Road link to the heart of the Roman Empire

Fewer people know of Rykeneild Street. It, too, has give-away place names on it as it stretches from Thornton-le-Street, near Thirsk, in the south, to Chester-le-Street in the north.

There are many theories about how it crossed the Tees, but most routes point to Middleton One Row and then on to Sadberge, where the tired centurions rested.

We have to guess how Rykeneild Street wended its way north from York, but as it nears the Tees tell-tale signs appear on the map. For instance, there is a straight lane running between the North Yorkshire villages of Deighton and Welbury, and then there are a couple of join-the-dots straight bits that take you unsatisfactorily towards Girsby.

From there it is plain sailing: Rykeneild's direct route in stark comparison to the meandering of the Tees around it. The road makes it down to the river via an extraordinary avenue of lime trees at Over Dinsdale. A sign says this avenue was planted with daffodils in 1991 by the "local community, Girsby and Over Dinsdale WI and friends".

The crossing of the river is known as Pountey's, which comes from a corruption of the Latin "pons Tisa", or "Tees Bridge". No one knows what sort of crossing this "pons" was. It could have just been a ford, although local folklore has long held that a bridge's foundations remain under the water. That was confirmed in 1996 when divers discovered a large three-sided abutment on the south side of the river. The stones in it were cramped together with iron ties - a typical Roman construction - and the position suggested that the bridge was 33ft wide.

If we could only find out when Rykeneild Street was built we might be able to say with more certainty what this crossing looked like. If it was built in the early stages of the invasion, when the Romans were still trying to suppress the native Brigantes tribe, it was probably just a ford.

Just like the Americans in Iraq, the Romans swept around the side of heavily armed tribes in AD71-74, hoping to come back later when the opposition had melted away.

They knew that the Brigantes' strongholds were at Aldbrough St John and Stanwick St John, so they might have stayed out of harm's way on the east side of them.

This theory says that once the Brigantes had been quelled, the Romans were able to safely build Dere Street up the centre of the country, close to Aldborough and Stanwick, so Rykeneild Street lost its importance. If this theory is correct, the Romans would not have got around to building a bridge at Pountey's.

However, if Rykeneild Street was built early in the Third Century, the crossing would probably have been a bridge. By then, Hadrian's Wall was complete and South Shields, the fort at its eastern end, would have required a large amount of supplies. Rykeneild Street appears to connect York with South Shields, so it might have been a supply line with a bridge to keep the supplies dry.

Enough theorising - however the Romans crossed the Tees, they were immediately welcomed into Durham by a steep riverbank called Tower Hill.

It is a long haul up, and they may have had some sort of station at the top in which they caught their breath. Certainly in the mid-12th Century a member of the Surtees family built motte and bailey castle (a mound of earth with a courtyard surrounded by a wall on top) to watch over the river crossing beneath. Much of this castle was destroyed in 1873, when Tower Hill House was built.

From Middleton One Row, the Romans marched straight for three miles to Sadberge.

The village is the highest point for miles around. Its name may well come from the Viking word "setberg" which means "flat-topped hill".

From the top of the flat-topped hill you can see the Cleveland Hills 20 miles to the south and the Pennine Hills 50 miles to the west. It is said that on a clear day you can even see the sea, 20 miles away at Redcar.

Here the Romans rested. Here they built a camp. You can tell this from looking at another possible derivation of Sadberge's name: in German 'burg' means castle and in Saxon 'berg' means fortification.

You can also tell from looking at the ground. Typically, a Roman road ran through a Roman camp. At Sadberge, the Roman road runs right through the village.

Today, to the west of the road are streets called Beacon Grange and Beacon Hill - probable references to where the Romans had their signalling station.

Today, on the east of the road, in a horses' field behind the Three Tuns pub, there are definite disturbances in the soil. They look like someone, a long time ago, has tried to terrace the side of the hill.

These, it is said, are the remains of the Roman camp.

Then there is the village church, St Andrew's, which stands on the highest spot in the village. The lanes around it seem to form a moat. This, it is said, is where the Romans had their fort. They retreated there whenever they came under attack.

Indeed, the Reverend W Lancaster Taylor, Vicar of Sadberge from 1887 to 1911, wrote in his history book how he once tried to dig a grave just outside the churchyard - just outside, in effect, the walls of the fort.

"To my surprise and grief," he wrote, "skulls were as numerous as potatoes in a potato field." Were these the remains of intruders who tried to scale the Romans' defences? From Sadberge, Rykeneild Street pushes on to Sedgefield and then over to Durham in discernably straight lines. At Durham it moves north to Chester-le-Street, which the Romans called Concangis.

Concangis is the only other known fort on Rykeneild Street, and is a 26-mile march from Sadberge.

The Romans departed these shores in the Fourth Century, but being a strategic site on Rykeneild Street left Sadberge in good stead for the next 1,000 years.

The route of the road varied over the centuries, but travellers always converged to pass through Sadberge, meaning that what is now a small village became a very important place controlling the land for miles around.

On occasions, Pountey's was not Rykeneild Street's preferred crossing of the Tees - there were also fords at Sockburn and Neasham - but it seems to have been the one generally used for a millennium or so, until the bridge at Croft became established.

History alleges that in 995AD, the body of Saint Cuthbert was carried across Pountey's ford by monks on their way from Ripon to found Durham.

History also alleges that in 1071 Princess Margaret crossed Pountey's ford on her way to marry Malcolm Canmore, King of Scotland.

Finally, history regales us with an extraordinary story from 1317. The Bishop of Durham, Lewis Beaumont, and a couple of the Pope's cardinals, Gaucelin Deuze and Luca di Fieschi, crossed at Pountey's on their way to Darlington. Two hours out of Darlington, they reached Rushyford, where they were set upon by a band of desperados led by Sir Gilbert Middleton, of Northumbria.

Sir Gilbert took Bishop Lewis hostage and imprisoned him in his castle at Mitford, then sent the cardinals off on horseback to Durham. There they gathered up the cathedral's treasures and exchanged them for the safe release of the bishop.

On December 14, the bishop sent an army to besiege Sir Gilbert in his castle. He was captured and put on a ship that sailed from Newcastle to Grimsby, where he was tied to the tail of his horse and dragged to London.

King Edward II himself tried Sir Gilbert and found him guilty. He was hanged - in front of the two Italian cardinals who had safely crossed at Pountey's - until he was half dead. Then he was taken down and beheaded. His heart was ripped out and his body was quartered. His head was sent to the City of London; one quarter of the body was sent to Newcastle, another to York, a third to Bristol and a fourth ended up in Dover.

All of which leads to the inescapable conclusion that Rykeneild Street and its stories - not all of them bloody - should be known by the widest possible audience.

l LAST week Echo Memories mentioned Sadberge's Beacon Hill in passing. Since then, several readers have confirmed that the row of bungalows on Beacon Hill started off as wooden wartime huts that were bricked up into substantial homes in the early 1950s.

Across the A66 from Beacon Hill is the Beacon Hill Works, which now seems to be a place in which lorries are stored. This, readers confirm, is where the Women's Land Army was billeted during the Second World War, the girls working in the fields round about.

But we need more information. If you have any, please write to: Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF, email chris.lloydnne.co.uk, or telephone (01325) 505062

Roman route: The view of the Roman road from Sadberge Supply line: The long avenue of trees at Over Dinsdale Strategic crossing: The Tees at Middleton One Row, where the Romans forded the river Frontier post: Some mounds of earth near the village of Sadberge, which was once a Roman fort and settlement

Published: 30/04/2003

Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF, e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.