A walk by the useless river
Sep. 11th, 2012 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe decided that our strategy for the Heritage Open Days this year would be to focus on seeing things which weren't normally available, and not to be put off by having to book. It didn't entirely work out that way.
Our strategy was also not to be talked into volunteering at Old Durham Gardens, but we failed completely on that one, and spent Friday afternoon there. We had a few visitors but weren't very busy, and there are worse ways to spend an afternoon than sitting in a walled garden with a good book (Kari Sperring's The Grass King's Concubine, since you ask, a very good book indeed), but I feel like a fraud. I don't know any more about the gardens than visitors can learn from the handout, and there were members of the Friends there gardening who could have kept an eye on things. Said Friends were very grateful to us for fielding visitors so that they could garden, and also prepare for Sunday afternoon when they were planning an ambitious programme of music and refreshments and generally being sociable. It sounded fun, and I was sorry that we'd be missing it (having already spent half a day at the gardens, and wanting to fit in other things which were only on at the weekend).
On Saturday we wanted to visit 7 Pimlico, a private house beautifully restored from medieval origins. This was restricted to three tours of 20 people each on Saturday and Sunday, with no advance booking, but if you turned up for a tour which was oversubscribed, you could book for a later one. We collected slips for the four o' clock tour and went to the old library on Palace Green (which is why we were on the riverbanks). I had hoped to see round the building, but to do this we would have had to book a tour, so we had a look at the exhibitions instead. These were free, for the Open Days, and at that price quite interesting. An exhibition about Bishop Cosin (Restoration bishop of Durham, builder of the library) passed beyond the naturally positive into the sycophantic, to which I inevitably respond by becoming hostile.Best thing in the exhibition, the register of books borrowed from the library in - I think - the 1770s, with crossings out when books were returned.
Back to Pimlico, and the visit was worth waiting for. A little crowded, as the proprietor was being kind and trying to fit in everyone who was waiting, and the house is on a domestic scale, though the present structure takes in what were original outbuildings, and you are at times inside the modern house looking at what was once an external wall, trying to identify the points at which a change in the stonework reveals different stages of building. Plus all the less elevated pleasures of being shown round someone else's house, of course.
Despite which, the high point of the weekend was our visit to the Gaunless Valley on Sunday. We had booked a guided walk on Cockfield Fell, starting from the Visitor Centre where there was an exhibition about Cockfield man Jeremiah Dixon (of Mason-Dixon fame). This, we anticipated, would occupy us for the morning, after which we would consult our list of open properties, find some lunch and visit somewhere else. It didn't happen that way, because what no-one thought to mention when we booked the morning walk was that most of that group were doing a day's tour in a vintage motor coach, and the walk would therefore not return them to the visitor centre, but take them to Cockfield village where they had lunch booked. So we had a longer - and better - walk than we had expected, but we wished we had brought sandwiches.
Cockfield Fell is a patch of open ground, about two miles across, between the village of Cockfield and the river Gaunless; alternatively, it is the largest heritage site in the North of England. Its rough grassland covers circular earthworks which may be iron age, hides the holes of medieval coal mines, conceals the traces of George Dixon (Jeremiah's brother)'s excavation of a canal to carry coal to the sea (he couldn't raise the finance, and then the railways came). We saw the skew bridge that carried the Haggerleazes railway over the Gaunless, and the remains of Thomas Bouch's viaduct which carried the Bishop Auckland and Barnard Castle Line high above them both.
From here it was a short walk over the tramway and past the pigeon sheds to the village. We parted from the group at the church, had a short refreshment break at the pub, and walked back along the river Gaunless (it's a Viking name meaning 'useless', whether because it didn't have the power to drive a mill, wasn't rich in fish or for some other reason) to our starting point.It wasn't a long walk, but there was so much to see that we felt we'd had a day's worth of adventures.
My pictures of Cockfield; There is this place (the Cockfield advertisement); The walk.
Our strategy was also not to be talked into volunteering at Old Durham Gardens, but we failed completely on that one, and spent Friday afternoon there. We had a few visitors but weren't very busy, and there are worse ways to spend an afternoon than sitting in a walled garden with a good book (Kari Sperring's The Grass King's Concubine, since you ask, a very good book indeed), but I feel like a fraud. I don't know any more about the gardens than visitors can learn from the handout, and there were members of the Friends there gardening who could have kept an eye on things. Said Friends were very grateful to us for fielding visitors so that they could garden, and also prepare for Sunday afternoon when they were planning an ambitious programme of music and refreshments and generally being sociable. It sounded fun, and I was sorry that we'd be missing it (having already spent half a day at the gardens, and wanting to fit in other things which were only on at the weekend).
