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Apparently #WaterfallWednesday is a thing too.
My favourite #Northumberland #waterfall is Roughting Linn (or Routin Linn).
Meaning 'roaring pool' in Old English, the steep gorge combines with #prehistoric ditches to create a large, enclosed area, usage unknown. Just outside the ditches is a large rock outcrop with #CupAndRing carvings.
A lot of people comment on the peace of the location.
Once at Christmas time, the laird had promised his guests good hunting. He paid a local woman, Nancy Scott, sixpence for the location of a rare white hare.
But when the party gave chase, the hare led them a merry dance, finally escaping the jaws of a hound straight into Nancy's cottage.
On entering, the laird found Nancy out of breath, nursing a bleeding heel, but no hare to be seen.
#Northumberland #NorthumbrianStories #Folklore #Lore #WinterTales #Stories #Storytelling
Something for #HillfortsWednesday. We're littered with #hillforts in the northern Cheviots. This is the same 1769 map of #Northumberland that I posted before, showing the belief of the time about these structures. I'm fascinated by the #stories we've told about the landscape over the centuries, trying to make sense of what was under our feet and on our horizons.
It was a frosty but sunny one this morning, mist lifting out of the river valley and lingering around the hills.
Shadows of the past are hidden in the landscape, invisible unless you know. Old plough lines lie under the flood water, and where I stood was a farm in the 18th and 19th centuries, now vanished. And the sharp tips of the hills are the ancient walls of #IronAge #HillForts
#Northumberland #landscape #photography #walking #November #LocalHistory #LandscapeHistory #RuralHistory
Walking home along my old country lane on a sharp, clear November evening, feels like I could have stepped back a hundred years or two (except for the overhead wires 😂 )
One of the documents that started me on the #FamilyHistory trail. I found it (aged 12) in a suitcase filled with old photos and documents in my granny's wardrobe, and couldn't rest until I made sense of it all.
In 1839, someone made these careful copies from the parish records of Kiltarlity in #Invernessshire of baptisms of the children of John Fraser, sawyer, and his wife Margaret, from between 1811 and 1823. Their second son was my 3x g-grandfather.
One of my favourite historic maps is the 1769 map of Northumberland by Andrew Armstrong. Not as detailed as later maps, but so fascinating to explore and compare. Pic is Sheet 1 (compressed), but the whole thing can be accessed with HD zoom and download options at http://digitalarchive.mcmaster.ca/islandora/object/macrepo%3A92703
#HistoricMaps #OldMaps #Northumberland #NorthumbrianHistory #18thCentury #Histodons #History #LocalHistory
The river banks have burst. This was a field of sheep yesterday. News is that it's over the road at the bridge now too.
#northumberland #weather #november #autumn #floods #rurallife
#Storytime from the #ScottishBorders this time. At Linton there once lived a terrible wyrm. It preyed on people and animals, swallowing anything in its path.
De Somerville, Laird of Lariston, had an iron spear made and placed a burning peat on the tip. With it, he was able to kill the wyrm, its death throes creating the ringed ridges you see on the hillsides near Linton today.
A Medieval carving on the church depicts the legend.