ROKEBY – properly pronounced Rookby – was the home of Scott’s friend John Morritt. It is near Greta Bridge on the roaring A66, and the lengthy poem was such a roaring success that JMW Turner was commissioned to illustrate a reprint.

Although the reprint wasn’t fully realised, Turner did paint several scenes, the most famous of which showed little old Brignall church crouched on the banks of the Greta beneath Teesdale’s towering hills.

But where is Brignall?

Sorry, we did not properly explain.

And it is an enchanting walk out.

The hamlet of Brignall is about a mile south of the Morritt Arms at Greta Bridge. It is marked by the tall tower of its “new” church – “new” in that it was built as recently as 1834.

Park outside the church and follow the signpost pointing down to the “old” church – Turner’s church.

It’s a steep, grassy, hollow descent – perhaps once the major route down to a lost village.

The path criss-crosses a ravine on ancient bridges – perhaps this is how Brignall got its names, the bridges down the hill.

Suddenly, the tight path opens into a flat, green riverside pasture, which was probably the site of a medieval village.

Perhaps an Anglo-Saxon leader called Bryni settled his people in this secret place – a “halh” in their language – and so Bryni’s halh is how Brignall got its name.

Once this was quite a community.

In 1265, the people of Brignall were granted permission to hold a market.

Now it is all quiet, just the mocking cry of green woodpeckers, the bleat of sheep and the roar of the river.

All that remains of the settlement is the ruin of the tiny 12th Century church, an older horizontal stone in its back wall suggesting someone was living and carving down here a few centuries earlier.

Now is a good time to visit, because come summer, the head-high nettles will have reclaimed their churchyard and the higgledy-piggledy headstones will be lost – against the wall, for example, lies Christopher Thwaites, the postmaster of Greta Bridge, who died in 1695 aged 67.

It may have been plague that wiped out old Brignall. It may have been a change in farming techniques or it that a medieval bypass took travellers to a better river crossing or it may have been a spate of floods.

The Northern Echo: Brignall churchyard as it is today
Brignall churchyard as it is today

Something did for old Brignall, causing its people to leave.

When Turner visited in 1823, the church was splendidly isolated, but still in use.

In 1834, the villagers dismantled it, and carried its stone up over the bridges to use for their “new” church, leaving us a fascinating ruin to paint, if you are like Turner, or to ruminate upon if you are a little less talented.