Sunday 22 January 2017

Bridges and Walls

Bridges - gates - they now built a wall from one sea to the other

A weekend of protests on several continents; a weekend designated for making marmalade, a quintessentially British preserve with a Portuguese name made from Spanish oranges and Caribbean sugar. I went into town to buy more oranges, and on autopilot got into the wrong lane and had to drive round the one-way system to get to the supermarket. I realised an exhibition at Tullie House that I kept meaning to see was due to end in a few days, so I went to look at a painting of Carlisle's Eden bridges*.

The painting is one of two from around 1800 and shows the city from Rickerby Park below Stanwix fort on the Roman border wall with the two Eden bridges in the foreground and the mountains behind. Leaving aside the river, I'm struck, oddly, by the similarity to Marrakech - another red walled medieval city with snowy mountains behind and places of worship rising above the houses.

The bridges brought traffic from Scotland to the former Sands island where the cattle marts were held - and customs duties paid (or not, if the drovers avoided the city) - and off the Sands island past the pinfold to Scotchgate. The city still has Scotchgate and Englishgate, but until today I didn't know there was an Irishgate too. I go through it every day. The actual gate was demolished in 1811 and its name lost in the building of the semi-ring road in the 1970s - although it was reincarnated in the unloved "millennium bridge", officially the Irishgate Bridge.

All three gates are double-named: English Gate is Botchergate (the road to Botcherby); Scotchgate is Rickergate (the road to Rickerby, Richard's farmstead); Irishgate is Caldewgate (the road over the river Caldew). There was no Danegate: the stone walls came after the norsemen had stopped being a threat, or had assimilated.

And after the bridges I looked at the exhibits about the shifting border, the reivers, and the original border wall.

They now built a wall across the island from one sea to the other, which being manned with a proper force, might be a terror to the foes which it was intended to repel, and a protection to their friends whom it covered...

After the Romans left and before the Normans arrived, we were one realm in these middlelands. The wall wasn't needed. When the Normans arrived, the North was harried, and emptied. The wall had a role to play again and the city walls were rebuilt in stone and frequently repaired. The Scots and the English were different folks, and fought. And the Irish, with their gate?

One day I shall walk these walls.

Nowadays we know the border is permeable; we know people who live in one country and work in the other; we know people who currently live and work in England but are thinking of moving to live in Scotland because it's more politically pleasant to them, or because their child's higher education will be more affordable, or for the chance to vote in the second referendum when it comes.

I look north for the views; my neighbours drive north for their holidays where the mountains are higher, the wilderness is greater and the eagles still fly. I look north as well as south to understand the history of the land I stand on; I get the travel news from Scotland as well as Cumbria, but my TV news comes from Newcastle and doesn't cover the whole of Cumbria, let alone the country five miles away as the curlew flies. Professionally we look south: Scotland is creating distinctiveness in its institutions and its public services compared to England, and somehow though the border on the ground is diminished, the border in the mind is strengthening. And as a result, sometime in the not too distant future, the border on the ground may return.

This year's marmalade is a whisky one, with more whisky than most recipes. Made in England, with Scotch. Before we had customs union in 1707, we had smuggling across this border. Whisky as well as cattle.

*Three days after I published this, Sir Ian McKellen on Who Do You Think You Are found that the artist James Lowes was his ancestor, and visited Tullie House to look at some of his engravings.

Read: Peter Roebuck, Cattle Droving through Cumbria 1600-1900, Bookcase 2015;
Rory Stewart, The Marches, Jonathan Cape 2016

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