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Bloodaxe Books
BLOODAXE
BOOKS
and Highgreen
Bloodaxe Books is usually associated with Newcastle - where it all started back in 1978 - but the editorial and publicity operation decamped with editor Neil Astley to the wilds of Northumberland in 1997.
At the same time chairman Simon Thirsk set up the Pandon sales office at Bala in North Wales. Book distribution was moved from Newcastle
THE TARSET VALLEY Within easy reach of the A68, Highgreen is 38 miles to the north-west of Newcastle and 90 miles south of Edinburgh. The historic abbey town of Hexham is 25 miles away, while closer by are the villages of Bellingham, capital of the North Tyne, and Otterburn in nearby Redesdale. At the head of the North Tyne is Kielder Forest with its vast reservoir, sculpture trail and James Turrell's Skyspace installation. Highgreen is up the valley from the Tarret burn, a tributary of the Tarset.
To the south is Hadrian's Wall; to the north, the Scottish border and the hills of the Cheviot; and to the north-west, the route through Elsdon and Coquetdale to Rothbury, Alnwick and Lindsfarne, or Holy Island, and the Farne Islands. The nearest airport is Newcastle, and the nearest railway stations are Newcastle or Hexham. There is no bus service beyond Bellingham or Otterburn, and these are only served by a few buses a day. You have to drive to Highgreen. Visitors should note the speed camera at the Highlander pub on the A696 between Ponteland and Belsay, and there are a dozen cameras on the A68 south from Edinburgh to Otterburn (with occasional speed traps on the A68 at West Woodburn or below Swine Hill and Fourlawshill Tops by Buteland Fell).
The name Tarset means the fold among the fir (or pine) trees. Tarset itself is a wonderfully ambiguous geographical entity, not even appearing on many maps because Tarset is the name of the valley and the river, and there is no settlement called Tarset, apart from the grass mound of the former Tarset Castle. Begun in 1267, this was the home of Red Comyn, the great Scottish nobleman whose murder by Robert the Bruce after a quarrel precipitated the war with Scotland that finally led to Bannockburn in 1314.
The Tarset valley along with much of Northumberland was part of Scotland as late as 1357, and two hundred years later the valleys of the North Tyne and Redesdale were still regarded even in London as an independent franchise, for the families of Border Reivers who controlled what were then remote lands were a law unto themselves. Tarset Castle was burnt to the ground in 1526 when the lawless Tarset men led by a Charlton drove out Sir Ralph Fenwick, who had been hunting one of the South Tyne Ridleys involved in the murder of Sir Albany Featherstonehaugh. The local battle cry of the time was: 'Tarset and Tarret burn / Hard and Heather bred,/ Yet-Yet-Yet.'
The most common names in the valley are still those of the Reiver families, including Charlton, Ridley, Armstrong, Fenwick, Milburn, Dodd, Robson and several others. Also surviving are some of their fortified houses, some known as bastle houses, others as pele towers, including three just a couple of miles down the valley from Highgreen. The bastle house at Black Middens is open to visitors and well preserved: the living quarters were upstairs and animals were kept below, allowing people and stock to be protected when the valley was raided by Scots marauders. The next bastle was the Comb, now a farm where Reivers of Tarset run their outdoor pursuits centre with clayshoots, team-building, forest hikes and quad-riding, but once the home of a notorious Milburn hard man, 'Barty of the Comb', who after losing sheep to Scots raiders set off on a reprisal raid. After "lifting" some wethers, he ran into a party of disgruntled Scots, and in the skirmish his crony Corbit Jack was killed and Barty wounded, but in a superhuman effort Milburn slew his assailant, and, in Barty's own words, the head of the unfortunate Scot 'sprang alang the heather like an onion'.
The famous moonlit Battle of Otterburn was fought over in the next valley, Redesdale, probably on the night of 19 August 1388. The events are chronicled in the Border Ballads - The Battle of Otterburn and Chevy Chase - as well as in Fleur Adcock's Hotspur (available from Bloodaxe in her Poems 1960-2000). After the Scots under James, Earl of Douglas had ravaged Northumberland and Durham, trying to lay siege to Newcastle, the English led by Sir Henry Percy (Shakespeare's 'Hotspur') fell upon their camp by the River Rede, Douglas being slain by Percy himself, although 'Harry Hotspur' was nevertheless captured, held hostage and later ransomed (only to die at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403). Shakespeare's fictionalised account of Hotspur's deeds can be followed in Richard II and Henry IV, Part I. The Percies controlled the north of England with something like kingly power for several centuries, first as feudal lords of Norman descent and then as Barons of Alnwick and later Earls of Northumberland. They have been described as 'the hereditary guardians of the north and the scourge of Scotland'.
