74 Durham Castle, by Mr W. H. D. Longstaffe. 



Saxon period. After the defeat of Malcolm's besieging Scots by Ucthred, 

 during tbe episcopacy of Aldbun, tbe erector of a Saxon Cathedral there, the 

 most handsome heads of the slain were carried by their tangled hair to Dur- 

 ham, and, having been washed by four women, were arrayed upon poles 

 round the walls, each woman having a cow for her pains. It may also be 

 mentioned, as to this or some later period, that, according to newspapers, ex- 

 cavations for sewers showed that the carriage way of the Baileys surmounts 

 a vast accumulation of refuse, including the bones of boars, stags, horses, 

 domestic animals, and the extinct elk. The same appearances were reached 

 at the outside of the city wall at Claypath Gates, and in both cases they sug- 

 gested that ancient moats had been filled up with debris. Three years after 

 the Conquest, in 1069, we gain another glimpse of Durham in a military 

 point of view. The conqueror sent Earl Eobert, surnamed Cumin, to the 

 Northumbrians at the north side of the Tyne. He entered Durham and per- 

 mitted his soldiers to act hostilely, they even slaying some of the " rustics" 

 (i. e. serfs) of the Church, but was received by Bishop Egelwin with all 

 civility and honour. The Northumbrians, determined not to submit to a 

 foreign lord, marching all night to Durham, at dawn burst its gates (jportas) 

 with great force, and slew the earl's men, thus taken unawares, everywhere 

 in the houses and streets. They then proceeded to attack the bishop's house, 

 in which the earl had been received, but, not being able to bear the javelins 

 of the defenders, they, in Cabul fashion, burned the house with its inhabi- 

 tants, including the earl. The house was near the Cathedral, for, while the 

 assailants were endeavouring to throw fire into it, the flaming sparks, flying 

 upwards, caught the western tower of the period, which, according to 

 Symeon, was in immediate proximity, and it appeared to be on the very verge 

 of destruction. The people prayed St. Cuthbert to preserve his church from 

 being burned, and a ^nd arose from the east, which drove the flames back- 

 wards from the church, and freed it from danger. The house had then 

 caught fire, and continued to blaze. It will be remembered that Bishop 

 Walcher was destroyed through the same Northumbrians setting fire to the 

 roof and walls of Gateshead Church a few years afterwards. 



The event sufiiciently explains the erection of a castle at Durham. "Wal- 

 cher, of Lorraine, was made bishop in 1071, and in 1072, when the King had 

 returned from Scotland, he built a castle in Durham, where, says the pseudo- 

 Symeon, the Bishop might keep himself and his people safe from assailants. 

 Of the nature of this castle we are, of" course, ignorant, but, whatever were 

 its beginnings, it soon rose to importance, for great stress upon its possession 

 was laid in the controversy of 1088 between King William Eufus and Bishop 

 St. Karileph, the successor of the murdered Walcher. It is diflB.cult to 

 ascribe an exact date to the early Norman chapel in the castle, but consider- 

 ing that it is so totally different from the peculiar Norman design which was 

 introduced by St. Karileph in 1093, when he began his new cathedral, and 

 was followed by Bishop Flambard, it would appear to be earlier than it. 

 The defensive works at Durham by Bishop Flambard, who also built a castle 

 at Norham (soon after destroyed by the Scots), were these: — "The city 

 [tcrbem), although Nature had fortified it, he rendered stronger and more 

 august with a wall. He constructed a wall in length extended from the 



