The cockatrice of Renwick and other tales

I took the afternoon off and went in search of mild adventure.  Nothing too exciting – just the memory of a drowned and forgotten village, some ancient stones, a bit about a saintly 7^th century king, a couple of long-ruined castles not many people have heard of – and a cockatrice.  Surprisingly few people have heard of the cockatrice, either.

In Britain, stories can be round any corner, off a beaten track, under a tree, or buried in any graveyard.  It is not always obvious, or pretty.  Often, all we get are tantalising glimpses of things that went before. Today’s excursion is in the far north-west of England, where the countryside can have an otherworldly feel to it.  Away from the tourist honeypots of the Lake District and the functional-looking towns, there is a sense of being close to an ancient past.

The quest took me northeast of Penrith, into what used to be the county of Cumberland.  The rumble of the M6 faded away.  This land became border country.  Before that, it was part of what some still call the Hen Ogledd, the ‘Old North’, where the language was that of the ancient Britons.  In post-Roman times, it was in the kingdom of Rheged.  However, the names of villages are newer; they are predominantly Old Norse, with a heavy infiltration of Anglian, the ancestors of the English: Langwathby, Salkeld, Glassonby, Kirkoswald.  My first stop was a church that did not even appear on the map, the parish church of St Michael and All Angels in the ancient settlement of Addingham.  The trouble is, Addingham is not marked either – because it disappeared sometime in the 12^th century, when the River Eden altered course.  Some suggest this event took place later, in the 16^th century.  Perhaps there were two such events.

Addingham

The Anglo-Saxon parish of Addingham – the home of Adda’s people – is thought to have been situated on the banks of the Eden, near a spot named Daleraven.  It included several, scattered, settlements.  The map today is marked Kirk Bank – Kirkja being the Norse for ‘church’.  On the opposite side of the river, still, is St Michael’s Well, an ancient spring.  We do not know whether the village was swept away suddenly, in a violent flood, or progressively.  Someone decided to rebuild the church.  Thus, today, the new church of St Michael and All Angels can be found near Maughanby Farm, along an unmarked, but well-maintained, track about 1½ miles south east of Kirk Bank, just outside the village of Glassonby.  According to information inside, it was begun in the 13^th century, but much altered since and largely 16^th century.  Though, I think, modest and nondescript, it deserves the respect of old age having outlasted the Black Death, Scottish raiders, the Reformation, Civil War – and more besides.  Nearby is the mysterious Long Meg and Her Daughters and another stone circle just west of Glassonby.  Mankind has been here a long time.

There is a gravel parking area just outside the church and a substantial, Victorian, hearse house and stables.  There are no other buildings in the immediate vicinity; was St Michael’s built in the middle of nowhere?  It is evidently well used and has an attractive wrought iron gate hung between quite grand stone gateposts.  Like many of the buildings hereabouts, the church is constructed of local red sandstone blocks – some (reputedly) reused from the original church.  What I really wanted to see, however, was a collection of large, carved, stones retrieved with some effort from the riverbed during the long dry summer of 1913.  They had presumably been lying there since the original church had been washed away 800 years previously and, all things considered, are in remarkable condition.  They include an early 5^th century Anglo-Saxon stone bearing an incised cross, a 9^th century Anglo-Saxon cross shaft in two pieces, a 10th century Norse hogsback tombstone and some old stone coffin lids.  All of these objects are now in the church porch.

Outside is a 10th/early 11th century red sandstone Anglo-Scandinavian cross. Some call it a hammerhead cross, or a high cross – it would once have been mounted on a taller shaft.  Highly decorated, it is set in a sandstone base newer than the cross, but still thought to be pre-Conquest.  Sometimes, this type of cross would be painted – there is no suggestion this one was. According to Historic England, the cross originally stood in a churchyard on the banks of the River Eden where the original Addingham village was sited and was first recorded at its present site in 1840.  There is no indication how it got there.  It is, apparently, reminiscent of crosses from west Cumbria and the only surviving example in the east of the county.

All of this does make you wonder what the original church was like, how it had so many apparently significant monuments – and what else might yet be discovered.

Kirkoswald

The next stop was Kirkoswald, which at least did not need to be found. It is a sizable village on the east bank of the River Eden, with handsome buildings and a rather nice market square – alas inevitably in use as a car park.  Raven Beck hurries through the village; its waters once powered three mills.  There’s an agreeable community village shop (where I bought a Mars bar for a vastly inflated price), a busy garage and two pubs.  One, the Fetherston Arms, is named for a local family, the Fetherstonhaughs.

