Below is a list of our Recommended Reading:

TRACKING A LEGEND is an extended edition of Frances Dickinson’s earlier book The Reluctant Rebel, published in 1996. In this later publication the poignant story of the Radcliffes, Earls of Derwentwater - a Northumbrian Jacobite family - is complemented by a jigsaw of colourful anecdotes relating to the many men and women of the north of England who supported the exiled Stuarts in the ill-fated Risings of 1715 and 1745. The book is profusely illustrated, featuring numerous Jacobite sites throughout the country and recording a vast array of Derwentwater portraits, relics and memorabilia.

Part One, James the Rebel Earl, focuses on James Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, a cousin of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart and a leader in the Jacobite Rising of 1715. After his execution on Tower Hill in 1716, the Earl became a legendary figure in Northumberland; his untimely death inspiring an endless string of ballads, novels, biographies and other creative works. The story moves through the centuries tracking the romantic legacy that lived on long after the downfall of the Radcliffes, Earls of Derwentwater, and gives a factual account (with maps and illustrations) of the 1715 Rising in Northumberland.

In Part Two, A Jacobite Trail, the author sets out to explore the long established traditions that embody the Derwentwater Legend. On her walks and visits she attempts to unravel the wealth of fact and folklore relating to the Earl, his family, and many of the other north-country rebels. Her investigations include a mission to locate the elusive Fairy Stone, once used as a Jacobite 'post-office', and a mystery concerning an old white rose bush planted by two Derwentwater ladies in the garden of Middleton Hall. The book concludes with the story of a twentieth-century Jacobite cause - a project initiated in 1993 to conserve Dilston Castle and Chapel in Northumberland, the remaining features of the once grand ancestral seat of the Earls of Derwentwater.

PAPERBACK, MATT COLOUR COVER, 160 pages; over 100 illustrations (17 colour plates); 4 Maps; 3 Genealogical Trees

Cresset Books (2001) ISBN 0 9529113 2 9

TRACKING A LEGEND is now out of print but second-hand copies can sometimes be obtained online or from Friends of Historic Dilston.

This attractive and informative publication is produced in full colour and designed to open up/fold down to the format of a map. It gives a synopsis of the Jacobite Cause with particular reference to the Northumbrian Jacobites and contains a pull-out map featuring photographs and information on 26 places which have factual and legendary associations with the Risings of 1715 and 1745. It was conceived and planned by Frances Dickinson to complement her book Tracking a Legend, published 2001 – the idea arising from her numerous walks and visits whilst researching the fact and folklore of the period. The Trail Guide would be of interest to individuals and Local History Societies planning an outing around Jacobite Northumberland.

Please click here for more information.

Using a great deal of unpublished material, this book tells the real story of Northumbrian Jacobitism and dispels some remarkably persistent romantic myths about the leaders of the movement and their actions in the rising of 1715.
The author brings out the central importance of the Northumbrians in Jacobite strategy: an Anglo-Franco-Scottish army was to be assembled in Northumberland, seize Tyneside to gain control of London's fuel supplies then sweep south to take the capital and place Prince James on the throne usurped from his father in 1688. The proceedings of the Northumbrians, have, however, been universally disparaged and their leaders, Thomas Forster, Lord Widdrington and the Earl of Derwentwater have been made scapegoats for the failure of the rising. This book reveals the truth about the matter.
Moreover, Northumbrian Jacobitism survived the 'Fifteen to remain a thorn in the side of the government for many years. Jacobite adherents at home and abroad remained so incorrigibly vexatious that the House of Hanover was not yet secure on the throne when the north once again figured in the 'Forty-five. Northumbrian Jacobitism therefore had a much greater significance than has been understood hitherto.
The Desperate Faction? was first published in 1995 to critical acclaim and reissued due to popular demand.

Price: £7.50

The Rose of Dilston – an 8 page illustrated booklet - was published in 2006 to mark the centenary of the death of Josephine Butler, the Victorian feminist and renowned social reformer who grew up at Dilston and lived there until her marriage to George Butler in 1852.
The booklet focuses on Josephine’s formative years and the influence of her father John Grey, a cousin of the Whig Prime Minister Earl Grey of Howick.

