called the Cat Gate, which may have been used by the Romans as a sally-port, when they made a foray on the Scots. Next comes Busy Gap, where the wall, being more upon the level, is greatly exposed, and a provision has been made for increasing its strength by the projection of a triangular rampart to the north. Busy Gap was notorious of yore as the chief resort of border reivers and mosstroopers. To this place of ill repute Camden refers, as “a place infamous for thieving and robbing,” and says, “I could not with safety take the full survey of it (the wall) in this neighbourhood, for the rank robbers thereabout.” In Newcastle, formerly, to call a brother burgess “a Busy Gap rogue,” was a matter liable to the censure of a guild, as is attested by an entry in the books of the Company of Bakers and Brewers of Newcastle-on-Tyne. A custom still kept up in Newcastle is significant of the terms which the townsmen held with those of the more immediate border. At eight o’clock on the eve of the day for holding the annual horse and cattle fair, the great bell of St. Nicholas is tolled.[1] This is called “the thief and reiver bell.” At the close of the fair the bell is again tolled. This custom was formerly intended to intimate a kind of armistice, by virtue of which the Bordermen were to consider themselves free to come and go, unquestioned and scatheless, during the interval between the tollings of the bell.
The next Mile Castle is situated opposite to a farm-house called the Kennel. Hodgson describes it as having, when it came under his notice in 1832, an interior wall on every side, and conjectures that the central area had not been roofed over, but only the space between the double walls. Something similar is observable in the imputed Celtic building of Chun Castle in Cornwall, and the Norman keep of Coningsburgh Castle in Yorkshire, the space between the double walls being reserved probably for dormitories and that in the centre for cooking, eating, and in-door recreation. Housesteads, the Roman Borcovicus, is allowed to be the finest position upon the Roman line. The impulsive Stukeley terms it the Tadmor of Britain; Dr. Bruce, with greater propriety, the British Pompeii. When Stukeley saw this station, the very disorder of its ruins may have had its effect on the imagination; but now, the progress of excavation has created a more intelligible interest in the light thus thrown upon its order and details. The inscriptions, altars, statues, and fragments of sculpture, which raised the admiration of former visitors, are now to be sought for in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle, but the gates, streets, and divisions of the station, so far as the excavations have reached, present a series of details calculated to excite the most lively interest. The four gates of the station have been cleared. They are double, so that the station is only accessible by passing through two lines of defence. The gateways have been closed by heavy two-leaved gates. The jambs and pillars of all the gateways are composed of large and massive stones of rustic masonry, the central pillar, taken at the second course of masonry, measuring six feet square. Between each portal is a large stone on which the gates have closed. On either side are guard-rooms, nearly perfect, with the exception of the roof. At the south gateway and outside the wall of the station there is a building, concerning which H and I had some discussion, my notion being that it was the bakery of the station; and while I was trying to prove this, a shrewd looking labourer, who was poking about some débris at hand, observed, “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, its nowther the one thing nor the ’tother of what ye’re talkin’ aboot.”
“Indeed!” I asked, “And pray what may it be?”
“It was just Johnny Armstrang’s malt-kiln,” was the reply of this second Ochiltree.
A little upwards of a century ago Houseteads was possessed by a family of the name of Armstrong, descendants of the famous Johnny, who sold it and the adjacent land for the sum of fifty-eight pounds. The farm now lets at the rate of three hundred pounds of annual rent.
At this suggestion of our new acquaintance, we were induced to view this building with a medieval, rather than a Roman eye, and it became evident that the subject of our inquiry had been no other than the Peele of some reiving Armstrong, consisting of a basement, wherein his cattle were housed, and over this a tower in which he had his abode, and, behind, a kiln in which he dried his corn: for in the days of Border strife, when one man sowed and another reaped, it was not always expedient to leave a crop till it should mature into full ripeness. The compactness with which the streets and houses are packed within the walls of the station indicates the necessity of housing a large body of men in as limited a compass as possible. The houses are very small and the streets exceedingly narrow. One street led from the north to the south gate, which appears to have been crossed by another from the east to the west gate, the centre being marked by a large square column. Traces of more spacious buildings appear in the northern quarter of the station, one of which measures seventy feet in length and eight feet in breadth. This has been, apparently, a chamber for the transaction of public affairs. Two hypocausts have been found within the walls, and one outside the station, by the Knag Burn, a stream which runs to the eastward; in the latter the flues were found to be full of soot. The station of Housesteads includes an area of nearly five acres. The suburbs have been very extensive. A little to the south, extending westwards, the hill-side has been scarped in flights of terraces similar to the hanging vineyards seen in Italy and on the steep sides of Lebanon. A stone-cased well of Roman masonry lies a little to the west of the station, but none has been discovered within its walls. In the Notitia, Borcovicus is the station of the Cohors Prima Tungorum. Inscriptions having reference to this cohort have been found in the station.
- ↑ The great bell of St. Nicholas still performs one or two other old-fashioned functions. It still tolls the curfew, which, in my recollection, was the signal for a general closing of shops. “The great bell of St. Nicholas Church,” says Brand, “is tolled at twelve o’clock at noon on this day (Shrove Tuesday), shops are immediately shut up, offices closed, and all kinds of business ceases, a sort of little carnival ensuing for the remaining part of the day.” This is called the pancake bell. I believe it is still rung, but the closing of shops has long been discontinued.
