Rights of way improvements in Teesdale

Tees-Swale blog by Will Bowman, Farming and Nature Trainee

As the Tees-Swale Farming and Nature trainee working at the North Pennines AONB Partnership, I have opportunities to experience a variety of new activities and tasks, including recently assisting with access improvements on rights of way in Teesdale.

We were improving a gateway on a footpath, which had fallen into disrepair during the winter. Livestock had squeezed their way through the gate, damaging the drystone wall which is a boundary between the fields as they did so. We had a new gateway to install but first we had to rebuild the fallen wall. I had been interested in gaining experience in countryside skills during my traineeship, such as drystone walling, and this was a fantastic opportunity to learn this heritage skill.

In a time when people travelled more often by foot, rights of way and footpaths linked communities together. Quite often you can trace the dotted green line indicating a footpath on an Ordnance Survey map as it links one farm to another, and those farms to the nearest town, schoolhouse, or chapel. Many of our footpaths follow the old routes that miners took as they journeyed into the hills to their places of work. One such miner, Richard Watson, known locally as the Teesdale bard, wrote a poem titled ‘My Journey to Work’ which describes his seven mile commute to work from the small hamlet of Holwick where he lived, via Bowlees to the mining hills of Coldberry and little Eggleshope. It was good to know that the right of way we were improving happened to be the footpath near to Low Force which Richard Watson would have travelled on his ‘Journey to Work’.

‘My Journey to Work’ by Richard Watson
With my week’s wallet o’er my shoulder flung,
Down the green sloping meads I jog along
A well known path from Holwick to Bowlees,
Where Winch Bridge spans the verdant banks of Tees.
When to the roaring river drawing near,
Its rumbling sound strikes loudly on the ear, —
Foaming and dashing in its rapid course,
O’er the rough grey whin rock named Little Force,
Then flowing gently doth its way pursue,
Till by the Staple Crag ’tis hid from view.
The sun, with no dark cloud to intervene,
Shines brightly on a varied lovely scene ;
The tall fir trees that on the north bank grow.
Their shadows long across the river throw,

Drystone walls are used to provide boundaries along field edges which contain livestock. There is no mortar securing the stones together, instead carefully selected interlocking stones secure the wall. Across the UK there are approximately 180,000 miles of drystone walls and they are a characteristic feature of the North Pennines and Yorkshire Dales landscapes. The walls create a patchwork effect of fields, criss-crossing over hills and, in some places, defying gravity as they scale steep-sided valleys.

We made a start repairing our wall by removing the stone from the damaged section, working our way down to find a solid foundation stone from which we could begin rebuilding our length of wall. We sorted stones into their various shapes and uses – throughstones, copes, heartings, and face stones – ready to build up the wall. Face stones are used to build up the walls outer side; heartings to fill the inners of the wall, creating an interlocking friction which secures the integrity of the wall; throughstones cross the whole width of the wall. tying it together; and copes finish the top of the wall.

This was my first attempt at building a drystone wall and, as we progressed slowly through the day, it became apparent that walling involves a great deal of patience and experience. To work with the stones, finding a place for them in the wall where they would fit perfectly, required skill. I did not have that skill, not yet, but, by the end of the day, we had finished the section of wall and installed the gate.

Restoring a stock-proof barrier for the farmland and improving a right of way which now sees more walkers and cyclist than miners on their ‘Journey to Work’. We left our wall for the elements, moss and lichen to finish decorating and I imagined this wall still standing in one hundred years’ time, when future generations of walkers, cyclists, and commuters might pass this way.

My experience of the day gave me food for thought, a new perspective on a characteristic of the North Pennines landscape, and an appreciation of the work involved building and maintaining the network of walls travelling hundreds of miles across our rural landscapes. Arthur Raistrick in ‘The Story of the Pennine Walls’ states: “The extent of walling in the Pennines represents many lifetimes of patient skill spent in hard manual work. We benefit today by the work of these generations, and it is incumbent upon us to maintain the walls in good repair.”. Raistrick also describes a drystone wall as a “…structure in a state of equilibrium”.

I believe this an apt description not only of a stone wall but of the state of the landscape as a greater whole, an equilibrium which requires dedicated maintenance for future generations to receive its benefit. Through the Tees-Swale: Naturally Connected programme we are collaborating with farmers and land managers to help maintain and restore this equilibrium of landscape, delivering landscape-wide nature recovery work which creates and maintains habitats so they are bigger, better, and more joined up. Tees-Swale also includes access and rights of way improvements, as well as community events and engagement with youth groups and schools, so that the landscape is better known, understood, and accessible for present and future generations.

You can find out more about Richard Watson and the trail from Bowlees named after him here.

The Tees-Swale: Naturally Connected programme is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and led by the North Pennines AONB Partnership in collaboration with the Yorkshire Dales National Park.