Gilsland - History

History

As in most areas of Britain, Bronze-Age and Iron-Age settlement in Northumberland is represented by cup and ring marked stones, standing stones and hill forts, though few such monuments, with the possible exception of the Popping Stone, have been found near Gilsland. Recent field walking activities by a local archaeology group have produced flint artefacts dated to the Bronze Age and Mesolithic. The evident antiquity of the civil parish boundaries may also be traceable to the Iron Age.

Gilsland is situated upon Hadrian's Wall, a noted monument constructed by the Roman army in the early part of the second century AD and lately dignified by inclusion as a World Heritage Site. Consequently, a superficial layer of Romano-British remains, remarkable chiefly for their quantity, is strewn across the surrounding landscape and dominates archaeological writings on the region, no doubt due to the classicist thrall under which early (and some later) archaeologists worked, the ease with which Roman artefacts can be found and the relative lack of original research since 1900. Prominent remains of military structures form tourist attractions, the focus being almost entirely on their stone-built phases, most having been repeatedly re-constructed in turf & timber. The Wall itself was initially of turf from a point to the west of Gilsland, but was eventually replaced in stone.

After the Romano-British interlude, paralleled perhaps by the effects of the British Raj in India, native populations went back to the business of creating the political entities we recognise and value today. Place-names give evidence of Scandinavian and Germanic influence during the so-called Dark Ages, but whether this influence was accompanied by mass-migration is currently debated by historians. Two outstanding, if somewhat mythical characters from this time, King Arthur and Saint Patrick, probably came from the Gilsland area.

During the 12th century the area now known as Cumbria passed from the control of the Kingdom of Strathclyde to the Norman King Henry II. This region was subdivided into baronies, the easternmost of which became the Barony of Gilsland, apparently named after an individual, although sporadic speculation by historians has failed to conclusively identitify him. This barony was famously ruled by William Howard during the 16/17th century and stretched from Carlisle to the present-day village of Gilsland. Gilsland Spa, a locally renowned mineral spring, was named from the Barony and the name was transferred from there to the village, although most of the population live on the Northumberland side, outside the original borders of the Barony.

The ancient kingdoms of Strathclyde and Northumbria were eventually subsumed into what we now know as Scotland and England, but for most of the later mediaeval period the Borders suffered instability and lawlessness due to their mutual antipathy and the indeterminate nature of the border. There have been many valiant attempts to romanticise the assumed incessant violence, starting with Sir Walter Scott and continuing to the 21st century farrago of Hexham Old Gaol.

As soon as the area was definitively pacified, with the Union of the Crowns and the suppression of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, economic activity rapidly increased. The original Gilsland Spa hotel was built in the 1740s, was already a popular summer resort by the 1780s and went on to provide a nucleus for the accumulation of guest-houses we now recognise as Gilsland. The opening of a railway station in the 1830s led to a boom in tourism. In the 1860s the name of the station was changed from Rose Hill to Gilsland, and residents of Rosehill, Mumpshall, Crooks, The Gap and surrounding farms and hamlets were invited to think of themselves as a single village, the name having been derived from the surrounding Barony of Gilsland. The idea has still not really caught on.