River Gelt facts for kids
The River Gelt is a cool river in Cumbria, England. It's like a smaller helper river, called a tributary, that flows into the bigger River Irthing.
The Gelt starts its journey high up near the border of Cumbria and Northumberland. It begins as a tiny stream called New Water at a place called Butt Hill. This stream then flows down through Geltsdale Middle before turning north.
After a little while, New Water meets up with another stream called Old Water in a special area known as the King's Forest of Geltsdale. Old Water comes from Crookburn Pike. Once these two streams join, they become the River Gelt. The river then flows northwest, passing between two hills, Talkin Fell and Castle Carrock Fell, and then through the villages with the same names.
The Gelt continues its path through Greenwell and even goes under the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway tracks. It then flows through Gelt Woods. Here, you can see an old Roman writing carved into the rock, which is from the year 207 AD! People call it "the written rock of Gelt." There are also other cool stories about a place called Abraham's Cave nearby. A long time ago, in 1570, a battle called the Battle of Gelt Bridge happened here. In this battle, Leonard Dacre and his army were beaten by Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon.
Finally, the River Gelt joins the River Irthing at a place called Edmond Castle. This is about 10 miles east of the city of Carlisle.
The Written Rock of Gelt
The Romans were very busy people, and they used to dig out soft sandstone from this area to build Hadrian's Wall. This famous wall is only about three miles north of the Gelt. The quarry where they dug the stone was stopped being used in 207 AD. On the rock face, the Roman workers carved lots of messages and pictures. People have known about these carvings since the 1700s!
In 2019, experts from the University of Newcastle used special 3D scanning tools to look at the site. They found even more carvings than anyone knew about before! To do this, they had to go down about 30 feet (9 meters) into the quarry using ropes or a special platform. They used a method called "structure-from-motion" to take many photos and create a 3D model of the rock. It's a bit tricky because the path to the site collapsed about 30 years ago.
Mike Collins, who is an inspector for ancient monuments at Historic England, said that these writings are "probably the most important" ones along Hadrian's Wall. He explained that they help us understand how the huge Hadrian's Wall project was organized. They also show us some very human and personal things, like a funny drawing of their commanding officer that some soldiers carved!
What Does "Gelt" Mean?
People have two main ideas about where the name Gelt comes from.
One idea is that it comes from an old British language word, *wïlt, which means "wild" or "uncontrolled." The Welsh word gwyllt is similar. There's another stream called the Gelt Burn in Northumberland that might have the same origin. But it's a bit puzzling why this river, in particular, would be called "wild" when there are many other rivers around.
The second idea, which many people think is more likely, is that the name comes from an old language called Old Norse. In Old Norse, Gelt means "gold" or "money." This is similar to words in other Germanic languages, like Yiddish. This idea fits well with the name Geltsdale, because dale clearly comes from the Old Norse word for "valley." We know that Vikings, who spoke Old Norse, lived in this area a long time ago, so it's very possible that Norse words were used for place names. Other local names like tarns (small lakes), fells (mountains), and becks (streams) also come from Old Norse. In this case, "gold" probably referred to the dark, golden color of the water, not the metal itself.
