Additional information
Terrain
- Field and moorland paths and quiet lanes, 12 stiles
Landscape
- Rolling farmland and forest
Dog friendliness
- Dogs on leads
Parking
- Car park in Elsdon, by bridge on Rothbury road
Toilets en route
- None on route
About the walk
For hundreds of years in the Middle Ages, Elsdon was at the centre of some of the most lawless land in England. It was the capital of the remote Middle March – one of three Marches or protective areas set up in 1249 to protect the border lands. Local historian G M Trevelyan wrote that Elsdon was... ‘the capital of Redesdale when neither Scotland nor England existed'. The chief threat to the area was from the reivers or moss troopers – bands of marauders, mostly from north of the border, who carried out raids on local farms, burning the crops, destroying homesteads and, above all, stealing cattle, sheep and horses. Such was the seriousness of these raids that they influenced the design of the village. Its wide green, more than 7 acres (2.8ha) in area, was used to pen animals during a raid, and the entrances to the village were shut off. Tower and castle Another important reminder of those anarchistic days is the Vicar’s Pele at Elsdon, just by the church. A square tower that could be easily defended, it was probably built in the 14th century, and rebuilt in the 16th and 18th. Its walls are up to 9ft (3m) thick. Lewis Carroll’s grandfather, later the Bishop of Ossory, lived in the tower from 1762 to 1765. The remains of earlier defences are a highlight of the first part of the walk. What are known locally as the Mote Hills are the spectacular remains of a motte-and-bailey castle. Sitting above the steep banks of Elsdon Burn the castle has a lower area – the bailey – surrounded by a deep ditch and bank, while the tall hill behind – the motte – once supported a timber castle. Put up by the de Umfravilles in the 12th century, Elsdon Castle had a short life, for in around 1160 the family moved its headquarters to Harbottle and left Elsdon to slumber. The walk takes you from the village to the tiny farming hamlet of Hudspeth (which shares its name with a county in Texas) and up across the slopes of Landshot Hill to Eastnook. The return follows a narrow, winding lane through Harwood Forest and on to Todholes, where Elizabethan county records reveal that in January 1582, Thomas Routledge of Todholes issued a complaint against Kinmont Armstrong of Canonbie, in Galloway, claiming he had stolen ‘40 kine, 20 sheep, and 1 horse, value 300 pounds sterling’ in a reivers raid. Follow the medieval wall The return to Elsdon, which offers good views of the village and the Mote Hills, is partially along a decayed medieval stone wall, once part of the outlying village defences. Look out, back on the Green, for the figure of Bacchus above the door of one of the cottages, which was originally an inn.
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