A1-The Great North Road
Catterick has a long history. In 1992 a Bronze Age Sword (2500 - 2000 B.C.) was found near Catterick Bridge buried in the river gravel a little distance from the river. The blade is 34 cm long, the bronze comprising 87% copper and 13% tin. It is described by Burgess. There is evidence of a henge, originally thought to have been a Roman amphitheatre, but there certainly was much Roman activity hereabouts. Cataractonium was a significant town with two forts, one each side of the river and settlements spreading along Dere Street. In 1625 a cauldron half full of Roman coins was found. It was kept at Brough Hall, a house occupied by a Royalist family in the Civil War but seized by Cromwell's forces, cauldron and all. Eventually the pot was returned - but without its contents.
Coddrington says:There on the south bank of the river Swale, about a quarter of a mile west of Catterick Bridge, are the remains of a walled camp, about 240 yards by 175 yards square, the Roman Station Cataracto. The bank of the river is about 50 feet lower than the camp, and the river may have been, for defence, held up by a weir which gave the name to the station. The road passes on the east of the station. While deepening the water with a weir might serve for defence, as Coddrington suggests, it would also serve to make the river more navigable. Perhaps lead from the mines in Upper Swaledale was exported this way.
| This is Jessica
Mothersole's sketch-map of the Roman fort close to where the Great
North Road crossed the Swale at Catterick Bridge. What she hasn't
shown is the present course of the A1 - because it wasn't there in
1926. It was built in the late 1950s straight through the middle of the fort, crossing
the Swale very close to the position of the Roman bridge. Thornbrough is a
farm, now just on the western side of the road. Here's a map
of a magnetometer survey that shows the fort and the position of the A1.
An altarstone found here is dedicated to an unnamed god referred to simply as the 'god who invented roads and pathways' A 4th century skeleton ornamented with jewelry including a jet necklace caused quite a stir beyond archaeological circles when the bones were discovered to be those of a man. |
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The present town has probably been occupied since Saxon times and in the sixth century it was the site of the Battle of Catteaeth, which was probably between Celts from Scotland and recently arrived Saxons. The Celts fared worst. Bard Aneurin recorded the times in his epic poem The Gododdin.
"To Cattraeth Vale in glittering row,
Twice two hundred warriors go.
Every warriors manly neck
Chains of reagle honor deck,
Wreathed in many a golden link;
From the golden cup they drink
Nectar that the bees produce,
Or the grapes exalted juice.
Flushed with mirth and hope they burn
But none to Cattraeth vale return,
Save Aeron brave, and Conan strong,
Bursting through the bloody throng,
And I, the meanest of them all,
That live to weep, and sing there fall."
Bard Aneurin, translated by Sir Thomas Gray
of Heton, Northumberland in the 14th Century.
Camden wrote that the Roman town was finally destroyed by the Danes in about 766.
Horses still battle it out, but just by running round the racetrack. The first recorded race meeting at Catterick was in 1783. This was held in what was then the parkland of the magnificent Brough Hall, which is now on the other side of the A1. A permanent site was not built until 1813.
Bishop Richard Pococke, in a letter to his sister recounting his English travels, wrote that on the 14th of May 1760; "I went to Cataric-bridge over the Swale where are remains of a chapel; within a hundred yards of the bridge to the south is the rampart of the old Roman town called Cataractonium; which is about 200 yards wide; from this northern rampart it extends about a quarter of a mile mostly by the ditch for a little more than the length of two fields. The farmer told me he discovered the old town wall in ploughing. He told me that they took up what appear'd to have been an old gateway, and us'd the stone in the cornice of the house." Now it is often assumed that a lot of Roman stonework was robbed and used elsewhere but we don't find many accounts of admission by the culprits! If the Bishop's farmer was right Cataractonium is buried under the modern A1. But let's linger over Pococke's letter a little longer: "I saw two small barrows at some little distance to the west, and there is a large tumulus at Cataric a mile to the west. Going half a mile further I came to the limekilns in a quarry of a kind of freestone in which there is much spar; especially in several cavities of it in which it forms round the cavities as christal does in hollow stones."
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The Great North Road crosses the River Swale at Catterick Bridge. Once there was a wooden bridge called Brompton Brigg but in about 1422 the three stone arches of Catterick Bridge were built just downstream. There may also have been an earlier stone bridge since the contract for the new bridge states that it should be between "...the olde stone brig and the new brig of tree". Stone slabs in the river underneath the bridge suggest that it was built on the site of a Roman paved ford. There used to be a chapel, served by a priest who collected contributions for bridge maintenance or as Grose described it in about 1777: "Upon the south-end of this bridge was formerly a Chapel or Oratory, where, as tradition tells us, Mass was said every day at eleven o'clock for the benefit of Travellers. By whom or at what time it was founded is not said or known. At present it is used as a coal magazine for the adjacent Inn." |
Mid 18th century engraving of chapel ruins and bridge |
Catterick Bridge in about 1920
Long in ruins, the chapel was finally demolished when the bridge was widened in 1792. The railway from Catterick Army Camp was laid on the the road bridge in 1915, sharing it with the Great North Road until 1922 when the Catterick Steel Girder Bridge was built just upstream. The stone bridge built in 1421 had been carrying 100 ton railway locomotives! The railway has gone again, the bridge remaining to carry some service pipes over the river, while the old road bridge carries the modern motor traffic.
Harry Speight described the inn, now called the Bridge House Hotel, in 1897: "The old inn, the George and Dragon, at Catterick Bridge, is a large and famous hostelry, and the very ample stabling behind tell of the days when the yard and stables were none too commodious, for in the old coaching era there was a big traffic on this Great North Road and a constant bustle of in-and-out-going vehicles. The inn is mentioned as such in the time of Henry VIII. (vide Leland), and has doubtless been a public resting-place for man and horse from the first building of the bridge, if not earlier." In 1924 Myra Curtis tells us it had closed and was now a private house. But business fortune comes around and the Bridge House Hotel soon reopened complete with some Robert Thompson dining tables and chairs, fireplaces and panelling, dating from the thirties.
Catterick Church has an inscription to the memory of Richard Braithwaite, alias Drunken Barnaby, who died at East Appleton, a mile to the south of the town, in 1673.
Margary describes the Roman road from north of Catterick Bridge thus: From the settlement of Cataractonium the road follows a new alignment almost due north for practically the whole distance, and parish boundaries follow it most of the way. It is at first derelict for 3/4 mile from the river crossing, but is partly marked by hedges. Then the Great North Road rejoins it at Robin Hood and, passing High Street Plantation, follows it to Scotch Corner and for a mile beyond before bearing off eastward to Darlington.
B & B Lincolnshire B&B
©Biff Vernon 2001, 2002, 2003
