Generations of Sheperds

Origins^[1]

Oh! The shepherds of the Coquet, the Alwin and the Rede, The Bowmont and the Breamish they’re aal of the same breed. Wi’ their collie dog ahint them and their stick wi’ horned heid, That’s the canny shepherd laddies o’ the hills.

Life as a shepherd in Upper Coquetdale in the late nineteenth century wasn’t all ceildhs and cock-salmon, in fact it was tough and tying and in winter decidedly dangerous. Yet the same families shepherded the same hills for generations and when children moved out it was more often than not up or down the valley. One such family were the Browns.

Originally the Browns weren’t shepherds or even Northumbrians. William Brown was born in Roxburghshire in 1801 and was gardener to Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford and one of the party which watched over the baronet’s grave, guarding against body-snatchers. His son, John remembered the gloomy funeral day but he also had less grey memories. Sir Walter’s dogs knocked him down and the great man picked him up and advised him to, “Stand near the wall, my little fellow and then the dogs cannot knock you down.” He also recalled how Wattie (as he was locally known) always stood with the point of his stick on the foot of his lame leg thus wearing away the leather on that shoe faster than the other.

What John and his five siblings did on leaving school isn’t known for certain but family legend has it that during a recession in the Border woollen mills they left Hawick to settle in North America. John remained, possibly because he had married Ellen Patterson and started a family. It is in 1851 in Bewcastle, Cumberland, that John is first designated ‘shepherd’. They evidently returned to Scotland for a while as is shown by their third and fourth children being born there. David Dippie Dixon recorded the arrival of John and Ellen at Carlcroft in Upper Coquetdale.

John Brown and his wife, a worthy couple, belonged to the Scotch side of the borders, but in 1860 they removed with their family out of Liddlesdale and settled in Coquet-water. Mr and Mrs Brown were known and respected by all in Upper Coquet, and both being an intelligent and observant turn of mind, were well versed in local incident and hill-lore.

John remained at Carlcroft until his death in 1897. What Dixon doesn’t record is the role John and Ellen’s children contributed to farming and life in Coquetdale and wider Northumberland.

James his eldest son initially worked with his father as a shepherd at Carlcroft but moved successively to Biddlestone Town Foot and Cottonshope Head in Redesdale, but it was after marrying Jane Anderson (a shepherd’s daughter of course) and moving to the Heigh, now deep in the Kidland Forest, that he left his mark in the farming community. He herded Cheviot sheep and must have had a good eye and stock strain as his ‘packs’ were regular prizewinners in the shepherds’ classes at shows at Alwinton, Rothbury and Bellingham. His collie dogs were also good, gaining awards at local shows. In 1899 he was joint starter and referee at Alwinton Races and Hirings, a responsible appointment, but it should be pointed out that in that year the half-mile race was declared void as some of the runners took the wrong course.

The second son, Alexander like James worked for a few years at Carlcroft and married a shepherd’s daughter – Mary Ellen Weatherson, originally from a remote farm in Redesdale. Although they had only been married a few months the 1881 census found them living apart, he working as a shepherd at Marshall’s Meadows, Berwick and she with her parents at Rowhope in remote Upper Coquetdale. The explanation could be that he had committed to a lambing before the wedding was arranged. In spite of this hiccough they spent the rest of their lives together at Burngrange on a tributary of the Tarset Burn. Archie progressed from shepherd to ‘shepherd and employer’. Widowed in 1928 Archibald died at Hawkhope Hill, Falstone in 1930 leaving, what was, for a shepherd, the tidy sum of £1625.19.4.

Strangely for the time John (1854 – 1936) was a scholar until he was sixteen but he then followed the customary route – shepherding at Carlcroft before moving on. He stayed at Carlcroft until after his father’s death but at the May term in 1901 the remaining family moved to Chartners in Harwood Forest where John became a farmer. At the age of 53 he married Jane(t), a woman over thirty years his junior, whom I suspect was a girl in service in the area. She didn’t come from a shepherding family but was a coalminer’s daughter from Gateshead. John retired in May 1914 and in two displenishing sales at Rothbury sold his entire flock of 700 Black-faced sheep. He died at Landshott Glebe, Elsdon in September 1936.

Agnes (b. 1856) lived at Carlcroft until she married Adam Rutherford, the shepherd son of Alexander from Fairhaugh who is reputed to have been the first person to drive sheep through the newly covered Rothbury Mart in 1871. They set up home at Doe Hill, Netherwitton but eventually he became shepherd to the Howeys at Carterside just outside Rothbury. He felt sufficiently settled in 1916 to donate a sheep to the Free Gift Sale held in Rothbury in aid of the Farmers’ Red Cross Fund. Of his two daughters one married a shepherd.

Robert the first of the family to be born in Northumberland naturally started in Carlcroft, moved to Sundaysight and in 1911 was found shepherding from Sandy Syke, a tiny cottage on Hareshaw Common just off the Bellingham to Otterburn road. His companion was a housekeeper, Elizabeth Hudson who had been a post messenger in Otterburn but was the widow of yet another shepherd. Sandy Syke was sold in 1937 and it is likely Robert moved out then as at the end of 1936 he was trying to sell a New Lister Separator ‘in good condition’.

Throughout her life, Margaret was either a shepherd’s daughter or a shepherd’s wife and the latter was a fulltime job as during her marriage she had eleven children of whom nine survived childhood. Her husband, Adam Dagg was himself the eighth of ten children and was a shepherd at LInbriggs working initially with his father but eventually taking over responsibility for the flocks. Given where each was brought up it would be nice to think that they met at a dance at Windyhaugh School.

Walter (b. 1865) shepherded with his father and then with brothers John and James at Carlcroft and the Heigh respectively. In 1911 he was still single and a shepherd at Dunshill, Elsdon but in 1912 he married nineteen year old Esther Fenwick who had been a domestic servant employed by a farmer at Gallowhill. Walter died at Ewartley Shank in 1936.

Ellen was John and Helen’s youngest and she broke the mould. She married John Armstrong who had farmed for a while at High Blakehope but in the 1901 census described himself as a rabbit catcher. An even bigger move away from herding Blackface or Cheviot sheep and rabbit trapping saw them move to Wallsend where John obtained a post as estate foreman although at Ellen’s death in 1934 he is described as a gardener.

Some of the shepherds’ cottages have gone, the ‘Forestry’ and Army have absorbed many of the hirsels, farming practices have changed and even for those still in Upper Coquetdale the limits of the world are no longer Rothbury mart and Windyhaugh School. But does shepherding run in the blood? Old John’s great grandson was an award winning shepherd and even I, his great, great grandson once did a lambing in the Cheviots!

Carlcroft