The Magpie

The magpie is a bird that has become entwined in the culture of Tyneside, and Newcastle in particular. Well, at least it has been since the blossoming of Newcastle United in the early twentieth century! It has gained a sort of cult status among Novocastrians, with sayings, little ditties and even full-blown songs being dedicated to the noisy and persistent creatures. And they are everywhere these days … but it was not always so. The following article, taken from the June 1889 edition of The Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore & Legend outlined the perilous position of the magpie in the late Victorian era. Other late nineteenth century texts proffer a similar story of woe and expected demise. Quite a recovery, then!

The magpie (Garrulus picus, Bewick; Picus eaudatus, Yarrell) has almost as many scientific as popular names. In some parts of the country (as in Scotland) it is best known as the pyot, or pyet; in Lancashire as the pynot ; and in the Midland and South-Eastern Counties as the chatterpie. In other districts it is best known by the abbreviated title of "mag" — short for magpie. It is one of the most handsomely-plumaged of our native birds, and is brisk and nimble in all its movements. Unfortunately it is so hotly persecuted by game-preservers and their keepers, and also by farmers, that it is fast becoming scarce in most parts of the country — in fact, is threatened with speedy extinction, especially in cultivated districts.

These forays on the eggs and young of domestic fowls and game birds are chiefly confined to the breeding season, when the magpies are rearing their young broods; but at other periods of the year their chief food is the insects and vermin which prey on the produce of the farm. Though by no means so harmless as the barn owl — another much persecuted and useful bird — the magpie is almost as nimble a mouser as the former, and it will also kill and devour rats. Popular folk-lore is inimical to the magpie, as the bird, under certain natural conditions referable to certain times of the year, is looked upon as ominous of sorrow, and is consequently persecuted from stupid superstitious motives. As Mr. John Hancock remarks, “this beautiful resident species, once so abundant in the district (Northumberland and Durham) has now almost disappeared from the neighbourhood of Newcastle, and has everywhere become rare.”

The magpie is found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, while in the Northern States of America it is represented by a very similar bird. It seldom visits mountains, open plains, or dense forests, but visually inhabits lightly wooded parts of the country.

In some of the Northern European countries magpies are treated with great consideration, especially in the Baltic provinces, where they may be seen feeding in the streets of populous towns like pigeons and jackdaws. There they are so familiar and trusting that they will even enter houses in search of food, the sagacious birds well knowing that they will not be molested. How different their treatment in this country!

The flight of the bird, owing to its short and rounded wings and long tail, appears somewhat heavy, and is made with quick vibrations, as if laboured, and in a high wind it does not seem to make much progress. Occasionally, however, the bird may be seen flying very rapidly and at a great height, though, as a rule, it does not seem partial to long flights. On the ground the bird is very nimble, and it can progress quickly either by hopping or walking, while the long and handsome tail is perpetually jerked up and down. The peculiar chatter of the bird can be heard for considerable distances.

The nest is mostly placed at the top of a tall tree, but sometimes in hedges and thorn bushes. It is a domed structure, composed of thorns and sticks, with a hole at the side. The inside is lined with roots and grass. The eggs run from five to seven, rarely more. The male weighs from eight to nine ounces; length, one foot and a half; bill, black; iris, dark brown; head, crown, neck, and nape, jet black; chin and throat black, the shafts of some of the feathers being greyish white; breast above, black; below, pure white; back, dull black. The wings are short and rounded, and the white feathers from the shoulder form a distinct patch of white along them; greater wing coverts, fine, glancing blue; lesser wing coverts, black; primaries, black, with an elongated patch of white on the inner web of each of the first ten feathers; secondaries and tertiaries, fine blue. The handsome tail is graduated and rounded, the outer feathers being only five inches long, and the middle ones nearly eleven inches.

Meanwhile, back in twenty-first century Newcastle, the magpie’s rehabilitation now seems complete with its recent inclusion in a mural in Newcastle’s Morden Street!

Ramblings from Hazlerigg (part 2 of 2)

One thing that has been bugging me about Hazlerigg and its environs these past few weeks is some of the street names. I often wonder about things like this: you know, exactly where do the names of our countless thoroughfares come from? Who decides on the names of the streets of our settlements, old and new? I don’t think I shall ever get to the bottom of such mysteries, but it doesn’t stop me trying.

