Of the many places associated with King Arthur, Cornish Tintagel or Glastonbury Tor spring to mind. But what these places lack in archaeological evidence is compensated by fiction and the lure of the tourist pound (250,000 visitors pay to enter Tintagel Castle annually.) Cumbria also has its fair share of sites affiliated with the name…
Thirlwall Castle and Greenhead
GREENHEAD, a village, and a chapelry in Haltwhistle parish. The village stands on the Tippal burn, adjacent to the Carlisle and Newcastle railway, near the Roman wall, and has a station on the railway, and a post office under Carlisle. The chapelry is annexed to the vicarage of Haltwhistle, in the diocese of Durham; to…
Carlisle’s Roman Bathhouse Dig
Good news at last for Carlisle Cricket Club. A £5,000 Lottery grant will kick-start repairs to flood damage created by February’s Storm Ciara. Five years earlier, Storm Desmond flooded the Edenside cricket ground, but that natural catastrophe created a chain of events that led to the discovery of the 1600-year-old Carlisle Roman Bathhouse. But with…
Blood on Burnswark Hill
History, for me, becomes most alive when ancient and modern uses are found for the same device. I first realized this when I read about the historical and contemporary uses of the term wall-chalking. During the Great Depression, an estimated 4,000,000 adults left their homes in search of work. These ‘hobos’ roamed the United States,…
Brampton Old Church
Brampton is surrounded by ancient history. Just over a mile to the east of modern-day Brampton stands the surviving nave of Brampton Old Church, perched on a sandstone bluff overlooking a sweep of the River Irthing. Its strategic position was recognised by the Roman Army whose ‘stone road’ or Stanegate ran below the bluff at…