THERE has been plenty of time this week to contemplate fire, not least because a bin in The Northern Echo's Darlington headquarters caught light on Tuesday night.

Watching the firemen march up and march down our three storeys of knee-aching stairs to reach the burning bin, the words of The Grand Old Duke of York popped into the head.

This was no reflection on the gallant efforts of the firemen. Instead, it was because of the blaze just days earlier at Allerton Castle near Knaresborough. This was far more disastrous than the little drenching we received from our mercifully prolific sprinkler system, which quickly dampened down our danger.

Tantalisingly, reports of Allerton's destruction said that it was at the castle that the nursery rhyme was set.

Further investigation provided an inundation of explanation.

The British rhyme is probably based upon an 11th century French saying which takes the mickey out of their king, Philippe I, who lost to the archers of Edward I of England:

The King of France went up the hill With forty thousand men.

The King of France came down the hill

And ne'er went up again.

This rhyme, say some, was Anglicised during the Wars of the Roses to commemorate the defeat of Richard Plantagenet, the Duke of York, at the Battle of Wakefield on December 30, 1460.

Richard marched his men up to Sandal Castle, which stands high on ancient earthworks at least ten metres above the natural ground level. Rashly, he refused to wait for reinforcements and so marched his men down to do battle with the Lancastrians below. The battle was lost within 30 minutes, he was killed (hence we remember the colours of the rainbow by saying "Richard of York gave battle in vain"), and his severed head was displayed wearing a straw crown on a gateway into York.

But Allerton Castle's website says that "according to local legend, the hill (in Allerton Park) is the one mentioned in the nursery rhyme".

Allerton was indeed home to a Duke of York, Frederick Augustus (1763-1827) the second son of George III. Frederick was Britain's commander during the Flanders campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars of 1793-1799. These were so disastrous that his father promoted him to the rank of commander-in-chief, a position he resigned from in 1809 when his former mistress, Mary Anne Clarke, alleged that he granted army commissions in return for bribes.

A House of Commons inquiry cleared Frederick of any impropriety. He was reinstated, Mary Anne was imprisoned and he died in debt in 1827. But none of the ups or downs of Frederick's military career explains why he should be ridiculed in rhyme.

Yet it was at Allerton Castle that Frederick apparently wanted a lake. A very big lake.

He instructed 10,000 of his men to dig him one. And he wanted a hill. A very big hill. So he instructed his men to pile up the soil as they dug it from the lake.

As the pile grew, the men had to march up to the top to deposit the soil. Then they had to march back down again to dig the lake. And then they had to march back up to deposit the soil.

Of course, when they were up they were up. And when they were down, they were down. And when they were only halfway up, they were neither up nor down.