Sometimes developers just get lazy, and use the names of regional villages, or whatever (the great expanses of water in Lakeland often feature heavily). We can see a bit of this is some of the streets in Hazlerigg (Heddon, Belsay, Matfen, etc), and on other occasions Christian names are deployed, often named after the children of local landowners or developers - and, again, Hazlerigg has a few of these. Others remain an unsolvable mystery - and in Hazlerigg we have several such examples.

I was, however, especially intrigued by a few of closely grouped thoroughfares at the village’s western extremity. These are Windt Street, Lieven Street, Lola Street, Enid Street and Charles Street. The latter three are likely just named after offspring or other family members of some prominent local family; but Windt and Lieven sounded most peculiar to my North-Eastern brain.

Turns out that Windt Street was named after a prominent local landowning family in the area of the nineteenth century. These folk owned many of the fields and farmsteads around and about (the exact extent of which I know not), and were often to be found striving to improve the lots of their tenants. Prior to the opening of Hazlerigg Colliery in 1892, though, the village itself didn’t exist. But then, as domestic dwellings began to pop up, well, streets began to form, and these needed to be named. And the first set of streets were those named above.

Windt, being the family name of the local landowners, was an obvious choice. The family’s main man at this point in time was one Harry de Windt, who was actually a rather famous explorer, who travelled, quite literally, all over the place, and wrote about it rather a lot, too. He’s even got his own Wikipedia page.

Harry de Windt, preparing for another hard winter in Hazlerigg

As for that other name, Lieven, well, the de Windt family had quite a heritage going back to the Netherlands and/or Flanders. They were especially prominent in early Dutch explorations in the New World (in what is now the British Virgin Isles in the Caribbean and in New Amsterdam in America - now New York). Their most prominent father figure in these very early days - their patriarch, if you like - was one Lieven de Windt; and his memory seems to have permeated through the centuries, to the extent of having a street named after him in Hazlerigg. I have no direct evidence of this, but that’s my ‘circumstantial-evidence’ stab at it.

And then there’s the new estate upon which I presently find myself residing. The street names here are rather easier to work out:

Winder Drive - A mine worker who operates heavy machinery to raise or lower cages via cables; 

Corver Crescent - Those who made corves, being the baskets in which coal was carried from the hewer to the bank;

Collier Gardens - A catch-all term for a coal miner (also means a ship that carries coal);

Stoneman Court - A person who makes excavation in stone (i.e. hard strata) other than coal;

Dataller Drive - A ‘dataller’, or ‘dataler’ was an underground workman paid by the day (from ‘day-toller’ maybe?).

The last one threw me a bit, but I got there in the end.

P.S. You may be wondering about the name ‘Hazlerigg’, and why the new colliery and subsequent settlement wasn’t named something else - like, say, ‘De Windt’, or whatever. Well, Hazlerigg was a family name, whose ancient base was in the area a couple of miles or so to the east of the present-day village of this name - essentially around Camperdown/Weetslade/Burradon. Camperdown was, until the mid-nineteenth century, actually known as Hazlerigge (note extra ‘e’), after which it adopted its new moniker. Hazlerigg then reappeared as the name of the new colliery sunk a little to the west in the 1890s, for no other reason, I suppose, than the authorities thought it right to revive the name of a long-standing local bigwig. It is worth pointing out that the new colliery was owned  by the Coxlodge and Burradon Coal Company, which provided a handy link to the Hazleriggs’ old stamping ground. So ‘Hazlerigg’ it was then … and the de Windts had to make do with a couple of minor street names.

Ramblings from Hazlerigg (part 1 of 2)

When I published my Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Tales from the Suburbs book back in 2023, I included a short article about the coalmining comings and goings in Hazlerigg. I had no idea that I would very soon find myself temporarily living in the suburb (yes, still in between houses, I’m afraid); and, consequently, I now find myself wandering around the streets and surrounding countryside of my new ‘home’ and studying old maps to see what interesting historical bits and bobs I can pick up.

The first thing any of us history nuts do when we are looking into the history of a ‘new’ environment is, of course, have a browse of the old Ordnance Survey maps (available on the NLS website). Upon doing so I was somewhat disappointed to discover that the relatively new housing estate on which I was briefly staying occupied land that appeared to have nothing much of interest sited there, well, ever. We’re talking about the land immediately north of Coach Lane, a little to the west of Hazlerigg village itself. Two or three farmsteads and/or houses was about the extent of it, and acres of gently rolling, undisturbed pasture.

