Padon Hill Monument (NY820928)

© Copyright Walter Baxter and licensed for 

reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Lying a few yards to the east of the Pennine Way about four miles west of Otterburn lies a large, neat stone cairn, or currick, known as Padon Hill Monument. It is a sizeable affair at around five metres high, which at first sight seems out of all proportion to the modest altitude of the peak it marks (379m).

On closer inspection you will see that it is more than just another hilltop cairn as is evidenced by the almost illegible plaque set into the stonework. And the strange thing about this landmark is that though it is a recent construction no one seems to know the full and proper story behind it.

The plaque bears the date 1903 or 1913 – though the latter is the more likely as it is supposed to have been erected in celebration of the 50th wedding anniversary of Sir Charles and Lady Morrison-Bell of Otterburn Hall (who were married in 1863). However, the cairn, meant ostensibly as a wedding anniversary marker stone for a couple of local notables, was also intended to honour the work of a prominent Presbyterian preacher called Alexander Padon. But, again, the history is all very sketchy, and we can only assume that this is the Alexander Peden who was active way back in the time of King Charles II. This seems to make sense as this chap was a very well-known Scottish covenanting minister at the time, and was so famous for his al fresco preaching in these parts that they named the hill after him (it was of course necessary to do this sort of thing in out-of-the-way places due to the laws of the day). Some sources say that there was once a chapel on the spot, which you can believe looking at the amount of loose stone lying around.

Peden (1626-1686) was an interesting chap who led an extraordinary life. Such was his infamy that he took to wearing a disguise to hide his identity from the authorities when on his preaching travels. It consisted of a cloth mask and wig, which you can check out at his Wikipedia entry.

Ilderton & Royal Genealogies (NU017218)

There is a story – a legend, almost – concerning the little village of Ilderton in the shadow of the Cheviots and an illegitimate line of descent from Charles II. It is a nice illustration of how a family can fall so quickly and completely from grace, leaving, of course, a trail of rumours and half-truths in their disappearing wake.

One of King Charles II’s many illegitimate offspring was thought to have been a chap by the name of Charles Dartiquenave (born about 1664), though he was not officially ‘recognised’ as such. Much of the evidence for his suspected regal roots stems from the man’s blessed career path, which, it has been assumed, was guided by the royal hand. Charles loved the high life, and enjoyed his various positions to their full extent. A carefully chosen wife ensured further riches, and he died in comfort at Albury, Hertfordshire, in 1737.

His son, also called Charles, enjoyed a respectable army career, inheriting his father’s many and varied possessions, too, it seems. Charles Junior died in 1748, leaving several young children, among them Charles Peter, Anne and Dorothy. The first named succeeded to the family residence, Patmer Hall (in Albury), but eventually sold the estate in 1775 for reasons unknown. For equally obscure reasons, he (together with his two sisters) then migrated several hundred miles north to take up the tenancy of Ilderton Hall, Northumberland, in 1776. Little is known of his life there, but he was a churchwarden for most of the 1780s.

By 1792, though, Charles had managed to squander his resources, and his entire farming stock and equipment, together with all of his household items and possessions, were sold at auction. His creditors were invited to grab what they could in the ensuing melee, and Charles scarpered to Alnwick (some sources suggest a legal dispute over his tenancy agreement of Ilderton Hall contributed to the move). He lived in a plain house, but maintained a coach and the title of a ‘gentleman’ until his death in 1801, aged 58. However, the man – a great grandson of King Charles II – doesn’t seem to have left a will, which is perhaps indicative of the financial depths to which he had dragged the family line.

Note: It is worth noting, too, that Charles’ sister, Dorothy, to whom he was very close, died in suspicious circumstances at Ilderton Hall prior to them vacating the property. Her supposed violent death resulted in a hasty burial in the garden, it was said. Stains which remain on one of the staircases of the hall are reputed to have been caused by blood from the wounds inflicted on Dorothy by her attacker.

Norton’s Quakers (NZ446221)

© Copyright Carol Rose and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

The first Quaker Meeting House proper to be built in the settlement of Norton was on the site of the current affair in the year 1671. Much altered over the years, the present structure dates from 1903 when it was rebuilt in the style of the original building.

What is remarkable, though, is how the religious body itself has managed to survive at all. Whilst some sources refer to the town’s ‘comparatively peaceful history’, the Quakers have suffered anything but a quiet existence there. Born around the time of the English Civil War, the Quaker movement made enemies of both Roundhead and Royalist alike – though the former tolerated them due to Quaker sympathies among their foot soldiers.

On the Restoration in 1660, there was a severe clamp-down on the activities of the ‘obstinate men and women’ of the parish ‘who would not let down their conventicles’. King Charles II sent a party north to root out the Quakers – one Simon Townsend having his house taken (the site of the alleged activities of the dissenters). Townsend and several others were severely punished, with the period of oppression in and around the town continuing deep into the 1660s.

