Published at 09:43, Friday, 19 February 2010

OTTERBURN – is it called after the otters who once frolicked in the nearby burn? Probably, but there is an older possible root to the name.

Otterburn origins: East Otterburn Farm, in the village where otters, moneyspiders and Mad Jack Hall once roamed.

The Redesdale village of Otterburn in the far north of Tynedale – where East Otterburn farmhouse is presently up for sale – used to be the stamping ground of the Ottadini tribe.

The Ottadini ruled the whole of the narrow neck of Britain in their heyday before the Romans came. And they outlasted the legions, surviving to take on the invading Saxons in the Dark Ages.

The Ottadini had a stronghold at Rochester, five miles north-east of Otterburn, and they were of the Pictish persuasion. That is, they belonged to the tattooed or “painted” tribes, and even more colourfully, Old King Cole the “merry old soul” of nursery rhyme fame, is said to have been originally an Ottadine from Northumberland!

What about the Ottercop Hills just east of Otterburn? Were roaming otters spotted there too, or did the Ottadini leave their trademark pictish whorls carved in Ottercop rocks?

This is where it gets complicated, because “Otter” in this case used to be “Atter” or spider. Romantically-minded Victorian historians have suggested that the hills got their name because they were often “silvered o’er with gossamer cobs” by the healthy local population of money-spiders...?

Name-calling made a legend of one owner of the estate at Otterburn where East Otterburn Farmhouse now stands.

Master Jack, an early 18th century member of the notorious Reiver family of Hall, was known to all and sundry as Mad Jack, not because he was soft in the head, but because he was the kind of crazy firebrand you could trust to turn Sunday tea into a riot.

A typical Mad Jack exploit was drawing his sword on a royal-warranted press-ganger, to stop him claiming Jack’s servant.

Mad Jack’s valet was having some innocent fun at the annual Stagshaw Bank Fair, near Corbridge, when he was pounced on by a well-known people-snatcher named Widdrington.

This parasitical man had been licensed to harvest Tynedalers for service in the fever-ridden plantations of the West Indies – a white man’s slavery endured for decades by people in the North-East, but little noticed by history.

Anyway, no Hall would stand by while his staff were headhunted, so Mad Jack demanded Widdrington prove his authority.

“This is my authority!” snarled Widdrington, drawing his sword. “But is your authority a match for mine?” answered Jack, as he whipped out his weapon too.

The Stagshaw Fair-goers were thrilled: an extra sideshow featuring Mad Jack versus Snatcher Widdrington! It was Jack who won the applause of the crowd, and Widdrington had to scarper for the Tynedale border to escape a vengeful mob.

Jack’s birthright had made him a local magistrate, but he fell foul of the King’s Law. He chose the losing side in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715, and his “mad” career ended suddenly at Tyburn.

But there was another famous son of Otterburn who kept his feet firmly on the ground, and made his name for maths, not mayhem.

Edward Riddle was born in Otterburn in 1788, and rose to be master of the Trinity House School, Newcastle, and later of the Mathematical School at the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, London.

Riddle’s obsession was improving navigation at sea, and he spent years observing the moon which he was sure was the key.

Riddle wrote a book explaining “ practical solutions of the most useful problems in Nautical Astronomy.....which will present no difficulty to those who understand the theory of Plane and Spherical Trigonometry”... a doddle for any sailor with a sextant?

Another brainy Otterburnite was Howard Pease, an antiquarian of the late Victorian era who owned the estate where East Otterburn Farmhouse now stands.

Bookworm Pease had the money to set up a fancy library at his home in Otterburn Tower – not far from East Otterburn Farm which was then the Home Farm of his estate.

He also built Otterburn Tower’s stable block in 1904, opting for an opulent “arts and crafts” style, and he added the lodge right opposite East Otterburn Farmhouse. Howard’s decorated tomb is one of the most ornate in Otterburn churchyard.

The Anglican church of St John the Evangelist was built in 1858, just yards from East Otterburn Farm.

Two well-heeled maiden ladies of the local land owning family of Davidson found the staggering total of £12,000 in their silk reticules to build and endow St John’s.

But the local Presbyterians were not to be outdone. They had a chapel from 1833, right next door to East Otterburn Farm. But by 1886 they had found the cash for a “handsome new church” with, according to Bulmer’s Directory, “the cost defrayed by the proceeds of a very successful bazaar!”

We don’t know the religious persuasion of George Waddell, who lived at East Otterburn Farm from 1841 until at least 1901, but he seems a warm-hearted man.

In 1881 George was a widower in a cosy set-up with his niece Eleanor Dunn as housekeeper, and Margaret Nicholson, aged 26 as boarder. By 1901, aged 85, we know George had a second wife, Mary.

When he wasn’t keeping his womenfolk happy, George was a woollen weaver, working just up the road at Otterburn Mill which was run by George’s younger brother William Waddell.

For generations the Otterburn woollen mill was one of the area’s main employers, making heavy “Bull’s Lug” blankets and pastel tartan cot rugs for export all round the British Empire.

In 1926 Otterburn Mill supplied a soft woollen blanket to the new-born Princess Elizabeth, six-times great-granddaughter of that usurping Hanoverian George I. Mad Jack, Otterburn’s Jacobite martyr, would have had reason to be mad!

l East Otterburn Farmhouse is for sale via Smiths Gore of Corbridge.

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