I HAVE just absent-mindedly got lost in the English Civil War by way of Piercebridge.

I had a moment free and set about tidying a pile of detritus on my desk. Detritus is always dangerous, and in it I found a document a reader sent to me concerning Roman Piercebridge. Echo Memories was in Piercebridge in September as the Baths House is for sale - a house with a rare and remarkable Roman baths in its back garden.

I have tried to steer Echo Memories clear of the debate about Piercebridge's Roman bridges quite simply because I don't know and am not expert enough to know. The Romans had two bridges over the Tees at Piercebridge: the first one was possibly wooden and built in the 2nd Century; the second was stone and was built 100 years or so later when the first one was washed away. The controversy lies in whether the bridges were just to carry Dere Street over the water or whether they were part of a dam system which raised the water level so that the Tees became navigable.

The third bridge at Piercebridge is the one that still stands and, quite probably, the one that gives the village its name. I always thought that Piercebridge was a priest's bridge - in the 13th Century, a chapel was built on top of the Roman baths at the north end of the bridge and there priests prayed for travellers.

This document points further back, though, and says that there's an Old English word persc which means osiers or willow twigs, and so 1,000 years ago at least part of the persc bridge was made of wood.

Today's stone bridge has been on the site of the twiggy bridge since 1500, and its great claim to fame was on December 1, 1642.

William Cavendish, the 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, had been appointed by Charles I as the governor in charge of the four northernmost counties: Northumberland, Durham, Westmorland and Cleveland. In Yorkshire, the Royalists were having a bit of both with the Parliamentarians' commanders Sir John Hotham, holed up in Hull, and Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax, who was rampaging around looking for a fight.

The Yorkshire Royalists asked Cavendish for help, and he led 8,000 men - known either as Whitecoats or Newcastle's Lambs - south. Sir John Hotham headed north to meet them, and the two parties collided at the bridge at Piercebridge.

It seems not to have been a full scale battle but some form of skirmish between raiding parties. The Roundheads consisted of three troops of horsemen (my dictionary says a troop is "a large group") and four companies of foot soldiers. The Roundheads, who were marching from Richmond to Darlington, dug in on the high ground of the Cliffe estate with two guns, and initially they repelled a Royalist rush at the bridge.

Cavendish brought up his heavy guns onto the bank opposite at Carlbury and proceeded to bombard the Parliamentarians' guns from a greater height.

With his greater altitude, he defeated Sir John and crossed into Yorkshire. Within two days he was in York, and within six days he was at Tadcaster where he gave Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax a good thrashing before going on to capture Wakefield, Leeds, Rotherham and Sheffield.

Cavendish versus Fairfax was a fixture often repeated in Yorkshire during the Civil War until in 1644, Cavendish had lost all of his gains and sailed into continental exile from Scarborough.

And Piercebridge had a small part to play in it.