THE area is covered with stenchpipes – the cast iron poles that the Victorians used to vent their sewers to stop them from exploding.
READ MORE: KICKING UP A STINK ABOUT HISTORIC VENTPIPES
“This one is in Howlish View in Coundon,” says Colin Watson. “As a young boy, I remember it being at its full height.” Now, sadly, it has been brought down in size, but you can still see that it was pretty ornate for a sewer gas pipe.
Howlish View is on the south side of Coundon and, as the name suggests, it looks up the hill to Howlish Hall.
The name “Howlish” comes from “howle”, which is a steep valley, and “letch”, which is a boggy area, although given its exposed position at the top of the Dene Valley, it would be nice to think that the name comes because the wind howls round its ledge.
Howlish Hall is now a nursing home, but a property of some sort has been on this ledge since the 11th Century. It was owned by the most famous names in the district: Agnew, Hopper, Eden and Wood – Nicholas Wood, a friend of George Stephenson, had his colliery headquarters in the hall.
Also living there is “the Grey Lady”, known as Mary to locals. She, it is said, was once a servant who fell pregnant by the master of Howlish. He would have nothing to do with her or her child, so she threw herself from the attic and killed herself.
Howlish Hall is reached by a track which local legend says is the "whale road". Centuries ago, horses and ponies hauled great oaks from the forests of Durham and Cumbria along this path to the shipbuilding centre at Whitby.
On their way home, the horses, carried back dead whales which were useful for their blubber, oil and bones.
Outside the hall is “the hanging tree”, an oak which once had a branch that grew at right angles. Whether any criminal was ever really hanged there, or it just looked as if someone could be hanged from there, is open to debate.
And now Howlish has a stinkpipe – what a fabulous part of the world!
READ MORE: 11 HISTORICAL SNIPPETS FROM BISHOP AUCKLAND
The structure on the scar face near Downholme in Swaledale
A RECENT cycling trip along the A6108 along the floor of Swaledale gave opportunity to call in at the large lay-by near Downholme Bridge. The lay-by was made when a kink in the road was straightened out and often local authorities store road dressing in it – we’ve even seen unadventurous daytrippers sitting on deckchairs amid the piles of chippings, sipping from their flasks.
A cliff, known on the maps as White Scar, rises steeply from the layby, and it is possible to scrabble up four or five metres into the trees to investigate.
Up there is the remains of an industrial, or wartime, building that looks to have been made of concrete which is now getting lost to nature. It was once very substantial.
There were Victorian quarries all around the village of Downholme, and specifically there was one above the lay-by at White Scar. The building could be connected to that, although its concrete nature suggests it might be a Second World War installation.
Can anyone put us out of our misery? Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk
READ MORE: WHEN THE BISHOP FEASTED ON WHALE VOMIT ICE CREAM IN HIS AUCKLAND PALACE
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