Two footnotes to Heritage Open Days

I'll try to post something coherent and comprehensive once the weekend is over: but for the time being, two things which would be relegated to the footnotes if I were to include them in that account.

A note on the topography of Durham City

On the riverbanks, on our way from Pimlico to Palace Green, we were stopped by a group of tourists who asked us the way to the mall. (Were they on the right side of the river, they wondered; I always end up counting on my fingers to answer that question.) I was all for directing them to the Gates, the nearest shopping mall, but durham_rambler guessed, correctly, that they meant the Prince Bishop's. (For those who don't know the city, on this map, they were trying to get from just below the 18 to the P to the right of the Market Place) We tried to direct them up, either through the College or via Windy Gap and Palace Green, to Saddler Street and so to the Market Place, but they were reluctant to leave the river. Could they just carry on along this path? Yes, but it wasn't the most direct route. That was OK, they said, they had plenty of time, they were booked for a boat trip at three o' clock. Light bulbs went on just above our heads: they wanted the boat house, immediately below the Price Bishop's shopping centre. In that case, turn through 180°, and yes, just keep following the river.

What is a pimlico?

There is a street in Durham called Pimlico, and visiting a house there, we were given an explanation of the origin of the name. The gist of it, if I have it straight, is that there is a bird found in the Bermuda islands, formerly known as the dusky shearwater (puffinus obscurus), and now the Audubon's shearwater (puffinus lherminieri)* whose cry sounds not entirely unlike "pimlico". The man who discovered this, and who was able to sustain the hungry settlers by snaring the birds for food, ultimately returned to Hoxton in London where he opened an inn called after the birds (and mentioned in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist. The name became a byword for a place of entertainment and enjoyment, and transferred in this sense to the houses across the river from Durham Cathedral.

Maybe. This account of the islands says: "The early writers refer to a nocturnal bird that they called the 'Pimlico' (spelled pimplicoe by Butler, and pemblyco by Capt. Smith) from its peculiar note, helped out, as Governor Butler suggested, by considerable imagination and some fond recollections of a favorite locality in England." That is, they heard the bird's call as "pimlico" because the place-name was already familiar to them. (The book seems more interested in establishing that the pimlico was not the mysterious bird known as the cahow).

Into this narrative our informant wove the story of Canon Tristram (worth clicking the link to see the photo), a leading nineteenth century ornithologist who traveeled extensively, became a canon of Durham Cathedral and whose collection of bird skins, now in the World Museum, Liverpool includes two Audubon's shearwaters. A number of birds are named after him, including Tristram's storm petrel. (Also a gerbil.)

In summary, then, my afternoon was enlivened by an unexpected shearwater which may or may not go some way to explain this placename, but a specimen of which belonged to someone who very probably came here.

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*Why does its English name pay tribute to Audubon and its Latin name to L'Herminier? Couldn't they have reached some sort of agreement?