A1-The Great North Road
As we saw from the Durham side of the River Derwent, Dere Street heads west at first across the first field before turning north-west at the southern corner of the little copse. There's nothing much to see except its alignment, seen in the straight B6309 further up the hill towards Whittonstall. While the Derwent valley exposes a Millstone Grit inlier we are soon back into the Coal Measures as we climb the hill. The land to the west is scarred by the Whittonstall Drift mine, which produced coal between 1914 and 1960, though some earthworks associated with a medieval settlement escaped the turmoil. The village of Whittonstall nestles just below the brow of the hill but still about 700 feet above sea level and our road drops steeply, marked by a hedgerow, where the modern road bends a little for a gentler gradient.
The 18th and 19th centuries saw the loss of much that was Roman, a loss appreciated by Jessie Mothersole, writing here in 1927: Gale wrote in about 1711 of this Road between Ebchester and Corstopitum, as being "in a direct line along one of the most entire, regular, and large ways I ever saw, and the ridge being for the most part 2 yards in height, full 8 yards broad, and paved with stone, that it is at present as even as new laid." It is difficult to believe that such was its condition only a little more than two centuries ago, when to-day we have to search even for vestiges. MacLauchlan could see the pavement at intervals all the way up to Whittonstall, as well as in the village itself.
The road descends more gently along the southern flank of the Lynn Burn valley. The OS maps record a Holy Well behind Kipper Lynn Farm on the north-east side of the road. A little further and we reach the fort at Castle Hill, from where the road is takes a more northerly alignment through the crossroads at Apperley Dene to Wheelbirks Bridge over the Stocksfield Burn. The bridge parapet has an inscription:
Built 1890, again to straighten, this old Roman Road
and then these lines from Christina Rossetti:
Does the road lead up hill all the
way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
We have now left the Coal Measures and underlying Millstone Grit behind and are now in the Yoredale Series and Carboniferous Limestone that makes up the greater part of Northumberland. A little further on the B6309 turns right for Hindley and Stocksfield and an unclassified road continues the Roman line, and even this leaves the Roman line, briefly, for a visit to Broomley. Dere Street enters Broomhaugh from the south-east and emerges from neighbouring Riding Mill still heading north-west but slightly displaced after crossing the Riding Mill Burn. Its existence has been confirmed by excavations in the village. It crosses a couple of fields and then is joined by the A695, mostly lying just south of the modern road, as far as the the turn to Corbridge. From close to Corbridge station, it crosses the alluvium of Dilston Haughs. Mothersole described the scene as she found it in the autumn of 1926: Passing close to the left of the cemetery-house, it makes for the high ground beyond the river on which Corstopitum stood. Across a stubble-field with sheep nibbling turnips, and black clouds of rooks swooping to pick up grain, we could see the dead-grass-covered surface of the site as a light patch against its green surroundings. The Tyne flowed in between, but was quite invisible from here. The Roman Bridge which crossed it carried the line of Dere Street over the river.
Lincolnshire
©Biff Vernon 2003