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Newbiggin was a town of some importance in Plantagenet days, with a busy harbour, and a pier; and in the reign of Edward II. it was required to contribute a vessel towards the naval defence of the Kingdom. Northward from Newbiggin Point is the magnificent sweep of Druridge Bay, stretching in a fine curve of ten miles or more to Hauxley Haven.

She set off, however, the thought of the drowning men hastening her on. For four miles she made her way in the storm and darkness, partly along the shore, scrambling over rock's, and wading waist-deep through the Lyne Burn and one or two other places where the waves had driven far up the sands, and partly across Newbiggin Moor, where the icy wind tore at her in her drenched clothing.

Coming now to shorter cables connecting Britain with the Continent, we have those of the Great Northern Telegraph Company, namely, Peterhead to Ekersund, Norway, 267 miles . Newbiggin, near Newcastle, to Arendal, Norway, 424 miles, and thence to Marstrand, Sweden, 98 miles. The great Northern Company has altogether twenty-two cables, of a total length of 6,110 miles.

Newbiggin itself is a large fishing village and an increasingly popular holiday resort, for it possesses not only good sands but a wide moor near at hand which provides one of the best of golf courses; and, also, a short distance along the coast, are the attractive Fairy Rocks.

On the mother's side, also, Wordsworth was connected with the middle territorial class; his mother, Anne Cookson, was the daughter of a well-to-do mercer in Penrith; but her mother was a Crackanthorpe, whose ancestors had been lords of the manor of Newbiggin, near Penrith, from the time of Edward III. He was thus, as Scott put it in his own case, come of "gentle" kin, and, like Scott, he was proud of it, and declared the fact in his short fragment of prose autobiography.

Not, however, without bringing on many an occasion proof of the courage which is shown as a matter of course by the fisher folk on our coasts. At Newbiggin, and Cresswell, for instance, deeds have been done, which, in their simple unassuming heroism, may be taken as typical of the hardy race which could count Grace Darling among its daughters.

But one gallant-hearted girl, named Peggy Brown, cried out, "If I thowt she could hing on a bit, I wad be away for the lifeboat." But between them and Newbiggin, the nearest lifeboat station, the Lyne Burn runs into the sea, and spreads widely out over the sands; and the older people told Peggy she could never cross the burn in the dark.

On the point at the northern curve of Newbiggin Bay stands Newbiggin Church, and ancient building, whose steeple, "leaning all awry," is a well-known landmark for sailors.