ON September 1, 1317, in a dingly dell at Rushyford on the Great North Road, ruffians and brigands jumped out of the reeds and ambushed a party of noblemen which included the man that King Edward II had appointed as the next Bishop of Durham.

The Northern Echo: The Eden Arms at Rushyford, beside the old A1, in 1962

The Eden Arms at Rushyford, beside the old A1, in 1962

The renegades in the rushes were led by Sir Gilbert Middleton, and they felt they had the backing of the people of Durham who didn’t like the king’s appointee. He was Lewis Beaumont, a French cousin of the queen, and the people did not want to be ruled by a foreigner.

Beaumont was dashing from London to Durham to take up his throne, fearing that if it stood empty, another pretender would step in. He was also aware that it was harvest-time, when the people of Durham had to pay their bishop their tithes, potentially making him wealthy if he were there to collect.

So he arrived in Darlington on August 31, and received a message from the cathedral telling him not to travel north because the road was infested with highwaymen.

Suspecting a trap, he did the opposite, and immediately rode north. Barely two hours out of Darlington on the A167, he was set upon at Rushyford by Sir Gilbert, hiding in the rushes, who took the whole entourage hostage.

To his horror, Sir Gilbert discovered that in the entourage were a pair of Italian cardinals, Gaucelin Deuze and Luca di Fieschi, who had been appointed by the Pope to negotiate peace with the Scots. This meant that Sir Gilbert had launched a violent attack directly against God himself.

Hurriedly, Sir Gilbert released the cardinals and sent them on their way to Durham, and carried off Beaumont to Mitford Castle in Northumberland, where he demanded a massive ransom for his release. Sir Gilbert probably expected the grateful people of the north to fall in behind him.

But the cardinals plundered the treasures of the cathedral, handed them to Sir Gilbert as the ransom, and forced Beaumont’s release. The people of Durham sensed which way the wind was blowing and sensibly kept their heads down, and Beaumont was consecrated as bishop.

Now isolated Sir Gilbert found his castle surrounded. He was arrested, charged with treason and shipped to London where he was dragged through the streets, hanged and – still alive – torn apart and then beheaded. By this time dead, his body was quartered, with one part sent to Bristol, another to Dover, a third to York and a fourth to Newcastle.

If the quarter bound for the North-East travelled by road, perhaps when it reached that dingly dell at Rushyford, there was a strange shiver as it sensed that this was the spot where it all began to go wrong for Sir Gilbert.

The Northern Echo: Sir John Scott, Lord Chancellor and 1st Earl of Eldon (1751-1838)

Sir John Scott, Lord Chancellor and 1st Earl of Eldon (1751-1838)

IN 1770, at Sedgefield church, a young couple locked eyes across the pews and fell in love.

He was 18-year-old John Scott, the son of a Newcastle “hoastman” – a successful coal merchant, keelman and pub-owner – who was studying at Oxford University to become a country clergyman.

She was 16-year-old Bessie Surtees, the daughter of the wealthy Aubone Surtees, a former mayor of Newcastle.

Bessie was a social cut above John, Aubone refused to countenance her relationship with a coaly cleric. Instead, he lined up Sir Walter Blackett, "the King of Newcastle", as her husband – he’d been mayor five times, the city's MP for nearly 40 years and was nearly 50 years older than beautiful young Bessie.

John had to act. He had a friend who worked in the shop beneath the Surtees’ amazing Newcastle townhouse in Sandhill. The friend hid a ladder and, in the dark of the night of November 18, 1772, John leant it against the timber-framed property and up to Bessie’s first floor leaded window.

The Northern Echo: Bessie Surtees' House in Sandhill, Newcastle. Picture: Google StreetView

Bessie Surtees' House in Sandhill, Newcastle. Picture: Google StreetView

Out she climbed.

Off they ran to Scotland, where people under the age of 21 did not need their parents' permission to marry. The following day Bessie, 18, wed John, 21, at Blackshiels near Edinburgh.

After the wedding, the happy couple returned to Newcastle to face the music. Aubone was furious and disowned Bessie, but after a couple of weeks was talked round and the wedding was blessed in the cathedral on January 19, 1773.

Being married meant that John couldn't qualify as a curate. He needed a new career, and studied law in London. He rose to become Attorney-General and for 20 years, under four different prime ministers, he was Lord Chancellor. A curmudgeonly Tory, he was opposed to freedom for Catholics and slaves, but he was one of the most important men in the kingdom. He was adored by George III and despised by the Liberals – WE Gladstone called him “the great champion of all that was most stupid in politics”.

In 1792, Sir John bought the Eldon estate, which stretched from Shildon to Sedgefield, for £22,000. In 1821, George IV conferred upon him the title of the 1st Earl of Eldon.

The Northern Echo: The Eden Arms around 1900

Whenever he visited his estate, he would stay at the Wheatsheaf Inn (above), a 17th Century coaching inn with stabling for 30 horses beside the dingly dell.