Then I came upon this archaeological report from a few short years ago. It seems the house developers commissioned the investigations prior to the commencement of building work. How interesting!

To save you the trouble of reading the 100-page effort, I shall summarise it my own amateurish way, thus:

The land upon which the Havannah Park/Oakwood Grange housing estate now sits - between Hazlerigg village to the east and Morley Hill Farm to the west - has, it seems, been hosting human activity since the Mesolithic era (that is, 5,000+ years ago), with activity continuing, sporadically, through every age since. Not much, though, seems to have happened after the mid-Roman period. Stone tools were found from the Mesolithic, as well as an axe-head from the Neolithic, a Bronze Age arrowhead, followed by significant Iron Age and early Romano-British settlement. Remarkable.

Best of all were the remains of three rectilinear enclosed settlements and one unenclosed settlement that likely functioned as farmsteads for extended family or kin groups. Radiocarbon dating places this activity to between the 4th century BC to the early 2nd century AD. There were ditches, roundhouses, pits, post-holes, gullies, pottery, animal bones, in addition to all those bits and pieces already mentioned. As well as evidence of domestic activity, ceremonial practices also took place. The evidence for farming was likely subsistence-level only; and the ditches and gullies suggested a certain amount of protective measures were taken by our ancestors as were, most certainly, water management/drainage practices.

My very limited research has not revealed much in the way of evidence of post-Roman activity; but the area burst back to life in the late Victorian era when coal mining investigative procedures spread into the zone in question. As I said in my 2023 book:

“The Hazlerigg we know today didn’t exist before the search for coal began there c.1890. The colliery opened in 1892, and made use of the old Fawdon Waggonway which just happened to be passing close by. The workings were centred on the now wooded land on the south side of Coach Lane, directly opposite the Bellway/Miller Homes new-build estate (‘Havannah Park’/’Oakwood Grange’).

(click on image to enlarge)

Ordnance Survey (1913)

Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

(Note that Morley Hill Farm, as referred to in the above-mentioned archaeological report, is shown top left. The recent housing estates have popped up in the two large fields to the east of the farm)

“New housing wasn’t especially quick to appear, despite the fact that in 1902 there were over 1,000 men employed at the colliery. Not until the interwar years did folk begin living there in large numbers – but as early as the 1960s deep mine workings in the vicinity had to stop due to subsidence concerns for the nearby developing airport. The colliery closed in 1964.

“Prior to the closure, though, in 1950, a drift mine had been opened on the land to the west of the old colliery. This was named Havannah Drift Mine, after a nearby farmstead (which used to be situated almost exactly on the eastern extremity of the airport runway!), and continued in production into the 1970s. Coal reserves then began to run low and the mine was wound up in 1977. The baths building still remains, forming part of an insulation manufactory. Most of the site, though, has since been landscaped and is now known as the ‘Havannah and Three Hills Nature Reserve’.”

The 1967 OS map shows the two mines in question during their brief overlap period:

Ordnance Survey (1967)

Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

As well as the two mines (old Hazlerigg Colliery to the right, and the newer Havannah Drift Mine to the left), Morley Hill Farm is top-centre, and the two large fields of archaeological interest to the farm’s right. Out of interest, the Newcastle Airport runway starts to the left (west) of Havannah farmstead at the left of picture.

It all leaves me gasping for more, but I think we shall have to leave it there for now. Next time, though, we shall have one last look at Hazlerigg before my brief tenancy runs out…

Grainger Memorial Fountain

When we talk of Newcastle's historical heart, architecturally-speaking, we often refer to it as 'Grainger Town'. The man in question, Richard Grainger, was the great nineteenth century entrepreneur who ripped the disintegrating, rotting core out of the town, and gave us the neo-classical look and feel of the modern-day city. The majestic sweep of Grey Street is the crowning glory, of course, but there are dozens of other thoroughfares and hundreds of buildings scattered across Newcastle's central square mile that owe their creation to the man and his architect side-kick, John Dobson.

