Greetings....and goodbye: The Salutation

Greetings!  - the 'firm handshake' sign of The Salutation at the time of
its closure and refurbishment (photograph taken January 2016).

It’s always rather sad to see a local pub close, even when the venue concerned is one you never frequented on anything like a regular basis. Closure was, however, the fate, in late 2015, of 'The Sally', more properly The Salutation Inn (NZ 26405 44295), on Finchale Road, Framwellgate Moor.

First, a note on Framwellgate Moor: while ‘Fram’ is today regarded very much as a suburb of Durham, in the post-medieval period it was the outlying rural margin of 'Framwellgate township' extending north-west from the core of the city (earlier still, medieval Durham comprised a group of largely independent city boroughs around the fortified peninsula, one of which - the Bishop's Borough - encompassed the Framwellgate/Sidegate area immediately north-west of the peninsula). When Framwellgate Moor Colliery opened in c. 1838, Framwellgate Moor essentially developed as a colliery village alongside the Durham to Newcastle section of the ‘Great North Road’ (now Front Street); the colliery lay to the east of Front Street, the area now covered by the north-western end of the vast Newton Hall estate (once the largest housing estate in Europe I believe).

Anyway, I don’t know what it was about ‘The Sally’, but a succession of tenants came and went in recent years, none of who could evidently make the place work and the owner, Enterprise Inns, decided to call time. At the moment, the pub is in the process of being converted by its new owner, Sansec Developments, into ground floor shop units with a couple of flats above (Durham County Council planning application reference DM/15/01606/FPA).

View of The Salutation following its closure (photograph taken January 2016), 
looking south-west from the east side of what was once part of the Great North Road.

The tall, slightly wonky pole on the pavement adjacent to the Salutation plot, centre left
of view, is part of a radio transmitting base station, i.e. a mobile phone mast. It's owned
by Hutchison 3G UK Limited (better known as 'Three', a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa; company slogan "when stuff sucks #makeitright") and EE Limited (a subsidiary of the BT Group).

Another view of The Salutation during its refurbishment (photograph taken January 2016),
this looking south-east from the north side of Durham Moor, the link road between
Front Street and the New College mini-roundabout.

Another view of The Salutation during its refurbishment (photograph taken January 2016), 
this looking north-west from the south side of Finchale Road; the adjacent housing,
Dryburn View (built at the very end of the 19th century or early years of the
20th century), is just visible, left of view.
 

There is nothing remotely historic or indeed particularly interesting about the Salutation building that is being refurbished (it dates to c. 1960 according to press coverage when its potential closure was looming). However, the corner plot in which it stands has evidently been the site of a pub of this name since the 1840s. The first building stood further to the east, in the corner of the plot, so that it fronted onto what was then the main road, the aforementioned Great North Road.

Another note, this on the route of the Great North Road as it ran north from Durham city centre in the post-medieval period. Until North Road was built in the early 1830s, the Great North Road was the ancient street of Framwellgate (see Armstrong's map of 1776, below), continuing as Framwellgate Peth, then running past Aykley Heads (basically following the same line as the modern road which skirts County Hall and runs up to Aykley Heads). It then ran almost due north along the line of what are now Durham Road, High Carr Road and Front Street, Framwellgate Moor, and on to Pity Me and then Plawsworth.
 






From Mostyn John Armstrong's map of 1776 (from 'An Actual Survey of the Great Post
Roads between London and Edinburgh'), this an extract of the road between Rushyford
and Plawsworth in County Durham. The Great North Road is shown running almost due
north out of Durham to Plawsworth, passing Aykley Heads ('Aycliffe head') and
crossing Framwellgate Moor (part of 'Durham Moor').