The record books are peppered with cases brought against the peace-loving ‘Society of Friends’ groups of this period. At the very height of the oppression, the Norton group built their first ‘official’ Meeting House on the village green in 1671. Massive fines, transportation and the like continued for those openly flouting the obligation to attend ‘national services’ in favour of their own religious gatherings, but the Quakers hung on until the ‘freer’ days following Charles II’s death in 1685. Though, in fact, an Act was passed against them as late as 1687 barring them from entry into many professions, they laid low thereafter, concentrating on social and industrial endeavours to stunning effect through the Industrial Revolution and beyond.

More information here.

Sir William Turner (NZ593216)

Everyone who has the slightest interest in the history of Cleveland is well aware of the Sir William Turner Almshouses, Kirkleatham. But who exactly was this most generous of men?

William was born in Guisborough, a little to the south of Kirkleatham, in 1615, to an already well-to-do family.  In the early 1620s, his father bought the Kirkleatham estate and began developing the site as the family home. But William was more than capable of making pots of money of his own, proving this following his move to London as a young man where he excelled in the fabrics wholesaling business.

After a long and successful career, during which time he amassed a huge fortune, he was knighted by King Charles II in recognition of his public works – and even found himself serving as Lord Mayor of London in the late 1660s, shortly after the infamous fire, during which time he worked closely with the likes of Christopher Wren in the rebuilding of the capital.

In the mid-1670s, Sir William, perhaps mindful that he had never married nor had children, surrendered most of his wealth to build the now famous almshouses in Kirkleatham – an institution founded in 1676 as the Sir William Turner Hospital. He determined that the hospital be established for the care of 40 people: ten old men, ten old women, ten boys and ten girls.

After his death in 1692 aged 77, control of the almshouses passed first to his nephew, then his great-nephew, Cholmley Turner. The great man’s will also made provision for the founding of a Free School in the village – a task completed by Cholmley in 1709, and which survives today as Kirkleatham Old Hall Museum.

Interested in Family History? Try this lot...

Thomas Jefferson’s Hero? (NU209025)

 

John Rushworth, that is. Who? I hear you ask. Well, the third President of the United States and principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was something of a fan of this now largely forgotten native of Acklington Park, a settlement a few miles to the south-west of Warkworth in Northumberland.

Rushworth was born in 1612 to a very well-to-do family with Yorkshire roots. The somewhat remote site of his birth did nothing to hinder his progress in life, however, progressing to Oxford University, from where he graduated in 1640. He became a student barrister, and thence clerk-assistant to the House of Commons, having made the acquaintance of King Charles I – and even married the sister of the future Speaker of the House. When all hell broke loose a year or so later, Rushworth became a supporter of Oliver Cromwell, with whom he had much in common, both politically and religiously. When the English Civil War commenced, he became Secretary to General Fairfax as well as Secretary to the Council of War.

John Rushworth effectively became the first ever official chronicler of a major war, being present at many of the big battles which ensued during 1642-51. He was also involved with negotiations with the king, as well as events surrounding his trial and execution (though he was not a signatory to the death warrant). Oliver Cromwell appointed Rushworth his personal Secretary during his ‘reign’, and was given much in the way of new responsibilities and roles thenceforth, much of them related to law reform.

John Milton, John Bunyan and Samuel Pepys were all close friends of his, and he became MP for Berwick on several occasions over the ensuing decades. In 1659, a year after Cromwell’s death, he published his famous Historical Collections (aka The Rushworth Papers), effectively a chronicle of the Civil War years (if a somewhat biased one), in which he espoused his methods and his reasoning. As Richard Cromwell’s power ebbed away during 1659-60, Rushworth, as Secretary to the Council of State, became, briefly, a very influential figure.

Despite the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, Rushworth managed to maintain positions of power, and was even made a Knight of the Order of the Bath in 1661. But it wasn’t to last. King Charles II never could quite forgive and forget, and Rushworth was eventually tried and imprisoned in the King's Bench Prison in 1684. He died in 1690, isolated from his family (he married and had four daughters) in a damp room in Rule's Court, Southwark, depressed, under-nourished, and suffering from senile dementia, aged 78: “where, being reduced to his second childship, for his memory was quite decayed by taking too much brandy to keep up his spirits, he quietly gave up the ghost in his lodging in a certain alley there, called Rule’s Court, on 12 May 1690”.

When, in 1890, King’s Bench Prison was demolished, ‘Rushworth School’ was built on the site and the thoroughfare was renamed ‘Rushworth Street’. His writings, however, found greatest favour in the US where they served as a source of inspiration for Thomas Jefferson. Rushworth's Historical Collections occupied pride of place in the great man’s library and he often quoted from them. Rushworth’s views of Charles I as a monarch who had “declared war on his own people” were later echoed in words by Thomas Jefferson and others when writing about the reign of George III and his actions during the War of Independence.