Kirkoswald, of course, means ‘church of Oswald’.  Oswald was a saint and brief King of Northumbria from c634-642AD.  His achievements were to beat the pagan Cadwallon, King of Gwynedd, at the Battle of Heavenfield, a victory allegedly secured through heavenly assistance.  One consequence of his win was the reunification of a previously divided Northumbria, securing the future of Christianity in the kingdom and, possibly, Anglo-Saxon power in the island of Britain.  Oswald welcomed the Celtic evangelist Aiden to the island of Lindisfarne, which became the priest’s base for preaching the gospel to the northern English.  Oswald also extended Anglian Northumbrian rule north, up to the River Forth.  In 638, his army overran Din Eidyn – the stronghold we know as Edinburgh.  He fell fighting the pagan King Penda of Mercia at the Battle of Maserfield in modern-day Shropshire.  After the battle, Penda had Oswald’s body dismembered and his head, hands and forearms, according to legend, displayed on a tree.  Maserfield is thought by many to be Oswestry – ‘Oswald’s tree’.  A year after the battle, Oswald’s younger brother, Oswy, retrieved the remains, taking the head to Lindisfarne and the rest to Bamburgh.  Oswald’s head is now in Durham Cathedral, buried with St Cuthbert.

Cumbria’s Kirkoswald, according to the printed guide in the parish church, was founded by Oswald and Aiden when the king found the locals worshipping a god of the spring that issued out of the bell tower hill. Some say Oswald’s body was brought through the village, en route to its final resting place.  My erudite reader may be familiar with another Kirkoswald, more than 100 miles to the north, in Ayrshire.  King Oswald apparently won a battle there and built a church in thanks for his victory.  These days, it is better known for its associations with the poet, Robert Burns.

St Oswald’s church, Kirkoswald (a fine piece of tautology), is unusual in having a discrete bell tower, situated on top of an adjacent hill.  It is one of the things I wanted to see, but I couldn’t figure out how to get to it and there was no one to ask.  The current version was built in 1893, replacing an earlier 18^th century version.  There is no record of a bell tower before that, although the chances are that there would have been one; something was needed to ring out across the valley, if only to warn of marauding Scots.  The church itself dates from around 1130, although there is obviously a very good chance there was a much earlier, probably timber-framed, version.  Like most English parish churches, Kirkoswald’s architecture spans the centuries.  A sacred spring lies under the nave – presumably the one that used to have a different god before Oswald arrived – and this now feeds a well on the outside of church’s west wall.  Here, you can take a drink – if you’re minded to. I gave it a miss.

I enjoy exploring churches, but confess I found the interior of St Oswald’s oppressive and, ignoring many of its undoubtedly fine and historic features, couldn’t wait to get back into the fresh air.  Oddly enough, outside in the churchyard was an all-pervading floral scent; yet no one was there.  It was not unpleasant, but made me feel a little uncomfortable.

Opposite the church is the relatively grand entrance to what was a short-lived college for 12 priests, founded by Lord Thomas Dacre in 1523.  It closed during the Reformation, which began in the 1530s.  The college was converted to residential use, bought by Henry Fetherstonhaugh in 1611 and has been in the family for 11 generations, at least until 2016. The Fetherstonhaugh family originated from Featherstone Castle, near Haltwhistle in Northumberland.  En passant, in 1747, Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh sold the family estate in Northumberland and purchased the Uppark estate in West Sussex.  I digress!  Returning to Kirkoswald, the entrance to the church is known as the ‘priests’ walk’ across flagstones through a gloomy wood.  Like the church, I found it vaguely unsettling.

It began to drizzle as I set off in search of the remains of Kirkoswald Castle, a short distance southeast of the village.  The average tourist would be hard-pressed to get excited about it, for there is very little to see.  A romantic, ruined, tower peeks through the trees, in need of a damsel. The tower housed living quarters; beneath are the remains of other buildings, the raised platform where the castle once stood and the more or less dry moat that surrounded it.  The first, timber castle, is thought to have been built in the 12^th century.  A licence to crenellate (fortify) was granted by King John in 1201, the castle was destroyed by the Scots in the 14^th century, was rebuilt, extended, and later acquired by the Dacre family. They added a great hall, chapel and moat in the 15^th century, but for some reason Kirkoswald Castle fell into disrepair.  By 1604, it was in the hands of Lord William Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk, who largely dismantled it, reusing materials at Naworth Castle, Lowther Hall and elsewhere in Kirkoswald.