 

The 1838/39 Tithe map of Framwellgate township (Durham University Library Archives and Special Collections reference DDR/EA/TTH/1/101), indicates that the corner plot in which the original Salutation stood was then entirely undeveloped. It was the quadrangular ‘Corner Allotment’, covering an area of 1 acre, 3 roods and 16 perches (an acre is 4,840 square yards or, in today’s money, c. 4,047 square metres, while a rood was 1/4 of an acre and a perch was 1/40th of a rood, or 1/160th of an acre). Farmed by a John Ainsley, the plot was owned, along with a great deal of land in the area, by Reverend Robert Hopper Williamson (1784-1865). The historical directories that I have to hand indicate that The Salutation was built in the 1840s; a pub of that name was present in Framwellgate Moor in 1847. It is certainly present on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of c. 1860, by which time the roadside colliery village to the north was relatively well-developed.




Detail of the crossroads of the Great North Road and (what is now) Finchale Road
from the first edition Ordnance Survey map of c. 1860; The Salutation (P.H.) (public
house) occupies the corner plot on the north-west side of the junction.
A century after this map was drawn, the farm to the south-east,
High Carr House, became Durham Fire Station.
 

The main building of the original pub was evidently L-shaped (the building numbered 482 on the Ordnance Survey map), occupying the south-eastern corner of the plot, with an attached building on its north side, along the main road, and what look like two smaller structures at its south-west corner, on Finchale Road (although this road is not named on the map). In addition, an unattached outbuilding stood in the north-western corner of its back yard. The whole complex, probably walled to the west and north, took up only a small portion of the corner allotment as depicted on the Tithe map (two other parts of that plot are numbered 481 and 483, with two parts unnumbered). Of note on the main building is an Ordnance Survey Bench Mark  (value 343.9 feet, or c. 104.82 metres above OD) at the north end of its east-facing elevation. The ‘victualler’ of the establishment in 1851 was a John Blackburn, according to Hagar and Cos. Directory of County Durham and its succession of landlords can be traced through the aforementioned historical directories, compiled in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Diagonally across the road junction on the first edition Ordnance Survey map was a farm, High Carr House, this the site of, from the late 1950s, Durham fire station (technically the headquarters of the County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service), which was itself demolished in 2014 and is now being redeveloped for housing by Bett (now Avant) Homes (to replace the Finchale Road fire station, the new Durham Community Fire Station, sited on the A691 at Sniperley, officially opened in March 2015).

As a pub name, The Salutation was by no means a Victorian introduction. In his short, but rather wonderful, English Inn and Tavern Names (Centre for English Name Studies, University of Nottingham 1994) Barrie Cox gives the first documentary reference to a pub (or rather, inn) of this name as 1754, an establishment in Tetbury, Gloucestershire pages 24 and 91), although Cox notes (page 100) that a hostelry of this name was mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary, compiled in the mid 17th century. Cox thought that name simply referred to a common drinking toast or landlord’s greeting, rather than being drawn from a biblical theme, specifically the greeting and proclamation of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, which is the suggested origin of the name in The Dictionary of Pub Names (Wordsworth Reference Series 2006, page 341). It was certainly a fairly common name for a pub in the region at the time the Salutation opened in Framwellgate Moor; for example, Kelly and Co.'s Post Office Directory for Northumberland and Durham for 1858 lists pubs of this name in Ryhope, Billingham, Tynemouth and Shoreswood (north Northumberland), while Newcastle had the rather oddly-named 'Turf and Salutation' on Pudding Chare, off Westgate Street (Road).

East-facing gable end of The Salutation during its refurbishment (photograph taken January
2016), looking WSW from the adjacent pavement; the wall-mounted 'firm handshake'
sign is repeated on a stand-alone sign in the eastern car park (first and second images).
Note that the removed lettering has left some 'ghost' signage and the clock stopped at 9.35.

Judging by the historic Ordnance Survey mapping  sequence that I’ve seen, it looks like the original Salutation building in Framwellgate Moor was never substantially altered before being demolished for the new/existing building, although its ancillary structures appear to have seen some amendments, some components - particularly at the south-western corner - possibly more fully incorporated into the main building.

