A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



terrace where the walls were dangerously out 

 of the perpendicular.** In 1752 extensive 

 alterations were made in the Town Hall when 

 Mr. George Bowes restored or adapted what is 

 now the mayor's parlour.*^ A year or two later 

 the members for the city, Henry Lambton and 

 John Tempest, refaced, if they did not entirely 

 rebuild, the front of the Town Hall. In 1760 

 the tower on the city side of Framwellgate 

 Bridge, so long one of its main defences, was 

 pulled down in order to give more easy access 

 to Silver Street. In 1774 one of the flanking 

 towers to the Great North Gate of the castle, 

 probably that towards the keep, fell in ruins. 

 Possibly the tower had been loosened by recent 

 excavation, of which some record exists. 



The social life of Durham in the i8th century 

 is pleasantly illustrated not only by occasional 

 letters from bishops, deans and prebendaries, 

 which have survived, but by diaries. Jacob 

 Bee, a skinner and glover of Crossgate, who died 

 in 171 1, has left notes of local occurrences from 

 1 68 1 to 1707, taking up the story from the point 

 at which Davenport's correspondence fails us. 

 He is followed from 1748 to 1778" by the 

 really valuable local journal of Thomas Gyll, 

 Solicitor-General of Durham, and in 1769 

 Recorder of the city. These documents, par- 

 ticularly the latter, give a very fair idea of the 

 atmosphere of Durham life. The best idea, 

 however, may be gained from the pages of 

 Sylvestra, a novel published in 1881, and written 

 by Mrs. Raine Ellis. The authoress, who was 

 daughter of the well-known antiquary. Dr. 

 James Raine, edited the Diary of Fanny 

 D'Arblay, and by means of the general knowledge 

 of the times acquired by this minute work, in 

 addition to help gained from private memoranda 

 and correspondence, has written what is surely 

 a life-like portraiture of ecclesiastical Hfe in 

 Durham in the reign of George III. A few 

 of the details gleaned from the diaries may be 

 mentioned. In 1733 the first races were run 

 on the Smiddyhaughs, now the University 

 cricket ground. This annual institution con- 

 tinued until 1887 with little interruption. A 

 letter from James Gisborne, a Durham pre- 



12 Interesting correspondence between the bishop 

 and Mr. Miller is referred to in An Eighteenth-Century 

 Correspondence (ed. Miss Dickins and Miss Stanton), 

 279. The friendship between Miller and Egerton 

 suggests that the period of Miller's influence at 

 Durham may have been prolonged. The particulars 

 of the decay in the castle are in Add. MSS. 9815. 



18 Inscription within the room. Also recorded in 

 Table Book. 



** The interval is partly filled by the north-country 

 allusion of John Thomlinson, curate of Rothbury. 

 All three diaries are printed and excellently annotated 

 by Mr. J. Crawford Hodgson in Three North-Country 

 Diaries (Surt. Soc). 



bendary and rector of Staveley, describes in an 

 amusing way his stolen sight of the races in 

 1750, and shows how the race-week was at that 

 time an important social event. ^^ In 1735 a 

 Durham paper was started under the title of the 

 Durham Courant, but it had an ephemeral exist- 

 ence." No copy of it is known to have sur- 

 vived. Conjecture attributes it to the first 

 Durham bookseller of those days whose name 

 has come down to us, one Patrick Sanderson." 

 Dr. Hunter the antiquary was a friend of Sander- 

 son. In 1749 died in the Bailey Mme. Poison or 

 Poisson, a Huguenot refugee, whose card- 

 parties were a feature of life in the Bailey. In 

 1760 ' died old Mrs. Proud of the coffee-house.' 

 The longevity of many Durham persons was 

 notorious, and cathedral appointments often 

 survived in person or in connexion for a great 

 number of years." Thus, Sir John Dolben, 

 the last dignitary of Crewe's nomination, sur- 

 vived until 1756, closing the brief list of the 

 prebendaries who were Jacobites at heart. He 

 had been installed in 1718. In 1771 a small 

 theatre was opened in Saddler Street. It gave 

 its name to the adjoining vennel or passage 

 which was nicknamed Drury Lane and is still 

 so called. A document of about this time, or 

 a little earlier, hints at another side to Durham 

 life in the thieves ready to make their way into 

 the Baileys when bolts and bars were not used. 

 Hard by, too, were the unfortunate prisoners in 

 the great gaol vnthin the north gate of the castle, 

 who were visited by Howard in 1774. His 

 account of the prison is gloomy reading, and 

 Neild thirty years later regards the gaol as 

 one of the very worst .*' 



Eighteenth-century descriptions of Durham 

 have been mentioned : it remains to chronicle 

 the first local guide-books to the city. The 

 earliest yet noticed is the compilation of the 

 antiquary Dr. Christopher Hunter, published 

 in 1733, when recent additions *" to the cathedral 



1" Printed in Derbyshire Arch., and Nat. Hist. Journ. 

 v (1883). 



1* Table Booh, sub anno. 



1' Mrs. Waghorn's name appears in Durham 

 Cathedral 1733 ; John Richardson, bookseller, bought 

 Dr. Hunter's Ubrary in 1749 ; Sanderson published 

 an augmented edition of Durham Cathedral in 1767. 

 See further, p. 84. 



1* In Mickleton MS. xci ad fin, " case of the copy- 

 holders." 



1' Many details are given in Gent. Mag. (Ser. i), 

 Ixxv, 987-90 ; a summary in Engl. Episcopal Palaces 

 (Province of York), 191-4 ; below, p. 51. 



2* The best summary of the alteration attempted 

 from time to time is given by Ormsby in his preface to 

 Services at the Reopening of Durham Cathedral, 1876. 

 Dr. J. T. Fowler gives a sketch of the history of the 

 book and its edition in the introducdon to his text 

 with excellent notes, 1902 {Rites of Dur. [Surt. 

 Soc.]). 



48 



