On Sunday 27 May 2007, The Two Countesses, an historical re-enactment by Time Bandits attracted much press coverage, with Paul Mooney from BBC Look North presenting the weekend weather report from Dilston Castle. This feisty re-enactment, directed by historical interpreter and military historian John Sadler, presented vignettes of two remarkable ladies from the Dilston story.
The first featured the Countess Anna Maria, wife to James, the ill-fated 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, and the legendary story of her challenging her husband to take up arms in the rising of 1715 – when he was having doubts – throwing down her fan and asking for his sword in return. The second re-enactment featured Amelia – the self-styled or ‘crazy’ Countess – who laid claim to the forfeited Derwentwater Estates the following century, taking up residence in the ruined Dilston Castle and having to be forcibly ejected by the authorities.
Background to the historical re-enactment: THE TWO COUNTESSES
THE LEGEND OF THE FAN
Anna Maria, Countess of Derwentwater
When James Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, was executed on Tower Hill in February 1716, his wife Anna Maria, Countess of Derwentwater, was destined to be blamed forever after for his fate. The tale of the Earl’s reluctance to take up arms in the Jacobite Rising of 1715, and having only done so due to the goading of his wife, is firmly entrenched within Northumbrian folklore. It is claimed that the Countess had called him a coward, throwing down her fan - challenging him to take it and give her his sword in return, so she could fight for King James.
There is, in fact, no evidence for this fanciful tale. The Earl and his wife appear to have been a devoted couple, as his letters written to her from the Tower, shortly before his execution, reveal. The widowed Countess never returned to live at Dilston Hall, moving to Brussels in 1721, where she died of smallpox, at the age of thirty. Tradition claims that her spirit in the form of a grey lady haunts the woods and glades around Dilston Castle and has been seen lighting a cresset at the top of the old tower, as she did every night whilst waiting in vain for her husband’s return.
A SQUATTER AT DILSTON CASTLE
Amelia – the Self-Styled Countess of Derwentwater
In 1857, a woman calling herself Amelia Tudor Radcliffe laid claim to the Derwentwater Estates, professing to be the grand-daughter of John Radcliffe, only son of the executed third Earl. The fact that John Radcliffe had died in 1731, at the age of nineteen, did not deter this determined and extremely eccentric lady who appeared from nowhere, telling her incredible story to the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle.
Amelia, the self-styled Countess declared that John Radcliffe had not died in 1731, but had staged his own death, fleeing to the Continent, where he married, produced a family and lived to a ripe old age – she being his sole heiress. To back-up her remarkable claim she produced several so-called family documents, as well as items of furniture and relics, all of which had supposedly come from the demolished Derwentwater mansion, Dilston Hall.
On 28 September 1866, accompanied by two retainers or henchmen, Amelia left her house in Blaydon and made her way to Dilston, where she famously took up residence in the ruined tower house - Dilston Castle. Here, a tarpaulin was erected as a makeshift roof, pictures were hung on the bare stone walls, and the ruin filled with furniture and other so-called ‘Derwentwater heirlooms’. Barricading the door, Amelia stubbornly remained in place for several days, guarded by her loyal henchmen. When officials tried to persuade her to leave she refused to go, lashing out with a sword and eventually having to be forcibly ejected – carried out of Dilston Castle still seated resolutely on her chair. Undeterred, she camped by the wayside, outside the grounds, for a further thirty-five days, before finally being removed by the Hexham Highways Board.
Following a series of mad-cap escapades, including attempts to intimidate the tenants of the Derwentwater Estates and persuade them to pay their rents to herself, the public support that she had initially received began to wane and local people turned against her. In 1871, she was served with a debtor’s summons and declared bankrupt. An auction of her various possessions and ‘Derwentwater heirlooms’ failed to raise enough money to pay her numerous creditors, and her refusal to co-operate with bankruptcy examinations led to her imprisonment in Newcastle Gaol. After her release she lived in poor circumstances, dying on 26 February 1880.