Sir John was a noted drinker, and the landlord, Mr Holt, kept a cellar crammed full of Carbonell's Fine Old Military Blackstrap Newcastle Port.

"Although they were decidedly not military, he and his host used to drink seven bottles a day between them, valiant topers that they were," wrote a historian. "On Saturdays they drank eight bottles; the extra one being to fortify themselves against Sunday morning's church service."

(Presumably, from Rushyford, for the service, the well fortified Sir John rode the five miles into St Edmund’s Church in Sedgefield, where he had first clapped eyes upon his beloved Bessie.)

Sir John, who was one of the Durham landowners who tried to prevent the Stockton & Darlington Railway being built in the early 1820s, died in 1838.

SIR John Scott’s great-great-grandson, the 5th Earl, died in Wimbledon in 2017. We believe he left land in the Rushyford area to his eldest son, the 6th Earl, whose full name is John Francis Thomas Marie Joseph Columba Fidelis Scott.

Other reminders of Sir John include Encombe Terrace in Ferryhill, which is named after his estate in Devon, and the Greta Green Wedding Inn on the A167 at Aycliffe which opened in the 1930s and is named to commemorate his elopement with Bessie.

The Northern Echo: An Edwardian postcard looking over the bridge over the Black Beck at Rushyford towards the original Wheatsheaf Inn

An Edwardian postcard looking over the bridge over the Black Beck at Rushyford towards the original Wheatsheaf Inn

WITH Sir John gone, the next period of Rushyford’s history began: the Eden family, the baronets of West Auckland, had owned the Windlestone estate for centuries, but in the 1830s decided they had outgrown their Manor House in West Auckland.

Robert Johnson Eden demolished the old hall at Windlestone and began building a new one. While it was under construction, the Edens lived at an old house – described as an Elizabethan manor house – in Rushyford next to the Wheatsheaf. In their honour, the hotel renamed itself the Eden Arms.

Windlestone Hall was completed in 1855, and the Edens moved in. Their house in Rushyford became known as “the Dower House”, as widows lived in it, most notably Lady Sybil, the mother of Sir Anthony Eden, the 1950s Prime Minister.

In 1936, weighed down by death duties, the Edens were obliged to sell the 4,000 acre Windlestone estate.

The Northern Echo: The Eden Arms, Rushyford, in 2002

The Eden Arms, Rushyford, in 2002

The North Eastern Brewery paid £6,500 for the coaching inn and the Dower House, and brought the two together as one large hostelry. The hotel’s main door switched to the south end of the site where the Edens’ manor house had stood.

The Northern Echo: TAMING A TROUBLE SPOT: "Straight and wide," said The Northern Echo on July 8, 1967, beneath the headline "Taming a trouble spot". The report continued: "The trouble spot junction at the Eden Arms, Rushyford, is about to lose its

"Straight and wide," said The Northern Echo on July 8, 1967, beneath the headline "Taming a trouble spot".

THE hamlet of Rushyford grew up to serve the travellers on the Great North Road: the smithy was almost as important as the inn.

In the 1840s, as the railways replaced horses, the coaching era faded, but Rushyford was reborn as a place for Windlestone estate workers to live.

The Edens also ushered in the next mode of transport, owning the area’s first motor cars. Their cars were painted yellow, with black lines and wheels.

When their first car pulled into the hotel, it so frightened a horse belonging to a draper that the poor creature had to be stabled overnight to recover and the unfortunate draper had to walk home.

The Northern Echo: David Bellamy launching the Eden Arms' new spa in 1986

David Bellamy launching the Eden Arms' new spa in 1986

BECAUSE of its ease of access as a motoring inn, on November 22, 1963, the Beatles were whisked out of the Globe at Stockton and into a police car which took them to the Eden Arms. Their screaming fans thought they’d gone to the Staincliffe Hotel in Seaton Carew so the Fab Four were able to spend the night largely unmolested playing fives and threes with the Eden’s resident skiffle band.

The Northern Echo: The Windlestone estate cottages at Rushyford

The Windlestone estate cottages at Rushyford

The Northern Echo: Windlestone estate workers cottages at Rushyford: the blacksmith's shop was at the right end of the row; the country's smallest post office was just out of shot on the left

Windlestone estate workers cottages at Rushyford: the blacksmith's shop was at the right end of the row; the country's smallest post office was just out of shot on the left

A POST office existed at Rushyford since at least 1900. It was long and thin, and looked as if an enterprising person had blocked up a garden passage, put a window in it and started selling stamps.

From 1900, the office was run by Isabella Hunter. In 1950, her daughter, Jane Aldred, took over, and when she shut up the one room shop in 1989, Rushyford lost the unique distinction of having the smallest post office in the country.

The post box, from the reign of George V, was moved into the hotel for safe-keeping. If the hotel itself can’t be saved, surely treasures like this can be?

The Northern Echo: The post box from Rushyford post office that is now in the Eden Arms Hotel reception. Picture: TOM BANKS.