I assume that the c. 1960 rebuild of The Salutation saw the front entrance moved to the north side largely due to the creation of what was a new link road, now called Durham Moor, between Durham Moor Houses/'Blackie Boy' roundabout and the south end of Front Street, this part of the realignment of the Great North Road undertaken prior to the Second World War. The set-back housing along the north side of Durham Moor, St. Cuthbert’s Avenue and the few detached properties to the east, was largely built before the War. The portion of the old route of the Great North Road which skirts the Salutation plot to the east has long been reduced to a narrow bus lane, linking Front Street to the High Carr Road/Finchale Road mini-roundabout.

As a final thought, I don’t recall ever seeing a photograph of the original 'Sally', surely there must be one in existence?

Grey towers of Durham

For the most part, this blog won't feature the more well-known architecture and land in Durham, as plenty and more has been written on that. But Prebends' Bridge (NZ 27145 41856) is a such a special place that I feel that it really has to feature as the first post here. No apologies for that.
 




 

View of Prebends' Bridge from upstream beyond the weir between the two former
mills (the former corn mill is right of view); the third arch lies left of view,
largely hidden by trees on the riverbank (photograph taken mid afternoon 10 February 2016).
Note the University students rowing between the bridge and the weir.

Prebends’ Bridge (the spelling appears variously as Prebends, Prebend's and Prebends', the last, I think, is correct) is a Grade I listed building (List Entry 1121354) and a scheduled monument (List Entry 1002337). It was built in the 1770s (most sources say 1772-78) from designs by George Nicholson, architect and clerk of works to the Dean and Chapter. A previous bridge, of probable 17th-century date, was destroyed by a catastrophic flood in 1771 (its abutment is still just visible on the west bank of the river, upstream from the existing structure).

Extract from John Wood's map of Durham from 1820.
Note that Prebends' Bridge is simply annotated 'New Bridge', with the riverbank
footpath leading to it from the Cathedral named 'Prebends Walk'.

Built in coursed squared sandstone and ashlar with three semi-circular arches, Prebends’ Bridge spans the deeply incised gorge of the River Wear on the western side of its peninsula loop in Durham. Standing approximately 12m above water level, perhaps its most interesting features, to me anyway, are the paired recessed refuges in each parapet. These are created by having semi-hexagonal projections rising to full bridge height above the cutwaters of the two river piers on each side. Another noteworthy feature, which many visitors probably miss, is the series of stone drains which protrude from the outer bridge faces at road bed level. The bridge is on the Heritage at Risk Register maintained by Historic England, due to the extent of physical deterioration of its masonry and a programme of remediation is on-going.

On the angled north parapet of the bridge, towards its western end, is an inscription of the words of Sir Walter Scott, taken from his 1817 poem Harold the Dauntless. Inspired by the Viking legends of the Berserkers, Scott reputedly described the poem - evidently his last long narrative verse - as "a strange, rude story" (it features the ghost of Harold's father, the Norse King Witikind). The Prebends' Bridge inscription reads:

GREY TOWERS OF DVRHAM
YET WELL I LOVE THY MIXED AND MASSIVE PILES
HALF CHVRCH OF GOD HALF CASTLE ‘GAINST THE SCOT
AND LONG TO ROAM THESE VENERABLE AISLES
WITH RECORDS STORED OF DEEDS LONG SINCE FORGOT

The Scott inscription on the north parapet of Prebends' Bridge
(photograph taken 10 February 2016).

The view up river to the north from the west end of the bridge was captured as a watercolour by J.M.W. Turner in about 1836. This famous atmospheric work, with the Cathedral rising above the wooded river gorge, was produced to be engraved as an illustration in Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales. The watercolour was based on sketches made by Turner on several earlier visits to Durham, the last thought to be in 1817.

 



View up river to the north from Prebends' Bridge (photograph taken mid afternoon 10 February 2016); while the wooded river gorge is in deepening shadow, the Cathedral remains brightly
illuminated by the late winter sun; Framwellgate Bridge spans the Wear in the distance.
.

 

Turner’s famous watercolour can be found online elsewhere; I'll end with a lesser known illustration of Prebends' Bridge.

This illustration of Prebends' Bridge and the Cathedral beyond supposedly dates
 to the early 19th century, though its precise date and the identity of the illustrator
are unknown. Note the fisherman on the riverbank in the foreground.