Evidence for Droving on the Wallington Estate
(Harry Beamish – National Trust Historian)
A brief reference in Hodgson's Northumberland, published in 1827, describing the Township of Catcherside on the western edge of the Wallington Estate, gives a tantalising suggestion of an old droving route south from the Border which predated the turnpike era:
"This place, now so still and lonely, seemed in former ages to have known something of life. The Scotch Street ran through it; and it had an ale-house, where the carriers and cadgers in the bell-horse times baited…"
A droving route running across this part of the county seems a reasonable assumption, given the geography and settlement pattern. Before the organised enclosure of the eighteenth century, the country would have been relatively unimpeded with stock-proof boundaries, particularly to the west of the more settled land around the settlements at Hartington and Cambo. A drover coming south over the Border Streets, and heading for a rendezvous such as the great fair at Stagshaw Bank above Corbridge, would have found the going relatively straightforward with water and grazing to hand and small settlements such as Catcherside along the way for refreshment.
The estate maps at Wallington and the early editions of the Ordnance Survey show a route across Harwood Head which is reflected by public rights of way today.
There is a strong possibility that antiquities served as waymarkers along this route, in such open country a large prehistoric earthwork or a medieval boundary marker such as Steng Cross, would have been useful reference points. Today only the base stone of Steng Cross survives, beside the better known "Winter's Gibbet". The cross stood on the watershed ridge and would have been easy to pick up on the skyline from some distance away. Further south a large rectangular prehistoric earthwork is passed on the way to Catcherside. There is a deeply incised hollow way beside it, suggesting that it was a well used route. Catcherside Camp may well have been another waymarker. The prehistoric enclosure would have made an excellent nightfold to keep the stock secure!
The presence of an old droving route is further suggested by a long standing tradition recorded in the excellent book 'In the Troublesome Times' first published in the 1929. This tradition says that there was a smithy at "The Shop Trees" a short distance east of Steng Cross on the Harwood Gate to Elsdon road. Here, it is said, cattle had been plated to defend their feet from the metalled roads which they would meet on the next stage of the journey. Up till that point most of the travelling would have been on the old green roads over the Border. The origin of the smithy is unknown, but by the mid eighteenth century a good turnpike road ran past the site from Elsdon to Morpeth which had a significant cattle market. Further routes via Cambo led to Newcastle and Hexham.
The same source records that, within living memory, farmers from the Cambo district had travelled to the great cattle fairs at Falkirk to obtain Kyloes. The tradition of driving cattle south from Falkirk had been brought to an end by the development of the railway network in the second half of the nineteenth century. Scots' Gap on the Wallington Estate established a thriving cattle market for the district because of its situation on a railway junction. Much of the trade in this later period was with Ireland rather than Scotland
