Of the stories concerning the many ‘lost villages’ that lie
scattered across the North-East the saddest of them all is surely that of the
cursed township of Wreighill in the parish of Rothbury, Coquetdale. Today only
a farm bearing the ancient name clings to the lofty prominence to the
north-west of Hepple; the sole reminder of the tragic little village whose name
was once synonymous with death and destruction.
Its roots lie deep in the mists of antiquity. Lying yards to the east of the Roman road
which links the Devil’s Causeway to Dere Street, 5½ miles west of Rothbury,
many ancient bones have been discovered high on its hill. The Romans – invariably occupiers of
settlements previously conquered – have left their own faint remains of a camp,
too, in the area. For a millennium after the Romans departed its progress
remains a mystery, indeed its very existence throughout the Dark and Middle
Ages remains in doubt. Suffice to say
that by the late fifteenth century it was known as Wreigh- or Wreck-Hill – for
reasons I will now attempt to explain.
Being situated on the western-most extremity of the Coquet
valley, the few dozen inhabitants were frequent victims of the infamous Border
reivers. On countless occasions Scottish
raiders descended the Cheviot foothills around the turn of the fifteenth
century only to find the poor village in their way. It became a way of life for the villagers,
but they simply refused to be beaten, regularly standing up stoically to their
foe. The Scottish freebooters, though,
vowed to some day make them pay for their determined resistance. Undaunted, the villagers defiantly stood
their ground as best they could over the months and years, but pay they finally
would on the fateful night of 25th May 1412.
On that terrible Wednesday evening a mighty Scottish band
appeared on the horizon and the troubled locals braced themselves again,
fearing the worst. A fierce encounter
ensued but, overpowered by numbers and might of arms, the village was
overrun. Its inhabitants were
slaughtered, many being pursued long into the night until not a soul remained,
the village itself being burnt and laid waste.
Until the early years of the twentieth century the phrase “the Woeful
Wednesday of the Wreck-Hill” was an oft used metaphor in those parts to all
that pertained to cruel, total and mindless slaughter. Thus, on account of its fateful existence,
the village came to be known as Wreck-Hill.
“Wreigh” was a convenient enough derivative, and the reasoning for the
development of the present-day place-name held good for a long while. But this story is not the source from which
the village’s name is drawn, and the truth, though quite different, remains
equally as morbid.
“Wreigh” is, in fact, derived from the Old English wearg, meaning a felon or wrong-doer;
and Wreigh-Hill, or Felon’s Hill, was where such offenders were put to death –
not by hanging but by strangulation! It
is likely that nearby Wreigh Burn was simply named after the village, but not
impossible that its meaning is identical to that of Throckley’s Wreigh Burn,
i.e. the burn where undesirables were summarily drowned.
By and by, as the violent age of the Border reivers and the
moss troopers passed into history, so the village recovered. In 1665, however, came a second great
calamity, as the isolated settlement was tragically and almost entirely wiped
out by the Plague. The story goes that a
small parcel was opened by a Miss Handyside which had been sent to her by a
young gentleman in London – where, of course, the terrible disease was then
raging – whereupon the deadly pestilence sprung out and spread over the whole
village, poor Miss Handyside being its first victim. By all accounts almost everyone suffered,
with only a few hardy folk surviving, who themselves interred their dead where
neither plough nor spade would ever turn them up. A century later, though, when the potato
arrived in the area, the steep slopes under which the dead lay were put to use
and countless brittle bones were unearthed.
Thankfully, however, little Wreighill is most recently
remembered as being the birthplace of the once nationally famous mathematical
genius, young George Coughran. Born in
1752, the son of a Wreighill farmer, Coughran showed signs of his extraordinary
talent in his infancy. Thrust
uncompromisingly into the fields of his father’s business as a child (where he
also excelled), he continued his studies part-time at every opportunity. He began to correspond with the Newcastle Courant, anonymously, arousing
great public interest and admiration.
His identity revealed, he became the subject of great local and national
acclaim, securing many awards. He
eventually became Calculator to the Astronomer Royal (a sort of human
computer), rising to the height of his fame as the country’s outstanding genius
of his time, before being tragically struck down at the age of 21 by smallpox
in Newcastle in 1774. He was buried in
the town’s St. Andrew’s churchyard.
After the turn of the nineteenth century Wreighill’s
population never topped 30. As the
Industrial Revolution gathered pace and the masses flocked to Newcastle for
work, Wreighill, and villages like it, emptied.
Only the old stayed, and when they died so the villages died – and this
is the real reason behind the deaths of so many hamlets and villages across the
country. Thus Wreighill went under for
the third and final time, contracting to a small farm by 1900, which it remains
to this day.
[this article has appeared in several forms and various
publications over the years, including among the pieces contained in the
still-available Aspects of North-East
History, Vol.2 – see here]
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