Another local stronghold was the pele tower at Charlton, between Tarset and Bellingham, from where the Charltons ruled much of the North Tyne. Their family seat is still at Hesleyside, visible across the river through the trees, its gardens planned by the landscape gardener Capability Brown in 1776. The famous family Spur is preserved at Hesleyside, the tradition in raiding times being that when the larder was nearly bare, a dish would be borne into the great hall at dinner time bearing not a leg of lamb but the Spur, a sign to the men that another foray over the border was needed for supplies of beef and mutton. This old Border custom is the subject of a painting by the Preraphaelite artist W.B. Scott on display at Wallington Hall, near Cambo, home of the Trevelyans, who have included several politicians and the historian G.M Trevelyan, while Lady Trevelyan was a patron of Swinburne. Capability Brown was born on the family estate at Kirkharle, and worked first at Wallington. Linda France's poem 'The Spur in the Dish' in her Bloodaxe collection The Gentleness of the Very Tall is another telling of the famous Northumberland tale.
The Pennine Way runs along the watershed between Redesdale and Tarset, passing the 12-foot monument on Padon Hill, erected by William Morrison-Bell's great-grandfather in about 1903, probably to commemorate his golden wedding anniversary. The hill's name said to commemorate Alexander Peden, the Scottish Covenanter who is supposed to have preached his prophetic sermons in the late 17th century to groups of hardy followers huddled on the windy summit. Visible from the road above Highgreen, Padon monument is conical but was originally a square construction.
The Tarset Valley is predominantly sheep country, with some cattle. But it is home to two international arts enterprises, not just Bloodaxe Books at Highgreen but also John and Kate Hersey's Unison Colour at Thorneyburn. Their handmade artists' pastels are exported all round the world. One of their users is former Highgreen artist in residence Sonja Stringer, whose Northumberland landscapes were all homegrown with Tarset's own pastels.
The parish of Tarset includes the hamlets of Greenhaugh, Lanehead and Greystead, and it was at Greystead Cottage back in his beloved Northumberland that Basil Bunting lived for some of his last years. Basil Bunting's Complete Poemsis now published by Bloodaxe, along with a double-cassette of him reading his epic poem Briggflatts and other work. Bunting's rich Northumbrian voice on the tape is close to the speech of the valley's older inhabitants, but the Northumbrian accent and dialect is now losing ground to Tyneside Geordie amongst the young.
Bloodaxe Books is named after Erik Bloodaxe, the last Viking king of independent Northumbria, who features in Briggflatts as Bunting's opposite persona to the Cuthbert side of his Northumbrian identity. These lands were ruled in the 10th century by Erik, a murderous chieftain who had to flee from Norway, becoming king of Orkney, Dublin and twice king of York and Northumbria. After his death in 954, the North became part of England for the first time. Erik was perhaps our first patron of poetry: when saga hero Egil was captured on his territory, he made him write a praise-poem overnight on pain of death. The poem, while totally disingenuous, is a brilliant example of the drapa form, and Erik was so delighted to be immortalised by the great bard Egil that he spared his life.
and Hampshire to Littlehampton in Sussex, with marketing managed at Bala by Alison Davis and finance by Bethan Jones.
Bloodaxe's international poetry publishing is now done from a converted granary in the North Tyne's Tarset valley, behind Highgreen Manor.
This is the home of William and Cynthia Morrison-Bell's Highgreen Arts, which runs residential courses and has an artist-in-residence.
Working with Neil Astley at Highgreen are publicity manager Christine Macgregor , permissions manager Suzanne Fairless-Aitken and publishing assistant Rebecca Hodkinson.
With an office surrounded by almost-tame rabbits, Bloodaxe at Highgreen
is quite unlike any other publishing house.
There are deer in the woods behind, sheep grazing along the road outside,
and a pair of pedigree kune-kune pigs kept just through the trees from the
office.
As well as foxes, badgers, bats, owls, stoats and feral cats, the local wildlife
includes a wide variety of birds, such as blackbirds, curlews, finches, skylarks,
swallows, tits, wagtails and woodpeckers; the occasional buzzard, kestrel,
or sparrowhawk, and sometimes an eagle; and hen harriers which are amongst
very few to be found in Britain, as well as merlins a few miles away above
Otterburn.
