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Newburgh.

(Novus Burgus-Leland. Newburg-Saxon. Newborough-Newburgh.)

EWBURGH is situate among the sylvan scenery on the north-east side of Easingwold from which it is four and a half miles distant, and bordering upon the beautiful village of Coxwold, and the romantic prospects of the Hambleton Hills.

The associations connected with the history of Newburgh are suggestive of high and solemn remembrances. The grassy mound on which the present Hall and remains of the ancient Priory stand, is asserted by antiquaries to have been once occupied by the Romans

Newburgh, called Novus Burgus by Leland, plainly indicates an origin from the ruins of some Roman Burgh or town, in, or near the place which now bears the name.

What with us is called Brough, Borough, Bury, is taken from Bunz, Bunge, or Bynız, which the learned Somner interprets urbs, civitas, arx, castrum, burgus, municipium, a city, a fort, a fortress, a tower, a castle. Est enim locus munitus ad salutem hominum. "It signifies," adds that author, "any fortified place for the safety of mankind." In the last sense, it seems to suit our purpose best. It is well known that the Saxons occupied and made use of the deserted Roman stations and palaces, and kept up their fortifications till they were beaten out of them by the Danes, who burnt or razed most of them to the ground. BURGH was then a common Saxon appellation for such a fortress, to which sometimes the Roman name was prefixed, as to Canterbury, Salisbury, &c., at other times some distinctive term in the language of their successors, as Aldburgh, Newburgh; the latter place being called

4 See Somner's Saxon Dict. generales de nominibus locorum.

Skinner's etym. ibid and Gibson's regulae
Chron. Saxon, in appendice.

Newburgh, to distinguish it from Aldburgh, then a fortified city in the neighbourhood, presenting appearances of higher antiquity.

There is of course much uncertainty connected with such

matters

"Darkness surrounds us; seeking we are lost

Amid Brigantian coves.

Nor characters of Greek or Roman fame
To an unquestionable source have led.
Enough-if eyes that sought the Fountain-head,
In vain, upon the growing Rill may gaze,

and though Roman data may fail to give elucidation to the problem, and the links connecting this pleasant rural retreat with colonists from the "eternal city" are of a "questionable source," yet there is a circumstantial alliance on which we can gaze with pleasure, and which will enable us, however imperfectly and erringly, to trace the "growing Rill" up to the "Fountain-head."

Leland speaks of a remarkable estuary or bay, not taken notice of by Ptolemy, which is the mouth of the river Tees. This bay, he says, must have been used by the ancient Romans, and therefore one may expect to meet with a road from it to the city of York, as there appears to have been from Whitby, (anciently Dunus Sinus,) Bridlington Bay, and some other places.

The most direct route from York to Tees mouth is past Crayke Castle, Newburgh, and by way of Hambleton. This ancient trackway of the Brigantes and Romans seems to have escaped the notice of some of our early antiquaries, but Drake after some research discovered the strata of the road in the lane between Coxwold and Newburgh, which was formerly the high-road, but now laid open to the adjoining fields. "Newburgh," says he, "might have been an entrenchment on this road. Up the hill by Lord Fauconberg's park wall, a good deal of it is obvious; particularly opposite to the extreme corner of this wall, is a piece of it, ten yards out of the present road, and almost under the hedge, very fresh and apparent. This pavement is of the same kind of pebble, and manner of Leland's Collectanea, 2, 369.

laying as those of the Roman roads, and it is here set upon a dry sandy hill, a place where none but the Romans would have laid a street over, for good and bad ground by them was paved alike. The vestiges or the stones of this road, may be traced as far as Crayke, which might be a kind of fortress upon this road."6

In a map of the Roman Roads of Yorkshire, published by the Royal Society of Antiquaries, London, the route of this road is given, as proceeding from York to Crayke Castle, across Hambleton direct to Tees mouth.

The Roman vicinary way already noticed from Malton, appears to have passed through or near the Park. Probably the road branched off in two directions, one to Easingwold, &c., and the other to Husthwaite, &c. The lane leading from Husthwaite to Newburgh in the road to Malton is now called Malton Street.

The intersection of the spot with Roman roads does not indeed settle this minute point of local inquiry; neither does the circumstance that several Roman coins have been discovered in the neighbourhood, dating as far back as Antonius Pius and Marcus Aurelius, prove Newburgh to have been a Roman town; because Roman coins have frequently been found altogether apart from any Roman settlement. Yet these, connected with other evidence of a less shadowy character will afford some faint view of the past condition of the place.

"Upon Oulston Moor," says Drake, "adjoining the road to Yearsley, and upon a dry sandy hill covered with heath, is the agger of an ancient entrenchment, supposed to be Roman, very much elevated and conspicuous, directed nearly in a line from Newburgh to York. About a quarter of a mile below the hill, in the same direction, near a farm house, called George Hornby's new house, about a yard below the surface of the ground, a floor resembling wall plaster, and pieces of tesselated pavement have lately been found. There have been also about this place many ancient tumuli or burial places."

"All these circumstances," says our author, "make it extremely probable, that Newburgh was a place of some note, so long ago as the time the Romans resided in Britain."

6 Drake's Eboracum. p. 37. 7 Ibid.

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