Morpeth

Morpeth has the honour of giving birth to Dr. William Turner, one of the earliest writers on Ornithology and Botany in Engand. His studies were not confined to Natural History; for he also wrote several pieces on theological subjects, and was so strenuous a supporter of the Reformation, and so determined an antagonist of the Church of Rome, that to avoid persecution during the reign of Queen Mary, he was obliged to seek an asylum abroad. Nor did he meddle with theological subjects without a title, for he was a divine as well as a physician, having been admitted to holy orders, by his countryman Bishop Ridley, in 1552.

His history of the principal birds mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny, composed, as he informs the reader in his concluding address, in less than two months, contains, besides the English names of the birds, many interesting notices of their habits, as observed by himself in his own country. His descriptions of birds from his own observation, are most accurate, and much more intelligible than those of many later writers who have piqued themselves on their systematic correctness. In speaking of the attegen he gives a correct description of the black grouse, male and female, though he doubts much whether the attagen of Aristotle and Pliny be found in this country. With the red grouse, as a distinct species, he was evidently unacquainted. He states that he had never seen or heard the corn-crake, which he calls "a daker hen," except in Northumberland. The water ouzel is as common on the banks of the Wansbeck at present, as it probably was in Turner's days, but the "Morpetenses" no longer call it "a water craw."

The first edition of Turner's work on Ornithology, a small octavo, dedicated to Edward Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward VI., was printed at Cologne, in 1544. This little book is very scarce: and I never saw a copy of it except my own, which appears to have belonged to a medical cotemporary, who has written on the title-page the day of the author's death, 8th July, 1568, and who observes, that he, the writer, was in London at the time. Turner was highly esteemed by foreign naturalists, and was a friend and correspondent of the celebrated Conrad Gesner, to whose great work, "Historia Animalium," he contributed a brief account of the fishes of England. His "Herbal" is the most common of all his works.

Morpeth Borough Council Tourism Pages include The Life of William Turner but this account concentrates on his contribution to herbalism and does not mention ornithology. Born in Morpeth, his 3 volume "A New Herball" (1551) was a landmark in the history of both botany and herbalism. It broke new ground in its thoroughness and accuracy and gave doctors their first chance to read in their own language (as opposed to Latin) an original study of the plants which were so important to their profession. Turner was given the title "Father of English Botany" as long ago as 1790. In 2001 work began on recreating a William Turner medieval garden in Carlisle Park, Morpeth. The Morpeth Chantry school which Turner attended as a child is now a bagpipe museum and craft centre.

The William Turner entry in the Galileo Project's Catalog of the Scientific Community is a more thorough biography than either Morpeth Council or Stephen Oliver attempted.

O ye Northumbrian shades! which overlook

The rocky pavement and the mossy falls

Of solitary Wensbeck's limped stream,

How gladly I recall your well-known seats,

Beloved of old; and that delightful time,

When all alone, for many a summer's day,

I wander'd through your calm recesses, led

In silence, by some powerful hand unseen.

Mark Akenside Pleasures of the Imagination 1744

On entering Morpeth from the south as the A197, the Great North Road passes St. Mary's, the Parish Church, where Emily Davison, the suffragette who died under the King's horse in the Derby, is buried. The road bends round what little is left of the 11th century castle (you get a nice view of the town and river if you climb up the castle hill) and then crosses the River Wansbeck over the Telford Bridge. This was built in 1831 just downstream of the old bridge, whose abutments and piers are still visible, now supporting a footbridge. The old bridge was probably 12th century and a little of the associated Chantry survives and occupied by the Tourist Information Office. Harper, it appears, felt strongly about the bridges: Morpeth is little changed since coaching times, but the one very noticeable alteration shows by what utter barbarism the town was inhabited towards the close of that era. Entering it, the turbulent Wansbeck is crossed by a stone bridge, built in 1830, to provide better accommodation for the increased traffic than the ancient one, a few yards upstream, afforded. For some five years longer the old building was suffered to remain, and then, with the exception of its piers, it was demolished. No one benefited by its destruction. it stood in no one's way, and its utility was such that a footbridge, a graceless thing of iron and scantling, has been erected across those ancient piers, to continue the access still required at this point from one bank to the other.

Morpeth Castle may have originally been similar to Alnwick and Warkworth; a Norman motte and bailey plan. The timber castle, on Ha' Hill, was destroyed by King John's forces in about 1216 and was then replaced by a stone one but it was not repaired, rebuilt and extended like Alnwick. By the 18th century it had been abandoned, to be used only as a source of building stone by the neighbours, so nothing more than the gatehouse, dating from about 1350, and a walled enclosure have survived. The gatehouse is now run as a holiday let by the Landmark Trust.

Cuthbert Collingwood (1745 - 1810) was born in Newcastle but lived much of his life in Morpeth. He was a keen gardener and passionate about planting acorns and nurturing oak trees. He has thus left a substantial legacy to the landscape around Morpeth. His interest in oak presumably stemmed from his seafaring days. A colleague of Nelson, he took command of the British fleet on Nelson's death in the Battle of Trafalgar, for which service he was given a peerage. He is buried at the south end of the Great North Road in St. Paul’s Cathedral. A grand statue of Collingwood looks out to sea from Tyneside.

The Great North Road follows Bridge street, (which leads from Telford Bridge to another, newer, bridge) to the Market Square and then turns north along Newgate and out of town as the A192.

Hepple recounts an advertisement placed in the Newcastle Courant for the 6th of January 1728: Lost, between Alnwick and Felton Bridge, from the Stage Coach, a pair of Leather baggs, wherein were some wearing linen, coffee, coffee cups, and other things: Whoever brings them to Mrs. Smith, Post-Mistress at Morpeth, shall have a guinea reward, and no questions asked.

And in 1935 Iain Anderson wrote of his southward trip along the road thus: By the time we left Alnwick and had crossed the rolling moorlands to Morpeth and Newcastle the full volume of outward-bound Sunday road traffic was at its peak. In the thirty miles between Alnwick and Newcastle I witnessed more gross bad driving than I had seen in a year's driving in Scotland. I am sure that to at least ten per cent. of these motorists the Highway Code was unknown or ignored. Despite the breadth of the road, despite the fact that the road was in excellent condition and in many places marked with traffic lanes, motor-car after motor-car would break out from the northward stream of traffic, cross the central traffic line on to the lanes of the southbound stream, forcing any southbound traffic almost on to the pavement or edge of the road. The speed itself of the overtaking traffic was never less than thirtyfive to forty miles per hour.

A little north of Morpeth the Great North Road seems to divide, the right fork taking the A1 to Alnwick and Berwick and keeping close to the coast on its way to Edinburgh, while a left fork takes the A697 through Wooler and Coldstream to reach Edinburgh by a slightly shorter but hillier inland route. It was the eastern road, with its gentler inclines, that was favoured by the stage coaches and has become the more important modern route but both have their part in the Great North Road. Had not the development of the railways come about just when it did, the western branch would have become pre-eminenent. Telford had surveyed and planned the project, Acts of Parliament in place, and some work begun but then the financiers switched to backing the railways. So the A1 goes east. But let's venture up Coldstream Road a little.

...unless you have time to pause awhile at the Buddhist Aruna Ratanagiri monastery at Harnham. It is west of Morpeth, overlooking the path of the Devil's Causeway, the Roman road from Corbridge to Berwick.

Morpeth

William Turner (1508-1568)