Cleves Cross and the wild boar of Ferryhill

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CLEVES Cross is a nondescript stone that pokes up out of the pavement beside a bus shelter. It is so high above the Ferryhill Gap that the rainclouds seem to scoot along below it.

Once, the North Skerne River - a tributary of the Skerne - used to flow through the Gap, and Durham monks had a fishpond and a swannery down there.

But the nondescript stone above has a far better tale to tell from centuries gone by.

Because, once upon a time, this high ridge from Kirk Merrington to Ferryhill was bedevilled by a "horride brawn" - a fearsome wild boar. It made its home at Brandon ("the brawn's den") and it liked nothing better than to rampage through Brancepeth ("the brawn's path") on its way to its favourite forest at Ferryhill (which comes from an Anglo Saxon word, firgen, meaning "wooded hill").

On the thickly-wooded hill, this terrible creature would root and snuffle in the most stomach-churning manner, before descending to the marsh at the bottom of the Gap. There, in the most despicable fashion, it would roll around, as happy as a pig in mud, enjoying "the luxurious pleasure of volutation".

Knights from near and far tried in vain to slay the formidable brute, but it was too quick for them all and, with luck on its side, it made many fortuitous escapes - it was streaky bacon.

But Hodge, or Roger, of Ferry studied the movements of the porcine purveyor of panic, and tracked its favourite haunts.

Roger knew it liked to come crashing through the trees on the cliffat Ferryhill and so there he devised a fatal trap: a deep pitfall, covered lightly with boughs and turf.

And brave, brave Sir Roger stood on yon side of the pit, armed with his trusty sword, waiting for the appalling creature to reveal itself.

Sure enough, it did, greedily lured to the spot by bait that Roge had cunningly concealed in the trap.

When the boar saw him standing on its favoured path, apparently defying its awesome power, a red mist descended upon it and it charged. Roger drew his sword.

"At once with hope and fear his heart rebounds," said a poet, desperately trying to dramatise a very thin story. Because the poor old porker plopped into the pit and Roger ran him through with his blade.

And that was that, the end of the big pig of Durham.

How the people of Ferryhill did celebrate. They had been freed from this malign presence that had terrorised their community, filling the minds of children and young women with paralysing dread, for so long.

Amid great cheering, they filled in the pit and, to mark the historic spot so that future generations would never forget the heroism of Sir Roger de Ferry, they placed a stone cross.

Because it was on the cliff above the Gap, it became known as cliff's cross - or Cleves Cross, as it is today, poking out of the pavement by the bus shelter.

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THOSE who know about such things, say Brandon, rather than being the brawn's lair, is a corruption of "Broom Hill". Brancepeth, rather than being the brawn's path, is more likely to relate to a family called Brant.

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TIM Brown, of Ferryhill Local History Society, has not found a reference to the story before Robert SurTees' history of Durham was published in 1816, even though the brawn was supposedly killed in 1208.

Was it just a product of SurTees' imagination?

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IT could be that Cleves Cross marks the high spot where pilgrims got the first glimpse of Durham Cathedral.