The Northumberland skies over Highgreen seem to tower up and up into the
heavens. Whereas other publishers will dash off for their bistro lunches,
a bit of shopping or just a walk through the traffic fumes of London or New
York, our lunchtime recreation might involve a walk in the fresh air up the
valley, or a visit to the pigs. Or we can sit out on a bench on a sunny day
with a sandwich and listen to the birds. Just half an hour's walk up the valley
is Padon Hill, and on a clear day you can see the moorlands of the North Pennines
stretching over sixty miles to the south; to the west are the mountains of
Cumbria, and east is Redesdale and Black Crag, and above the skyline, the
Cheviot white-topped with snow in the winter. If you walk back via Gibshiel
you may be mobbed by curious and strange little black Hebridean sheep, from
the remote Scottish island of St Kilda. But most of the sheep you'll encounter
in this part of the valley will be Swaledales and Scottish Blackfaces, along
with North of England mules (speckle-faced crosses of either of the two black-faced
breeds with Northumberland's Bluefaced Leicesters).
Teat grass, fresh vegetables and fruit (not swill or pizzas). Their sty received
structural improvements courtesy of the wooden pallets used for book deliveries
by our printer.
A long way from Chicago: Bloodaxe's Peg Osterman never had pigs to feed at lunchtime in the States.
Highgreen's pigs with Kate Kirsopp-Reed, who has an MSc in Tropical Animal Production and Health
Highgreen's rare
kune-kune pigs
Kune-kune pigs are native to New Zealand. They used to be kept by the Maoris
and are probably Chinese in origin. Their name (pronounced kooney)
is a Maori word meaning 'fat and round'.
The breed has been described as a 'Walt Disney cartoon version of a pig'.
They are friendly, compact animals with short stumpy legs, round stocky bodies,
large heads with no real neck, and short snouts. Highgreen's kune-kunes are
black, each having a pair of piripiri dangling under the jaw, the distinctive
wattles or dewlap tassles with no apparent function that are peculiar only
to this breed and to Polish black and white spotted pigs. Until recently purebred
kune-kunes were in grave danger of becoming extinct in New Zealand, and as
recently as 1988 there were only about 160 purebreds left worldwide, and there
are still fewer than 2000 purebred kune-kunes in the world.
In the months leading up to Christmas the old dairy at Highgreen looks like Santa's grotto. As well as producing handmade wooden toys and puzzles - sold at craft fairs under his banner of Tarset Toys - photographer and climber Barry Imeson coordinates Loose Scree, a bimonthly magazine for seasoned climbers.
Highgreen
in pictures
Aerial view of Highgreen. Bloodaxe's
office is the bothy behind the left turret.
Highgreen Manor was refashioned in 1894 by the architect W. Ansell of Clifford's Inn in a castellated Scottish baronial style (softened with a touch of Loire chateau).
It incorporates the original Highgreen farmhouse which probably dates from the late 18th or early 19th century.
Bloodaxe's office behind the manor house is in a former bothy, a listed building which was originally a granary; permission had to be sought to remove the animal stalls fixed along one wall before the conversion was viable.
The beautifully converted artist's studio nextdoor was once as a pig sty.
Some of the buildings at Highgreen. Bloodaxe is through the arches, with
the artist's flat above and the dovecote studio to the left.
The tree-lined front drive at Highgreen, with open moorland beyind the gate.
Below: Three different views of the Bloodaxe office in the bothy at Highgreen.
The Lannan Foundation
visits Highgreen
Bloodaxe works with many international bodies, including America's
Lannan Foundation, which took over Highgreen Manor in February 2001 to film
Peter Reading reading his entire life's work. The Lannan Foundation
has produced many videos and recordings of leading contemporary writers, but
this is the first time they have recorded a poet reading everything he has
ever published, not only for archive but also to produce
a complete video-set as well as a selected version and CD, all schedule for
release in 2002.
Peter Reading is one of several Bloodaxe winners of
the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, and in 1998-99 he
held the first Lannan Foundation Literary Residency, based at Marfa in Texas,
the inspiration for his recent collection Marfan. Other Bloodaxe winners
of the Lannan Award for Poetry include Carolyn Forché, Denise Levertov
and Ken Smith, while R.S. Thomas received the even more prestigious Lannan
Lifetime
Achievement Award in 1996. One of Lannan's primary aims is developing a wider
readership for contemporary poetry, and the Lannan Foundation is supporting
Bloodaxe's Staying Alive anthology ('real poems for unreal times')
and educational project, the first time it has helped an arts organisation
outside the States.
