We all thoroughly enjoyed the articles by Elizabeth Stevens on her visits to her grandparents in the early part of this century. It may be to your interest to take country life in the Borderland back another two or three generations, via the method used in 1921 by the Women's Institute of Cambo in Northumberland. Cambo area lies athwart the A696 which is the main route from Newcastle upon Tyne to the Borderline at Carter Bar.

The very names are redolent of Border tales, Great Bavington, Elsdon, Otterburn, Rothley Crags, and significantly--Scot's Gap. The folk whose reminiscences were used are Robsons, Mc Crackens, Hedleys, Bells, Armstrongs and many others.

The W.I. ladies went round their region listening to the older members of the community, some of them in their nineties, as they told of their own experiences or those related by their forelders, thus taking the account back almost two centuries in some cases.

Clothes Maketh The Man

Herewith some gleanings from a chapter on home weaving:- "When we were children we were sent out to gather wool, when we came home from school, and it was-who could get a bagful first. In the evening we had to pick the motes out of the wool, we didn't like that. Then it was sent to Otterburn mills and carded, and then my mother spun it on her big wheel, - wool for stockings. She had two spinning wheels, the wee one for linen and the big one for wool. For stockings she twisted it herself and knitted them. If for blankets it went back to Otterburn to be woven."

At the 'treasure evening' Mrs Robert Wilson showed "Adam's shirt, seventy years old. Given to me for Adam by his grandmother. It was spun by his great great grandmother, made by his great grandmother, worn by his grandfather, father, and himself." It was neatly marked R.A.W. in fine cross stitch, with a flower underneath, his grandfather's initials, and his own. "It is made of fine linen and the size for a small boy and this last Adam has outgrown it." {They don't make 'em like that any more!-Ed.}

Mrs Hedley, of her childhood days said, "I can see Sir Walter Trevelyan as he used to come into the school; he always wore a PLAID;the men did then instead of the coats they wear now. The men used to wear brocade waistcoats with nice buttons, and white shirts with ruffles and long hats." She showed a blue waistcoat with leather trims and blue brocade buttons which had been her father's. "The women wore a cap after they were married, my mother didn't like it and never did it."

"The women who did farm work wore bonnets called 'uglies' which had the face shield held out rigid with canes. Cambo women wore them for the haymaking in Sir Walter's time then clooty (clouty) bonnets came in."

The Moonlighters

"Salt was 5 shillings a stone! mother said they'd clarify the salt of the water used to salt beef to put on their porridge. When she was a servant her employers used to send the salt and candles to the hills to be hidden from the excisemen." Mrs Thomas Hepple.

There were many accounts of the subterfuges used to hide illicit candle making, this amusing one from Miss Mc Cracken. "A woman was dipping candles when word came that the gaugers were coming. She hid them in the manure heap, and they all melted,- but she got the WICKS back!" {Miss Mc Cracken would have been one of the family of David Mc Cracken who sang at the 1986 Cragside Gather, "Dipping of the Yowes" and "Aye Wor Nannie's A Mazor!" Ed.}

Mrs Robson of Broom House made her candles in a mould which did six at a time. "It's worth it if you kill your own sheep and have plenty fat" she said. Her husband explained the old method of repeated dipping of wicks, suspended from a frame made of wood poles and wires, into a tub of fat.

What with candle and soap making, spinning, knitting, cooking, washing, and sewing it proves what my grannie used to say, "A woman's work's never done!" Mind you, they had each other's company, for many of these tasks were done together.

Home Sweet Home

Mr Isaac Perceval:- "There was a time ninety years ago when there were no ovens and no windows; when people shifted they took the windows and fireplaces with them. No, the houses weren't all alike, the windows were different sizes and they had to made right with boards,-- and with cow dung. I've seen a hoose mesel' where ye went in here, and there was the coo, and here was the cuddy,(donkey), and the living room was there. (‘And the hens would be in the passage, put in his housekeeper’). I've been there often, my grandfather was born there. You had to pass through the byre past the heels o' the coo and cuddy to reach the living room." He also described a house at Angerton where a couple with seven children lived in one room. Another speaker said houses were hovels with pigs in the cellar.

George Handyside could remember Back Row, Cambo, where they were black thatched (Heather thatch) and in one house the family used the same door as the cow. William Pearson remembers hearthstones being taken when folk shifted. Could this be poverty of possessions, or a manifestation of the old Norse tradition of keeping a hearthstone generation after generation?

Mrs Pearson said they made bread in the pot until they got new wee ovens. They also cooked meat or porridge in yettlins, (3 legged pots), and put red hot coals on the lid.

Sir Charles Trevelyan,(Wallington Hall-1807-1886) made them shift the middens from in front of the houses at Cambo.

And So To Bed

Most of the houses in the last century were very draughty, some even had canvas ceilings, and doors were far from flush. As a consequence, beds were often part of the house. They were the large wooden-walled structures which were almost a small room. They had shutters which could close them completely.

R.E. Bosanquet:- "Closed beds, box, beds, or cupboard beds, were common until 20 or 30 years ago in Northumberland. Forty years ago almost every hind's kitchen had two box beds filling one wall of the room. In still older times they had doors which could be closed."

"Sometimes there was a bed underneath which could be pulled out like a drawer." Mrs. W. Wilson.

"Chaff beds were greatly used within the memory of many of us. They were comfortable and clean, for the ticks were washed and filled again, nearly every year, after the thresher had been." Several women said this.

"We only had one room and there were seven of us children. It was a large room and we had two four-pole beds, and a desk bed, and a haulybed on castors that you pulled out from under a four-pole bed, and three of us were put in it. Later we had two rooms. In those days my father had to pay sixpence a week for schooling for each of us and had to pay for everything we used, pens, ink, and books. It was threepence a week for labourers' children, but he was a mechanic." Mrs Pearson.

Bob Armstrong was the joiner at Cambo so it's a fair bet that he made or repaired many of those beds.

Prior to the advent of the railway circa 1860/62, there were great droves of cattle from "ower the edge" at Carter Bar and many of them were re-shod at a place called Shop Trees. This name came about because there was in the past a smithy there for the purpose. It was a mile from Winter's Gibbet on the Elsdon Road, (no Belsay to Otterburn Road then).

Shoes for cattle were in two parts, to allow the hoof to spread when walking. Most were Kyloes bought at Falkirk Fair by local farmers but some would be travelling through. Once some shod cattle came over from Canada, they were used for ploughing.

On the western fringe of the area we are covering was the Hareshawhead Colliery owned by the Armstrongs. Joseph Armstrong was born in Otterburn 1787, and is the ancestor of Joyce Armstrong of Keighley.

The famous landscape gardener Capability Brown, (whose mother was an Armstrong), was born in Kirkharle, and went to Cambo school. In later years Sir George Trevelyan became convinced that he designed the gardens of Wallington Hall as they were the same as those of Claremont in Surrey which were made at the same time, i.e., 1766.