Josephine Butler (NT929344 & NT913302)

In net miles she may not have travelled very far – from her birthplace near Milfield to her grave in Kirknewton – but Josephine Butler (née Grey) was a North-Easterner whose influence stretched into the hearts and minds of millions of folk worldwide as both a pioneering feminist and social reformer par excellence.

Josephine Elizabeth Grey was born in 1828 at Milfield Hill House, a mansion which once stood a little to the north of Milfield, Northumberland. A cousin of the famous Earl Grey (Reform Act, Abolition of Slavery and, yes, tea), she was the seventh child of John Grey, from whom she inherited a belief in social justice and reform. In 1852 she married like-minded George Butler, an Oxford lecturer, and so began a husband-and-wife campaign against the wrongs of the world – slavery, social injustice and the rights of women.

Moving first to Cheltenham and then Liverpool, the Butlers championed their cause at every opportunity, often to the detriment of George’s career! After her husband’s death in 1890, Josephine moved to London – and even campaigned abroad for much of the time. Feeding off her own periodic bouts of depression and grief, she constantly sought out causes more desperate than her own. She was a staunch believer in education for women and campaigned ceaselessly for the rights of the female sex in this area – helping found Cambridge University’s first college for women, Newnham. Moreover, her campaigns on the taboo subjects of prostitution and sexual morality led to law changes in women’s favour across Europe – all from a devout Christian who didn’t baulk at upsetting anyone.

In her latter years the grand old woman returned to her North-East roots, settling near her son in Wooler. She died in 1906, aged 78, and was buried in Kirknewton Churchyard, three miles SW of her birthplace.

The Battle of Humbleton Hill (NT969294)

© Copyright Lisa Jarvis and licensed for reuse 

under this Creative Commons Licence.

The Battle of Humbleton (or Homildon) Hill took place on 14^th September 1402 on a site a couple of miles NW of Wooler. It pitched the Scots against the English, and was famously mentioned by William Shakespeare in his historical epic, Henry IV, Pt1. It resulted in a resounding victory for the English, but was not effectively followed up, suggesting that the loss of life was largely in vain.

The Scots were getting particularly ambitious at the time due to Henry IV’s preoccupation with the troublesome Welsh further south. An initial set-to at Nesbit Moor in Berwickshire in June 1402 had seen the Scots defeated, but they continued snapping away at the English heels. In August the Earl of Douglas led a 10,000-strong army south, devastating Northumberland as far as Newcastle. Turning back north laden with plunder, they set up camp at Milfield north of Wooler. The English, though, weren’t prepared to let them get away, and the Earl of Northumberland, assisted by his son, Harry Hotspur, cut them off and forced them into battle.

As the two armies circled one another, the Scots settled on the rising ground north of Humbleton Hill in the foot of the Cheviots. They moved into their ‘Schiltron’ formations – thus providing the deadly English archers with mightily easy targets. The victorious bowmen struck most probably from the high land around Harehope Hill, with most of the Scottish casualties finding their final resting places in the plain to the north and east as they sped for safety – and into the arms of the main body of their foe. Many thousands of Scots perished, with only a handful of English dead – and all in the space of an hour or so.

The English, though, didn’t push ahead with a full-scale invasion of Scotland, preferring instead to concentrate on their Welsh problem. The Percy family – Harry Hotspur and his father amongst them – wasn’t best pleased with the tame aftermath and eventually turned against Henry IV. Both father and son ultimately lost their lives in failed rebellions against the English monarch in the ensuing years.

The Bendor ‘Battle Stone’ has traditionally marked the spot of the 1402 conflict – though it is most likely a Bronze Age standing stone, ancient cists having been found thereabouts.

Wooler and the New World (NT993283)

The town of Wooler may now be known as the ‘Gateway to the Cheviots’, but for one brief moment in time during the nineteenth century it offered locals a portal to a very different wilderness: the open expanses of the Canadian eastern provinces.

Whereas many folk were encouraged to move to or visit the town for its renowned health benefits (including famous names such as Grace Darling, Virginia Woolf and Sir Walter Scott), in the 1830s townsfolk were actively urged to make the long journey to New Brunswick, Canada, in an attempt to better themselves. A publicity drive by the New Brunswick Land Company in both North Northumberland and the Scottish Lowlands was launched “for the purpose of engaging families to settle on the company’s lands.”

The organisation was operating under British colonial rule which was encouraging such companies to open up large tracts of land for the purpose of “the profit of their colonial shareholders”. By chance, it seems, the residents of the Border area were targeted and information sessions were held at Ford Castle. In May 1836 the D’Arcy sailed from Berwick with its first batch of settlers – 110 in number – which had been drawn mainly from Lowland Scotland, plus a few from the Wooler area. They arrived safely and settled in Stanley in New Brunswick. 

Almost exactly a year later a further 137 followed them aboard the Cornelius, the majority of which this time came from Wooler and its environs. This second tranche again headed for New Brunswick, but instead (and after a dispute with the authorities) made for a virgin patch of ground and founded the little town of Harvey.

The emigrants were primarily farm labourers and their families, but included a sprinkling of tradesmen – just the sort needed in the New World. Of the Wooler contingent of the second party, two-thirds were labourers, one a teacher and eight were tradesmen: 2 millers, 2 carpenters, plus a mason, blacksmith, tailor and shopkeeper.

That was all a very long time ago, but, yes, both places still exist today. Stanley is a little to the north of Fredericton in the central area of New Brunswick, and Harvey is a few miles to the SW of the said town. As for the Wooler ‘stronghold’ of Harvey, well, it was a struggle initially, but in the decade or so after 1837 many friends and relatives arrived from Northumberland to join the first arrivals – and there are now thousands of descendants of these pioneers spread across North America. And in 2007, more than 100 of these descendants gathered at Ford Castle for the ‘Harvey Settler Reunion’ event.