In fact, I did not get to see the ruins.  Halfway across the path to the castle, I spotted cows at the other end of the field.  Now, I grew up with cows, did a lot of walking in different parts of the country, and had no fear of them.  In the last 20 years or so, however, they have turned into aggressive, deranged, creatures.  Some people believe cows are Britain’s most dangerous large animal after politicians.  The website Killer Cows says there have been 74 fatal attacks since 2000.  Having foolishly left my AK47 in the car and not wanting to make it 75, I beat a hasty retreat.

Renwick and the cockatrice

The road from Kirkoswald to the small village of Renwick was narrow and led inexorably toward the mass of the Pennine Chain.  It felt curiously alien.  Renwick was not far and bigger than I expected, spacious, with handsome houses of the distinctive local red sandstone, some painted, and a large, surprisingly attractive, Methodist chapel.  It was just after five in the afternoon and, despite evidence of occupation, the place appeared to be deserted.  Perhaps everyone hid when I arrived.  The only people I saw during my brief visit was when I took a wrong turn that would have taken me off-road, up onto the fells.  As I reversed, two small boys appeared over a gate to gaze curiously at the stupid stranger in their midst.

What I was after was the church, All Saints’.  It is not old, erected in 1845 to replace an earlier one of 1737, but is thought to be at least the fourth version on the site in what is an ancient village.  It is a simple affair, built by public subscription at a time when, in addition to agriculture, local activities included coal mining, quarrying and lime burning.  And it is the church that is at the centre of the tale of the Renwick cockatrice.

My reference for the legend of the cockatrice of Renwick is the Cumbria County History Trust, which cites William Hutchinson’s ‘History of the County of Cumberland’, published in 1794.  This includes footnotes written by a surveyor, John Housman, who writes that John Tallentire of Scalehouses (a hamlet near the village) enjoyed exemption from the payment of tithes.  This was due to an ancestor, apparently also called John Tallentire, being rewarded for having slain a noxious cockatrice.  This event seems to have taken place in the year 1609/10, during the reign of James I (James VI in Scotland), when the villagers were replacing the church.  As they pulled down the existing one, a large winged creature suddenly flew up out of the ruins at them.  They fled, but John Tallentire bravely faced the beast and, taking up a bough from a rowan tree, killed it.

There are versions of this story that suggest the event took place at a different time.  Indeed, a John Tallentire of Scale Houses is buried in the churchyard (as well as his wife and three children).  John died in 1833, aged 72 years.  A note on the Find a Grave website says, “Slayer of a dragon known as a cockatrice according to local legend.”

This says nothing about a rowan bough and John Housman doesn’t mention it either.  There is a widespread folk belief that rowan is potent against witchcraft; rowan is also called the witch, or wicken tree.

What is a cockatrice?

Given the apparent ubiquitous nature of these unpleasant creatures, you may be surprised to learn that I did not spot one in Renwick.  Perhaps it was nesting under the church.  Next time I’m in the area, I should head to the nearby village of Croglin, where there are rumours of a vampire.

Undaunted, I set off in search of the remains of my second castle of the afternoon, at Haresceugh.  After about a mile, thankful not to meet any other vehicle coming the other way, I passed one of the most attractive, clean, farmhouses I have ever seen.  My destination was a few metres beyond.  Calling Haresceugh a castle is generous.  There was a manor in the 12^th century and a hall owned by the Dacre family of Lanercost is recorded in a conveyance to Dr Peter Barwick, physician to the king, in around 1660.  It is said to have been pulled down in 1820, with a tower left to collapse in 1866, but I know not why.  In the late 19^th/early 20^th centuries, the farm, styled Haresceugh Castle, was the home of the Blenkinships, or Blenkinsops.  Just two fragments of walling survive today to mark the place where a reasonably substantial building once stood.  Wondering at what it might have looked like, and the people that lived there, I took a couple of photos from the lane.  Continuing along it would take me deeper into the Pennines than I wanted to go so, performing a multiple-point turn, I retraced my route and headed home.