On Saturday we wanted to visit 7 Pimlico, a private house beautifully restored from medieval origins. This was restricted to three tours of 20 people each on Saturday and Sunday, with no advance booking, but if you turned up for a tour which was oversubscribed, you could book for a later one. We collected slips for the four o' clock tour and went to the old library on Palace Green (which is why we were on the riverbanks). I had hoped to see round the building, but to do this we would have had to book a tour, so we had a look at the exhibitions instead. These were free, for the Open Days, and at that price quite interesting. An exhibition about Bishop Cosin (Restoration bishop of Durham, builder of the library) passed beyond the naturally positive into the sycophantic, to which I inevitably respond by becoming hostile.Best thing in the exhibition, the register of books borrowed from the library in - I think - the 1770s, with crossings out when books were returned.
Back to Pimlico, and the visit was worth waiting for. A little crowded, as the proprietor was being kind and trying to fit in everyone who was waiting, and the house is on a domestic scale, though the present structure takes in what were original outbuildings, and you are at times inside the modern house looking at what was once an external wall, trying to identify the points at which a change in the stonework reveals different stages of building. Plus all the less elevated pleasures of being shown round someone else's house, of course.
Despite which, the high point of the weekend was our visit to the Gaunless Valley on Sunday. We had booked a guided walk on Cockfield Fell, starting from the Visitor Centre where there was an exhibition about Cockfield man Jeremiah Dixon (of Mason-Dixon fame). This, we anticipated, would occupy us for the morning, after which we would consult our list of open properties, find some lunch and visit somewhere else. It didn't happen that way, because what no-one thought to mention when we booked the morning walk was that most of that group were doing a day's tour in a vintage motor coach, and the walk would therefore not return them to the visitor centre, but take them to Cockfield village where they had lunch booked. So we had a longer - and better - walk than we had expected, but we wished we had brought sandwiches.
Cockfield Fell is a patch of open ground, about two miles across, between the village of Cockfield and the river Gaunless; alternatively, it is the largest heritage site in the North of England. Its rough grassland covers circular earthworks which may be iron age, hides the holes of medieval coal mines, conceals the traces of George Dixon (Jeremiah's brother)'s excavation of a canal to carry coal to the sea (he couldn't raise the finance, and then the railways came). We saw the skew bridge that carried the Haggerleazes railway over the Gaunless, and the remains of Thomas Bouch's viaduct which carried the Bishop Auckland and Barnard Castle Line high above them both.
From here it was a short walk over the tramway and past the pigeon sheds to the village. We parted from the group at the church, had a short refreshment break at the pub, and walked back along the river Gaunless (it's a Viking name meaning 'useless', whether because it didn't have the power to drive a mill, wasn't rich in fish or for some other reason) to our starting point.It wasn't a long walk, but there was so much to see that we felt we'd had a day's worth of adventures.
My pictures of Cockfield; There is this place (the Cockfield advertisement); The walk.
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no subject
Date: 2012-09-11 10:41 pm (UTC)Great pictures, and I'm jealous of your day.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-12 08:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-12 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-12 08:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-20 03:43 pm (UTC)Interesting; I don't think I ever heard of Old Durham gardens when we lived there. It looks like 7Pimlico is closed now. :-(
An exhibition about Bishop Cosin (Restoration bishop of Durham, builder of the library) passed beyond the naturally positive into the sycophantic, to which I inevitably respond by becoming hostile.Best thing in the exhibition, the register of books borrowed from the library in - I think - the 1770s, with crossings out when books were returned.
That's awesome that you saw interesting stuff in the library on the Palace Green. I've tried going in there a few times to ask about the Shakespeare Folio and have always been struck by how horribly they re-did the inside (c. 1975?). It looks so beautiful from without. And yes, I tend to react badly when history write-ups seem to become PR for someone or other. I dislike the voice of a Gushy Narrative.
The Lindisfarne Gospels will be in Durham by now, no? July 1st to September 30th? are they at the library?
no subject
Date: 2013-07-20 05:17 pm (UTC)Yes, the Gospels are in the library on Palace Green - we have tickets for the end of August, when a schoolfriend of mine who is also a Durham graduate will be visiting.
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Date: 2013-07-20 05:32 pm (UTC)::excitedly waiting::