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ON Monday, the A67 slipped quietly back into use more than two years after it was first closed by a landslip. The workmen have cleared the vegetation from the Tees bank between High Coniscliffe and Piercebridge and so travellers driving west along the treetop road from Darlington to Barnard Castle can see how sharply the land falls away to the river.
One Gainford resident, who comes into Darlington six times a week, estimates the detour caused by the closure has put at least 2,500 additional miles onto his car. Now with the road re-open, it is probably with much relief that drivers pass the scene of the landslip and few will think, as they hurtle down the hill towards Piercebridge, that they are going through the site of the lost hamlet of Carlbury.
Humans have lived in Carlbury since long before it was called “Carlbury”. A glance to the north reveals a mysterious-looking hillock, much ploughed around, which is called Smotherlaw. It is believed to be a Bronze Age barrow, or tumulus – a mound of stones piled over a grave a thousand or more years before the birth of Christ.
The name Carlbury is more recent, from Viking times. It was originally “Ceorlaburg” – the settlement of the ceorls, or karls. A ceorl was a free peasant, so the guess is that these people had earned the right not to be controlled by the Romans of Piercebridge, and so they lived in their own settlement on the high land outside the Roman fort.
On December 1, 1642, during the Civil War, a band of Royalists led by the Earl of Newcastle, stationed their canons on Carlbury’s high land, and fired them at the Parliamentarians, led by Colonel John Hotham, who had control of Piercebridge down below. The bombardment scattered the Parliamentarians, and allowed the Royalists to cross the Tees into Yorkshire unhindered.
The real spur...