Price: £2.00

OTHERWORLD NORTH EAST: Ghosts and Hauntings Explored
Author Tony Liddell
Tyne Bridge Publishing

Most of us get an enjoyable chill from hearing and telling ghost stories, but are you brave enough to read this account of real-life ghost investigations? Together with teams of dedicated investigators, Tony has spent the last year visiting haunted sites in the North East, holding overnight vigils to discover more about paranormal phenomena. 0therworld North East contains 40 tales of ghosts and hauntings including accounts of investigations at 16 sites including Dilston Castle and Chapel, Newcastle Keep, Beamish Hall and Alnmouth's infamous Schooner Hotel. So which are the most haunted places in the region? How can you communicate with a supernatural presence? And did the investigators really capture a ghost on camera? Read the book to find out.

Price: £9.99

Robert Forster, a clock and watchmaker from Corbridge, in Northumberland, gathered together documents and oral traditions to write this book which remains to this day the standard work on the village and its adjoining hamlets, in particular Dilston and Aydon.

With woodcuts to illustrate the text, Forster begins his story in the time of the Roman occupation of the area, and continues through the centuries until he reaches his own boyhood memories - some of the most fascinating of these anecdotes relating to Dilston.

The book is available from the publisher TRY MALDEN LTD or from HISTORIC DILSTON. Enquires to Mary Rose Ridley: 01661 844157.

A NORTHUMBRIAN RECUSANT GENTRY FAMILY – The Radcliffes of Dilston in the Long Seventeenth Century, is an annotated version of a talk given to the Friends by Dr Leo Gooch on 13 October 2007. It is the first in a series of occasional papers to be published in support of the Friends of Historic Dilston.

The 20-page booklet, by Leo Gooch, contains a wealth of newly researched material, challenging some long-held beliefs and providing a fascinating glimpse of life at Dilston Hall in the Radcliffes’ heyday. The narrative traces the family’s rise to its unassailable status as a pre-eminent regional dynasty to its fall because of its resolute adherence to Catholicism, Royalism and Jacobitism. In so doing, it details not only the lives of the successive heads of the family, over five generations, but takes in the wider family framework, showing how, in every aspect except religion, the Radcliffes led similar lives to those of other English squires and landowners. We learn about the role played by the family chaplains, how being a Catholic affected the education of the children and why so many of the women of the family became nuns. Leo Gooch’s rich account of the life and times of this Northumbrian recusant gentry family adds greatly to our ongoing fascination with the Radcliffes of Dilston.

Price: The booklet can be purchased from Friends of Historic Dilston, £3.50 (to include postage & packing)
The cost to Friends is £2 or £2.50 by post from the Membership Secretary.

The story of the Claxton Family and their struggle for undisputed control of the Barony of Dilston and the landed estates of the Tyndale Family, from the 1370s to the 1440s, was the subject of a fascinating talk given to Friends by Dr Brian Barker on 5 May 2007. A booklet has now been published, by North East England History Institute, covering the course of the dispute and examining the issues involved through the considerable amounts of legal documentation that was generated. These shed light on the north-eastern gentry and enable comparisons to be made with the gentry of other regions, thus contributing to a lively historical debate concerning regional diversity in England during the middle ages. In his analysis of the Dilston dispute Brian Barker augments our understanding of the extent to which those pillars of medieval local authority, the county gentry, were prepared to use their authority in the ruthless pursuit of their own interests.

The booklet is published at a significant time when the tower house (Dilston Castle) built by the Claxtons around the mid-15th century, is about to be further restored by the North Pennines Heritage Trust. Features of the original build are the gun-loops in the vault and the pepperpot turret, which led to a wall-walk on the upper level. When the fallen stairway leading up to the turret is replaced in the next stage of the restoration work, visitors will be able to access this vantage point from where an amazing vista across the Tyne Valley can be seen.

Price: LAW AND DISORDER IN THE MEDIEVAL NORTH EAST: The Claxtons and the Barony of Dilston in Northumberland, 1373 – 1441, by Brian Barker, published by North East England History Institute, will be on sale at Dilston when the site opens in May for £5.95. Alternatively, it can be purchased direct from the author, email: b.barker@tees.ac.uk

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