Last updated at 09:52, Friday, 18 September 2009

NO WONDER there are fat books written about place names in Northumberland. Take the little village of Henshaw near Haltwhistle. This was surely “the copse where chickens scratched” or some such fowl connection? But thrice nay!

Wesleyan past: The former Croft Chapel was one of two Methodist chapels in Henshaw.

Henshaw was apparently named for an Odin-worshipping Viking invader who settled there around the dawn of British Christianity.

Earlier spellings of Henshaw were Hething’s Haugh and Heðinn’s Halh – the valley of the Danish heathen, with a name like clearing your throat.

Now the Anglo-Saxon word ‘Hething’ means contempt or mockery. “Skorne he had and grete hethyng, of them that made so grete bostyng...” which suggests the locals didn’t admire the Norseman neighbour who had moved into the soggy haugh.

But if Henshaw was named after Heðinn, he was a very different sort of Viking – a legendary prince from Scandinavian mythology.

Prince Heðinn was the son of King Heorrenda (can these Norse names get any worse?) and he was forced by a magic spell to battle rival king Hogni for 143 years because Freya, Queen of the Norse Gods, had lost her necklace.

Odin, Freya’s husband and top god at Valhalla, had discovered some sort of hanky panky going on, revealed by the missing necklace Brisingamen (doesn’t everybody name their necklaces?). To punish his errant wife Odin magicked an endless battle among her highest ranking worshippers.

Warlords Prince Heðinn and King Hogni hacked and slashed at each other from dawn to dusk, and Queen Freya spent her evenings sewing back lopped limbs, patching slit gizzards, and getting her champions ready for another battlefield confrontation.

Only a Christian could end the spiral of slaughter because according to legend, when a Christian kills you, you stay killed. It was the sword of baptised lord Olaf Tryggvason which gave Prince Heðinn and King Hogni one-way tickets to the best seats in Valhalla.

You don’t need to be a doctor of divinity to work out that this story illustrates the defeat of pagan religions by Christianity. It would be apt if Henshaw had this link to the story of Christianity in Britain – for a small village it has always had plenty of places of worship.

In 1836 the sect known as Primitive Methodists, or Ranters, built a chapel at Henshaw. They invested in stone rather than cheaper wood and they made it big enough for a congregation of 150 people. By 1885 they had to enlarge their chapel, collecting £390 around the village to finance the project – that’s nearly £28,500 in today’s money. And in 1905 they added a Sunday school.

Little Henshaw also had a fine body of Wesleyan Methodists and they were determined not to be left behind. They built their own stone chapel in 1840, and by 1897 it had to be almost doubled in size.

Both chapels have been turned into quaint homes now, still with the stained glass panels, lancet windows and trefoil carvings of their religious past. The Ranter’s chapel went on the market 18 months ago, and now its Wesleyan neighbour the Croft Chapel is up for sale.

A lucky chance has preserved a letter which crossed the world and survived 150 years to tell us who was in the Croft Chapel pulpit during its early days.

Mary Ann Hunter had emigrated from Henshaw to New Zealand in 1862. Five years later she wrote a long letter to be shared with all her old neighbours, but addressed to Andrew Johnson, who was village shoemaker and also leader of the Henshaw Wesleyan Methodist chapel.

Mary Ann writes wistfully of her friends in Tynedale, and reveals some of the horrors of a pioneering life.

“It is now four years since we arrived in New Zealand and we have only one letter from Mary Liddle to tell us how you are all getting on in Henshaw,” she wrote.

“The Maoris as a race are very savage. They have had missionaries among them and two Church of England ministers that had been with them for a long time they one day took prisoner and horribly murdered one of them.”

Despite such barbaric events, Mary Ann added: “We feel just as secure here as you do in Henshaw.” But then, what could daunt a village named after a Viking warrior prince?

l The Croft Chapel at Henshaw is for sale via Rook Matthews Sayer of Fore Street, Hexham.

First published at 09:49, Friday, 18 September 2009
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk