Month: December 2021

A popular Border ballad was ‘The Death of Parcy Reed’, taken down from the ‘chanting’ of an old woman named Kitty Hall, by James Telfer…

The dangers of mining – from pit-falls to fire damp – are reflected in the beliefs of miners, especially those concerning various spirits formerly said…

In 1832, the county historian John Hodgson gave a vivid account of a seventeenth-century witch, Meg of Meldon. He writes: MEG, or, as some call…

In the second volume of M. A. Richardson’s Table Book (1844) appears what is said to be a popular story ‘of which the occurrences happened…

Dilston Hall, built in 1616, was demolished in 1768, except for its chapel, which, like the surviving tower of the earlier Dilston Castle, is now…

Denton Hall, near Newcastle, was said to be haunted by an apparition clad in rustling silks. A literary story of an encounter with this spectre…

A mile-long (1.6 km) walk on the Kyloe Hills leads to a natural cave in open woodland. Marked on the map as ‘St Cuthbert’s Cave’,…

Until about 1820, the old fortress of Blenkinsopp, on the western border of Northumberland, was partly occupied by some poor families. ‘More than thirty years…

M. A. Richardson’s Table Book (1842–5) includes an account, sent him by Robert Robertson of Sunderland, of the haunting sixty or seventy years previously of…

In the grey of the evening ‘about half a century ago’, says M. A. Richardson in his Table Book (1842–5), a stripling was making his…