January is supposed to be the most difficult month of the year. Limited daylight, limited sunshine, limited garden and allotment time, inhospitable weather.  Friends with Covid, friends with ‘the’ cold, the perceived need to detox after Christmas.  The BBC reminded me recently that there won’t be another bank holiday for over three months, although Terroir sees this as a mixed blessing, as extra days off just seem to breed bad temper over the health, social, moral and legal implications of a day out.

Today, I am admiring the sunshine picking out the frost on neighbours’ roofs and the skeletal details of a sycamore tree creating its own sculpture garden and converting its backdrop (uninspiring urban architecture) into works of art.  Get your kicks where you can.  But yesterday, I spent the day in a sunny Northumberland, courtesy of the Terroir photo library and last summer’s lighter lockdown restrictions.  Welcome, I hope, to a little uplift, to a virtual day out.

Hadrian’s wall (above) is a magnificent symbol of Northumberland (and Cumbria of course) and, as we were staying in Greenhead, which is pretty much at the midpoint of the wall, we spent our first few days wallowing in, on and around Roman remains.   Here are a few classic tourist pictures. 

As time progressed and as we read and visited more widely, mining became a recurrent theme, a sort of ground bass, if you will pardon the pun, to our visit.  You will probably know all this, but Terroir was surprised at the variety and longevity of local mining and quarrying.  Key commodities were limestone, sandstone, iron, lead, silver, zinc, lime, clay and, of course, coal.  Mining has been going on for a long time in this area. A useful Historic England publication (https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-preindustrial-mines-quarries/heag223-pre-industrial-mines-and-quarries/) suggests that Northumbrian communities as far back as the Iron Age had been quarrying stone for round house construction and for quernstones with which to grind flour.

Of course stone quarrying must have expanded significantly with the arrival of the Romans but production must have gone into overdrive after Emperor Hadrian landed in AD122 and ordered construction of a wall from Wallsend on the Tyne in the east to Bowness on Solway in the west. 

Below: views of the dolerite Whin Sill cliff (which provided a natural route for much of the wall) and adjacent stone quarries.

Stone quarrying continued after the Romans left, with much plundering of the pre-cut, Roman wall-stone as well as production of newly quarried stone.

Below - some post Roman uses for the local building material

From left to right: Thirlwall Castle 12th century with subsequent alterations, listed Grade I/Scheduled Monument. Featherstone Castle 13th century with subsequent additions and alterations, listed Grade I. Greenhead Parish Church 19th Century, listed Grade II. Greenhead Methodist Church (now youth hostel), 19th century.

Quarrying contiuned into modern times with, unsurprisingly a rather mixed impact on the environment.

Below left - an artist’s impression of Cawfields Milecastle. Below right - an artist’s impression of Cawfields Quarry, located just under the Whin SIll, and where later mining of the Sill’s hard dolomite (great for road surfacing) destroyed the Roman structures above.

But where did the iron, lead, silver, zinc, lime, clay and coal fit in?  Two aspects got us interested in these commodities.  One was a day spent exploring Haltwhistle and the other was the Newcastle/Carlisle railway line which passed within yards of our accommodation, although Greenhead Station itself had been subject to Dr Beeching’s cuts in the 1960s.  We’ll use these two settlements as examples of how pervasive mining used to be.

The railway is a particularly early route which opened in phases between March 1835 and July 1836.  Such was the value of local products, and the need to get them to ports and markets, that transport improvements around Carlisle and Newcastle were being planned from the second half of the 18th century.  A Carlisle/Newcastle canal was seriously considered.  But once railways became a realistic option, and despite significant opposition to this noisy, smoky new-fangled transport, there was really no contest.  Railway infrastructure was a fraction of the cost of canal building.    

Coal had been mined at Haltwhistle since the 1600s and around Greenhead since at least the 1700s. But, thanks to the Haltwhistle Burn, the town also had significant woollen and corn mills, lime kilns and brickworks.  The coming of the railway revolutionised all these local activities. But Haltwhistle was also located relatively close to the north Pennine lead ore area with production centred on Alston and Nenthead.  Exporting both lead and the associated silver by road was slow and costly but the promise of a rail head at Haltwhistle changed the eonomics - and the industry - dramatically. Apparently lead was being stockpiled at Haltwhistle before the railway even opened. 

Below, left to right: history of Haltwhistle and historic view of the Station; Haltwhistle Station today; ‘The rise of industry’ information plaque.

Above: the flask train passes through another classic Carlisle and Newcastle Railway station; this one is Wylam, to the west of Newcastle.

But the railway faces competition now for the honour of transporting walkers and visitors to the beauties of the wall. It may only run in summer but route AD 122 (geddit?) is an excellent way of travelling between Hexham and Haltwhistle via Greenhead and the must-see highlights of Hadrian’s massive construction project.