Published at 09:43, Friday, 05 February 2010

WHAT a surprise – Whittonstall has nothing to do with “white”. You might expect the village south of Stocksfield to have got its name from whitewashed sheepfolds – “whitten stelle” – or some such Anglo Saxon concoction.

The Old School, Whittonstall: A treasury of learning, but a cache of real treasure was found nearby.

But a thousand years ago, Whittonstall was known as Quicktunstall, or the homestead with the quickset hedge.

Quicksetting has long been a popular way of establishing your boundaries, by planting quick (i.e. living, not dead) hazel cuttings straight into the ground.

A strange, sad story attaches to the owner of “Quictonestal” during the 13th century Crusades. He was William de Morpath and to honour a holy vow he took his wife and sons on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

He left his daughter, Ysabellis, behind in the care of her grandfather, with instructions that if mum, dad and the boys didn’t come back after 12 years, Ysabellis was to inherit “toft and croft” at Quictonestal.

Sir William probably thought it was highly unlikely none of them would see home again. But as Ysabellis waited and the years passed, she finally had to accept she was the last of the de Morpaths. Let’s hope she was comforted by becoming an heiress.

By the time John Speed drew his map of Northumberland in 1610, Quicktunstall had become “Whittenstall”. And when land owner Dame E Radcliffe left £4 to be shared by the poor of the parish on “St Lucie’s Day” 1668, she called the village “Whottonstall”.

But local spelling eventually improved, and thanks must be due to this village house now up for sale – Whittonstall Old School.

In 1846, the whole community – about 190 people lived in Whittonstall then – chipped in to pay for a National School for Boys and Girls.

Children didn’t have to go to school in those days – the law for five-10 year-olds to be schooled came in 1880 – and another disincentive was the weekly fee of a penny.

But young William Gibson seems to have been the first schoolmaster of the new Whittonstall school, and for his salary of £15 a year he would have taught the National Syllabus – reading, writing, arithmetic and religion – to any penny-rich Whittonstallers who turned up.

Sometimes as many as 70 a day were recorded, and Mr Gibson may well have taught the children of Whittonstall’s two mid-Victorian shoemakers, Richard Oley and Joseph Green, and if Joseph Proud the blacksmith had any offspring, the schoolhouse was a mere step away for them.

We know Mr Gibson was quite a youthful teacher when appointed to the National School, because he was still living in Whittonstall 40 years later, a retired schoolmaster noted in Bulmer’s Directory of 1886.

A close neighbour of the old schoolmaster was Whittonstall’s vicar, who had a most melodious name – the Rev. John Low-Low.

The double barrel doesn’t appear to be a typing mistake. John Low-Low crops up in many different records. He came to the village in 1872 with a glowing reputation for scholarship, fitting his parish duties around the study of “theology, Hebrew, Syriac, medieval archaeology, church history, and liturgiology”.

“Hospitable, genial, and humorous Low-Low”, as he was known to chums, was also credited with preserving the scholarly words of one of England’s greatest theologists, Canon Henry Jenkyns.

This lecturer taught at Durham University from 1839 to 1864, and Low-Low was one of his students. Dr Jenkyns had “a reputation for learning and power of teaching then unequalled in England, and worthy to be compared with the great professors of Germany”, but he never wrote his lectures down.

When Dr Jenkyns died in 1878 it was feared his wisdom had died with him, until it was discovered that the diligent scholar Low-Low had transcribed every lesson.

The vicar before Low-Low was equally brainy in his own way. The Rev. Richard Marshall served for more than 25 years as “physician, lawyer and arbitrator, as well as pastor of his little flock”. And he also found time for a scientific hobby – astronomy. The map of 1856 shows Whittonstall Parsonage – just a few yards from the ten year-old National School – had its own observatory.

Mr Marshall also enjoyed a smarter church than some of his predecessors. Whittonstall’s church, St Philip and St James – just across the wall from the Old School – had been completely rebuilt around 1832.

The builders recycled the site and stone of a much-older chapel, which a priest, ordained there in 1818, described as “a perfect hovel”!

By 1914 when the Great War broke out, the multitasking Mr Marshall was long gone, but the role of village elder was held by Whittonstall’s schoolmaster, John William Lish.

Not only was Mr Lish teaching in the Old School but he was also “assistant overseer” and secretary of the Whittonstall Parochial Institute. So Mr Lish was master of both the Old School and the New School.

In 1912, a small square wooden building near the site of today’s Whittonstall First School became the new home of the “3Rs”, and the Old School became The Institute – later the village hall.

Local people who may have forgotten the now-vanished wooden school which came between their Old School and the modern First School, were reminded when a recent exhibition of old photographs in Whittonstall featured its faded image.

But 51 years ago, photographs of Whittonstall were hot news, thanks to a cache of medieval treasure discovered just yards from the Old School/Institute/village hall – it didn’t become a family home until 1998.

On January 18, 1958, workman Mark Bradley must have cursed as he knuckled down to the freezing job of digging foundations for Whittonstall’s new police station.

But his luck was soon to turn. As his spade cut through the clay, Mark saw some sixpences spilling out of a box. He tried to lift the metal, wax-sealed box, but its great age was revealed as it crumbled in his hands.

Mark’s “sixpences” were more than 1,000 silver pennies, minted in the reigns of Edward I and II, and as perfect as the day they were hidden 600 years before. Coins from the Whittonstall Hoard can be seen in museums throughout the region.

l The Old School, Whittonstall, is for sale though Foster Maddison of Hexham.

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk