A Snowy Trip to Newcastle

Wednesday 23 February 2005. It was a snowy but bright day heading over to Newcastle for a meeting of the Jisc Advisory Services. Besides Jisc infoNet that I worked for, there were Jisc Legal, Jisc TechDis, Jisc Netskills and a few staff from Jisc's central offices too.

As far as I remember, this was a meeting over two days, starting after lunch on the 23rd and ending after lunch on the 24th. It was 140 miles each way journey for me. Some had travelled from London and Bristol. On the way to Newcastle the A66 was looking a bit wintry and I was glad to get over the Pennines safely and onto the A1M. I stopped to take a quick photo of the Angel of the North in snow.

Thursday 24 February 2005. Overnight the snow caught up to Newcastle. This was the view from my bedroom that morning, looking towards Newcastle railway station with a GNER train pulling out on its journey south to York and beyond. The train is on a raised viaduct that now divides the castle keep from its barbican, the Black Gate.

There has been a fortress here since Roman times, guarding the crossing of the River Tyne at the eastern end of Hadrian's Wall. The son of William the Conqueror, Robert Curthose built a motte and bailey castle here in 1080, being a mound of earth with a wooden pallisade and the current Keep, seen today was built by King Henry II from 1172 to 1177 with the Black Gate being added during Henry III's reign between 1247-1250.

Heading homeward again later that afternoon, the snow was falling heavily on the A66.

The road was still open but there wasn't much traffic attempting it and I knew I had a few exposed roads to come even once I left the A66.

On the West Yorkshire moors the wind was blowing hard, turning the snow into a whirling blizzard and starting to cover the road. At times I had no idea where the edges of the road were but luckily there was always a bit of clear tarmac so that I could see enough to avoid any risk of driving off on one side or the other.

By the time I was approaching Kirby Stephen, the hills were white but the road was reassuringly visible again!

Work Index

In the Land of Ice and Snow...

Well actually it's just about all gone.

I've spent the last two days in Newcastle. There was snow on the way - a few isolated drifts of grey, dirty snow piled up against walls and grassy banks on the A66 going over the moors and even more at Durham Services were I stopped on the way on Monday morning to wake myself up.

They had cleared the paths but the car park still had two inches of ice with a slushy top that made the car lurch sideways when I set off again and had to climb out of the hole in the ice it had settled into.

The snow is apparently coming back on Thursday. That's ok becuse I should have finished charging about the country by then and can knuckle down to planning an online delivery of the Project Management workshop which I've rashly agreed to do in four hourly instalments in the New Year.

Whilst I've been away Fran has put the Christmas tree up. Early reports were that it had survived the cats' attention for the first day...

Brough Castle

The other day I mentioned scanning some photos of Brougham Castle in Cumbria and being still in the throes of the central heating work, I've been kept indoors and have been amusing myself by working my way through the old bag of photographic negatives.

The photo was taken in 1997 and is of Brough Castle, also in Cumbria. Brough is in a remote position along the A66 that crosses the country linking Cumbria with the north east. This road is exposed and affected frequently by high winds and snow in winter. The village of Brough is small and there is no car park for visitors to the castle which is reached through a cow field - mind your footing! The castle was first built around 1100 on the northern part of the Roman fort of Verteris. Above we see what is left of Clifford's Tower, built around 1300 by Robert Clifford. His grandfather had been a border baron of the southern marches of Wales and was great-nephew of a mistress of Henry II. A fairly tenuous link, but he traded his land in Monmouth for the Honour of Skipton in 1310 and came into ownership of several castles in the north.

Robert would have added the curtain wall and strengthened the existing keep. I climbed up that very dilapidated tower in the 1980s and stood on the tiny space enclosed by the railings at the top.

This photograph shows the view from the top of the keep, which has some ancient graffiti carved into the walls.

The main block of buildings adjoining the Round Tower were added fifty years later by Robert's grandson, Roger. This is all but ruined now as seen here, although one room is still whole and is used as a storeroom. The castle had been destroyed by the Scots in 1174, being rebuilt towards the end of the 12th century. A fire at Christmas 1521 destroyed Roger's building work thoroughly cooking their goose, so to speak... The castle lay derelict until that great restorer, Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke (1590-1676) began a three year restoration project. She had described Brough as "Going to ruin, more and more."

Despite the destruction there are still traces of plaster on the walls. Lady Anne started restorations in 1661 and in 1663 erected a plaque to say so. However after her death in 1676 her grandson started to demolish it and the castle was robbed of stone mercilessly for use at Appleby and elsewhere. Even Lady Anne's plaque was used in the building of a watermill at Brough.

At the rear of the castle the corner of the keep has collapsed at some point and two substantially huge lumps of masonry, one with the crenulations from the very top of the tower, can be seen in the moat. This is why you get warning signs at old castles - you would not want a chunk of masonry like this bouncing off your head... The best view of the castle is from the top of the slip road coming off the A66 westbound carriageway.

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