Topic: “You Wouldn’t Believe it”

Just once this year I’m writing about my husband’s family instead of my own. One of their surnames is Arkle, which always fascinated me. Christopher Arkle 1816-1896 and most of his family arrived in NZ from Northumberland in 1861 but nothing was known about his antecedents.

One Christmas after dithering over several genealogical magazines in a shop, I bought one for something to read over the holiday. Driving home with my husband, I idly leafed through the magazine and suddenly the surname Arkle leapt out at me. (I probably exclaimed and my husband swerved…)

It was a story called “My Ancestor Froze to Death” and a little research soon showed that Eleanor Arkle Heron was the sister of the Christopher who came to NZ. The story of Eleanor’s unfortunate death had probably never reached her brother.

Eleanor Arkle aged 50, who had married into the border Heron family, lived in Hartside in the Ingram Valley, still a relatively lonely spot today, and one winter’s day in 1863 “went visiting”. Despite a fierce snowstorm, she decided to make her way home 4 miles across the Cheviot moors on foot and never made it. An account of her death in the regional newspaper on Monday 7 December 1863 was headlined “Snow storms on the Cheviots and loss of life”. Apparently it had been one of the most violent snowstorms northern Northumberland had ever experienced.

My story doesn’t quite end here. I got in touch with the author of the article who in turn put me in touch with distant Arkle relatives. They did not know anything about the NZ Christopher’s family; he had simply “disappeared”. I have been able to greatly expand the Arkle family tree back to an early Christopher of the late 17th Century who together with several later generations lived near Alwinton, Northumberland.

One of my husband’s distant relatives, in telling me of this, added this charming story:

“Alwinton church is really special. It is built out of the village on a very hilly site. How they dug some of the graves I do not know. They must have had a struggle getting the coffins up too. Inside, the church is split level with the altar about ten steps higher than the body of the church. When I was young we used to go to Alwinton Show every year. It was usually held in October, and the highlight was the sheep dog trails and the Cumberland wrestling. The men taking part were nearly all sheepherders, and real characters. There is a track that goes from Alwinton over the hills to Scotland, and this was used by the whisky smugglers in days gone by. There are many stories of the excise men trying to catch the smugglers, who did not pay tax on this black market spirit.”

Wikipedia tells me the church goes back to the 9th century. There are some beautiful photos at https://fabulousnorth.com/st-michael-and-all-angels-church-low-alwinton/