Published at 09:41, Friday, 12 February 2010

FANS of BBC's Lark Rise to Candleford will have seen the villagers fretting recently about collecting “leazes” to see them through the winter.

Apparently, “leazing” is gleaning corn dropped by the reapers. Well it may be so in Oxfordshire, but not in Northumberland.

We have plenty of leazes here, but they are not spare ears of grain shared among the poor, though the word does mean community co-operation.

North-East “leazes” were small, communal hay fields. Each villager had rights to a portion of the leazes’ fodder, and could graze a set number of his beasts on the leazes after mowing.

It was a popular idea copied by almost every settlement in the region. Newcastle has its Leazes Park, Allendale has Thornley Leazes, Corbridge has Leazes Terrace, and Hexham has Shaftoe Leazes.

Today, Shaftoe Leazes is a street of substantial Victorian town houses, with hanging baskets and walled flower beds providing scarcely a mouthful of fodder.

Number 18, now up for sale, is a typical example.

But if you go back to 1826 when Scots surveyor John Wood drew his detailed map of Hexham, the area around Shaftoe Leazes would have looked more promising to a hungry heifer.

The whole length was called Carlisle Road then, and on either side were long narrow fields belonging to Mr John Fairlamb, and the wider pastures of Thomas Wentworth Beaumont, who also owned the Sele.

Mr Stobart’s Sawmill stood on the north side of the road, and the Cockshaw Burn ran diagonally across – its little stone bridge was not built until the middle of the century, so perhaps the burn was culverted under the highway?

The future Shaftoe Leazes – which doesn’t appear on maps until 1894 – seems to have begun from the Cockshaw Burn. Just a few yards south-east was a key junction where the Carlisle road met the turnpike road to Alston.

The Hexham to Alston road existed from at least 1762, but it was probably just a rutted track in those days. In 1778 a turnpike trust was set up to bring the track into the Age of Enlightenment.

The Summerrods turnpike stood just a mile or so from Shaftoe Leazes, and everyone who wanted to pass through – from farmers leading cattle, to the Alston stagecoach – had to pay a toll which went into the repair kitty for Hexham’s highroads.

That was the plan. But by 1800 an Act of Parliament was needed to keep the Summerrods turnpike in “effectual repair”.

The North Pennines roads were taken in a masterful hand in the 1820s – that of the famous John Loudon “Tar” McAdam.

He is credited with the invention of “tarmac”, but McAdam never used tar to keep his highways together, just the “stickability” of many layers of small stones.

By the time Shaftoe Leazes appeared on maps in 1894, the West End Inn was conveniently sited at the turnpike road junction – today it’s called The Fox.

Next-door The Coach House – currently on the market too – was probably used by the inn’s clientele.

In mid-Victorian days, there was a large block called Davison’s Buildings beside the road which became Shaftoe Leazes and iron master Thomas Davison, his wife, Elizabeth, and baby Henry, lived at Number 1 Temperley Place, just a few yards east.

Davison’s Iron Foundry in Eilansgate (where the Hexham Horseless Carriage Co. is today) is said to date back to the 18th century.

But what about the Shaftoes of Shaftoe Leazes?

The energetic and fertile family of Shaftoe (or Shafto) left their mark all over this region. Hexham commemorates them in Shaftoe Crescent and Shaftoe Green as well as Shaftoe Leazes.

As for Shaftoes living close to the road that bears their name – a Lady Mary Shafto lived at Hencotes in 1834, according to Pigot’s Directory, and Wood’s map of 1826 shows a large plot owned by Mrs Shaftoe on the south side of Hencotes, and another long thin plot south of Battle Hill.

Hexham Abbey has a memorial to Martha, daughter of attorney Charles Shaftoe, who died in 1814 aged just 28.

These Shaftoe ladies were no doubt of spotless reputation, but there were some scurrilous Shaftoes too.

In March 1807, George Delavel Shafto died aged just 44 in the Lang Stairs prison – the old name for Hexham’s Moot Hall because of its flight of stone steps.

The main seat of the Shaftos was Bavington Hall, near Thockrington, and the family was once feared for miles around as notorious Border Reivers. In 1527, Shaftoes ganged up to kidnap 24 Hexhamites for ransom. In 1575, they were in the Redeswire Fray where George Heron, Keeper of Tynedale, met his sticky end.

And in 1715, the Shaftoes were on the wrong side in the Jacobite rebellion and were tried for treason alongside their noble neighbour the Earl of Derwentwater.

The Shaftoes survived where the Earl died, and they seem to have learnt their lesson.

In 1738, Mr Shaftoe, of Benwell Tower, near Newcastle, was a gardener rather than a cattle rustler, and Kirkharle’s young landscaping star Capability Brown was in his employ.

By 1760 the Shaftoes were inspiring songwriters. The famously handsome Robert Shafto of the Durham branch of the family was “Bonny Bobby Shafto” who broke the heart of Mary Bellasis of Brancepeth Castle.

And the pious streak of the Shaftoes has ensured their name will be remembered.

The Rev. John Shaftoe set up a charity 325 years ago which still lives on in Haydon Bridge’s Shaftoe Trust First School.

Miss Cynthia Shafto is remembered fondly at Thockrington Church because she paid for its restoration in 1951.

Most of the terraced houses of Shaftoe Leazes were built between 1889 and 1899. James Frazer of Newcastle designed them, and Wallace and Wilkinson built them as unpretentious, solid family homes, with no fancy indoor loos, but spacious rooms and a scullery “out back”.

Shaftoe Leazes may not have a particularly colourful past, but the street can be proud of its link with the Shaftoes – one of the most fascinating families in the region.

l No. 18 Shaftoe Leazes is for sale via Smiths Gore of Corbridge.

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