Perhaps, then, Richard Grainger should have a statue in his honour in the city he essentially created. If not atop a column like Earl Grey, but at least something along the lines of the Joseph Cowen monument near Cross House, or the Lord Armstrong affair near The Hancock. Instead, though, hidden in a quiet backwater off Waterloo Street, we have this:

(click on image to enlarge)

And it wasn't as if the locals or their leaders put this modest effort together, it was actually done out of sheer compulsion, thus:

So it was their daughter, Rachel, who saw to it that her parents got the praise they deserved. Presumably it was paid for out of Rachel's estate, too. If it wasn't for her, there'd be NO monument to her dad and his wife. Remarkable. 

Here's a couple of other shots:

It may now sit in sad isolation, but it once enjoyed a more prominent situate at the base of the Stephenson Monument near St.John's Church. Here's an Edwardian shot of the scene as it appeared on an old postcard:

Sources vary, but it seems the monument was moved prior to road 'improvements' in the 1950s. Whether it was moved straight to its Waterloo Street spot at this point, or at some later stage following cold storage, I know not. Perhaps someone out there can help me out on this point.

It's 1892 unveiling did at least make the local press:

The story of the Grainger Memorial Fountain is a sad one. For all Richard Grainger did for the city, the best we can do by way of acknowledgement is a modest pile of granite and an accompanying horse trough stuck away on some seldom-visited backstreet.

In the unlikely event that Newcastle City Council have a few bob to spare at some point in the future they could do worse than throwing up a proper statue to the great man ... and a one for the equally-esteemed John Dobson, too, in fact!

 

The Wait Was Finally Over. Twelve Months On.

Exactly one year ago today, I, like several thousands of other long-suffering Newcastle United fans, experienced one of the greatest, relief-ridden moments of my life. I hope that local fans of other persuasions - and indeed the many non-football enthusiasts out there - will excuse my little burst of self-indulgence. The story is a brief and simple one, and is perhaps best explained in the opening passage of my recently-published book, Novocastrian:

(click on images to enlarge)

I promise not to mention it again. Probably for the best anyway, as every time I relive the moment I just start to cry....

Bucks' Panorama of Newcastle, 1745

I was recently, and somewhat reluctantly, dragged into a charity shop in Blaydon by my wife in search of God-knows-what, when I spotted the following for sale for £8:

(click on image to enlarge)

Here's a little zoom-in:

As us sad, mad map-keen enthusiasts know, this is the 1745 panorama of the town of Newcastle as drawn by those prolific topographical engravers/draughtsmen, Samuel & Nathaniel Buck. Well, I couldn't resist, could I? So under the disapproving gaze of my better half, I quickly snaffled it and made my way triumphantly to the car. She's not spoken to me since.

Anyway, here are the brothers in question:

If you want a better image of the Newcastle pic in question (and, perhaps, a close-up of the accompanying text) then the two websites here and here are the places to head. Very nice.

And as for the brothers' backstory - and, indeed, the tale of their Newcastle panorama in particular - I turned to that most excellent of tomes, Newcastle upon Tyne: Mapping the City (see my dedicated blog post). Here's their take on on the subject on pages 53-56. As ever, click on the images to enlarge:

I'm sure the lads who put this superb book together won't mind me reproducing the text, for it is an excellent effort, and essential reading for those interested in the history of this part of the world. It is widely available online if you want to get yourself a copy. Go on, treat yourself.

The question remains, though: what the heck am I going to do with my oversized purchase? I think my wife might have a suggestion....

Charity Update

Above can be seen the acknowledgement of the latest charity donation made from the sale of my books. As you probably know, most of my books are sold for the benefit of my chosen charity, the Great North Children's Hospital, an institution that is based in Newcastle but serves the whole of northern England for all manner of kiddies'-related medical issues.

As a general rule, the books listed in the left-hand column of this blog are sold for the benefit of the GNCH (well, the sale profits anyway!), whilst those to the right are for my own personal benefit. The profit of each book sale is always at least £1, and is usually a bit more, so the above £200 donation amounts to getting on for 200 individual sales. So, a very big THANK YOU to all of you who have helped raise the said amount.

With Gift Aid, the £200 = £250 in reality. And this brings the overall total of charity donations over the past few years to £1,100.

The GNCH's website can be found here.

Donations can be made here.

So, remember that every time you purchase one of my 'charity' local history books, you are helping fund the excellent work of this most laudable organisation. 

And if you've already bought, read and (hopefully) enjoyed on of my tomes, then do consider helping to spread the word by leaving a rating and/or review on Amazon, or giving it a plug on social media.

Thank you!