Deposition – Elizabeth Burn – 28 Nov 1757

Mrs Elizabeth Burn, 52 and upwards, wife of apothecary in Penrith, daughter and heir of William Johnson of Grisley Row. She said that between the age of 7 and 19 when she married, ‘ in Winter she would drive her [step]father’s milch cows over the Heights (Knights) Cleugh and then hound them with a dog onto the Hareshaw or where else they chose to graze and did so constantly publicly and openly for all the time she continued at Grislee Well Raw…and saith that during all that time of her knowledge the Hareshaw, Thackshaw and Sandyford were reputed to belong to Allendale; and saith that as she went from the Girslee Well Raw to the Heights Cleugh, the Powstile Well divided Allendale and Whitfield Commons and what lay on the right hand belonged to Whitfield and what lay on the left hand belonged to Allendale’…..said her [step]father kept English sheep, but sometimes bought Scotch sheep, and whenever he did he hired a herd to attend to the sheep on the ground in question, who ‘built a little hut or shed of turf and earth between the Long Cross and Sandyford near Sym’s Cleugh to shelter himself from the weather while he was herding her Father in Law’s sheep…She remembered her father in law ‘bringing some heath and ling from the Thackshaws across Sandyford Cleugh which was carried in Crooks on horseback from thence by the road leading to Alston down to Grislee Well Raw and employing Mathew Wilson and John Stobbart, two thatchers who lived in Whitfield Liberty to cover his dwelling house and outhouse at Grislee Well Raw and saith she is the better enabled to remember the same because she held the horses while the said heather or ling was brought across the Sandyford Cleugh ‘…….. ‘her father in law used to cast peats for fuel in the Hareshaw beyond the Heights Cleugh and saith that William Teasdale of Grislee Raw, Thomas Stout of  Redheugh and the tenants of Hawkuplee Smiddy and Furnace House which last places are all in Allendale did all get their peats in Hareshaw aforesaid and never heard of any interruption that was given them or any of them.’