to take advantage of the tide being out to make a nocturnal raid across the river.
As a consequence, the border area, according to Bates, 'literally bristled' with defensive towers; Old Bewick was selected as the location for one such, and a peel tower was erected, presumably at some point in the 15th-century, since the first documented mention is in a 1509 Chapter House book suggesting it could accommodate 40 horsemen.[29] Bewick Tower is described as a 'good tower', in Sir Robert Bowes and Sir Ralph Ellerker 1541 View of the Castles, Towers, Barmekyns, and Fortresses of the Frontier of the East and Middle Marches, wording which Bates suggests conveys a meaning that it was capable of housing 50 people;[30] but equally, despite recent repairs to part of its roof, the tower was found not to be in good repair nor completely watertight.[31]
In a later, 1584, report by the Commissioners on the Borders, for Elizabeth I, Bewick Tower was found to be decayed, and recommendations were made that it be rebuilt (at a cost of £20) and ideally augmented by a barmkin defensive wall, and stabling for 50 horses, at a cost of £200.[32] The recommendations do not seem to have been acted on; a 1608 survey found:[33]
a faire stronge tower, with a garth and a dovecoate of hewen stone, which hath beene wholy covered with leade but most parte of the leade is now decayed or purloyned away wherby it is not inhabitable but in one comer that is vaulted over. This tower hath commonly beene a refuge for the Tenants ther in time of danger.
Ruins of the tower were extant in 1715, but it had been demolished and the foundations covered by the Alnwick to New Haggestoneturnpike road, projected in an 1825 Local Act of Parliament and built shortly thereafter.[34][35]
Governance
Old Bewick is in the parliamentary constituency of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Old Bewick was formerly a township; from 1866 Old Bewick was a civil parish in its own right until it was abolished on 1 April 1955 to form Bewick.[36]
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