The Wooing of Mrs Walter Scott (NY639679)

To a Lady, with Flowers from a Roman Wall

By Sir Walter Scott

Take these flowers which, purple waving,
On the ruin’d rampart grew,
Where, the sons of freedom braving
Rome's imperial standards flew.

Warriors from the breach of danger
Pluck no longer laurels there;
They but yield the passing stranger
Wild-flower wreaths for Beauty’s hair.

Astride the Northumberland-Cumbria border, where the River Irthing swings down from the north before turning westward, can be found the little town of Gilsland (on the Northumberland side) and Gilsland Spa (on the Cumbrian). Opposite the latter, across the little valley, can be found Wardrew House, now a private residence but once a hotel. During 1797, the famous Scottish novelist and poet, Sir Walter Scott, stayed there for a three month break whilst taking the waters of the nearby spa.

Wardrew House

© Copyright Karl and Ali and licensed for reuse 

under this Creative Commons Licence.

Inspired by the flora of the district, Scott composed the above piece – his efforts fuelled, too, no doubt by the whirlwind romance he enjoyed during his stay in the area with his future wife, Charlotte Genevieve Charpentier (or Carpenter). Miss Carpenter, an émigré from the French Revolution, was at the same time staying at The Shaws Hotel (which formerly stood on the site of the Gilsland Spa Hotel over the river from Wardrew), and Scott supposedly proposed to the young woman at the famous ‘Popping Stone’ a little upstream from their respective hotels. They were married in December 1797 in Carlisle.

Coincidentally, Scott’s compatriot, Robert Burns, also stayed at Wardrew House a decade before, in 1787. The house was originally built in 1752, but was much modified after a period of dilapidation in the 19^th century.

Haughton Castle Paper Mill (NY921729)

Near the bank of the River North Tyne a little to the north of Humshaugh stands Haughton Castle and its associated buildings. On the riverbank itself can be found the remains of an old paper mill, built by Captain William Smith, the owner of the nearby castle, in 1788. The flow of the river here is steady and strong, which is just what you’re looking for if you’re a mill owner.

It is also rather remote, which is not always good for communications – but it is good for sneaky goings-on. And, in 1793, just five years after its construction, Haughton Castle Mill was commissioned by the British government for a rather special assignment: it was instructed to produce the paper required for the printing of counterfeit French currency.

There’d been the little matter of the French Revolution, of course, in 1789, and the new revolutionary government was struggling to find its feet. One of its most controversial measures was to introduce as a new currency the ‘Assignat’, backed by the value of property seized from the Catholic Church. Obviously, the Church wasn’t too happy about this illegal seizure and they, together with what was left of the French nobility, opposed the new currency system. To add to the new regime’s woes many foreign countries began producing forged assignats to flood the market and thus destabilise the French economy. Belgium, Switzerland and Britain were at the forefront in this regard, and one of the many paper mills chosen for the project was that on the bank of the North Tyne at Haughton. Its remoteness no doubt contributed to its selection and, for around two years during 1793-95, a good deal of the paper with which the dodgy notes were made was turned out here. The printing process was carried out elsewhere, though; then the notes were sent to Flanders with the British Army.

By the many and various anti-assignat methods thus employed across Europe, the new-fangled French revolutionary currency was indeed brought down. Introduced in 1789, it devalued steadily and was scrapped in 1796. By the time Napoleon I became emperor in 1804 it was a distant memory. So you could argue that the undercover activity at Haughton Castle Mill in the 1790s helped bring the little dictator to power.

One of the moulds for making the paper notes still survives and is in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne. The mill itself had fallen out of use by the 1880s, though much of the fabric of the building survives.

The Beginnings of Ushaw College (NZ219438)

The building complex which was, until very recently, known as Ushaw College was for many years the principal Roman Catholic seminary in the north of England. It acted as a training facility for young catholic priests, but was closed in 2011 due to falling numbers of scholars. From its founding in 1808, it grew into an institution of substantial proportions over its 400+ acres.

Despite its high profile history (in the catholic world at least) the most interesting aspect of its 200-year existence is the backstory to its establishment. Amazingly, the tale begins in the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I and the re-imposition of Protestantism in England, which led to the exile (voluntary or otherwise) of many of those of the catholic faith. At Douai in northern France (then in the Spanish Netherlands), a small community of English exiles assembled, who, in turn, helped establish the University of Douai – indeed, the institution’s first chancellor was an Oxford University import. Almost immediately the idea of an ‘English seminary’ was mooted for the little commune – and so was founded Douai’s ‘English College’ in 1568.

The academy effectively became a ‘Catholic University of Oxford in exile’, readying itself for the reconversion of England to the catholic faith. Although this, of course, never transpired, a great number of priests were secreted into England in the decades and centuries that followed – though the fortunes of the college ebbed and flowed over the years. Then, when the French Revolution hit in the 1790s, the great majority of the officials fled back to England and the college was quickly suppressed.

The fleeing clerics and their students were eventually able to establish new college sites in Ware, Hertfordshire, and at Crook Hall, Durham – the second of these relocating, in time, to Ushaw. As for the Ushaw site, a building programme spanning 1804-1808 saw a new seminary opened as ‘St.Cuthbert’s College’ – under the guidance of Bishop William Gibson and to the designs of James Taylor. In the following decades it was much expanded with the aid of several other eminent architects.

Since its closure as a seminary in 2011, the site has been run by a charitable trust with a view to long-term educational use (possibly, eventually, as a catholic scholarship/heritage centre). It is also, in stages, being opened up to the public, including as a venue for concerts, etc.