A Durham Trail

Read the directions below and as you follow the trail look carefully around you to find
the answers to the questions. Sometimes the answer is in front of you, sometimes on
your left or right; sometimes above your head and sometimes even beneath your feet.
Some questions are easy-peasy, some are difficult and some are almost impossible.
If you can’t find the answer; ask somebody!
Have fun!

Leave St. Chad’s College and turn right. Cross the road and turn right into Dun Cow
Lane. Go up to the Palace Green.
(1) What is the name for the small stones in the road in Dun Cow Lane?
 Bonus Question 1: What is the legend of the Dun Cow?

Turn right into Palace Green. The first building is a University Department.
(2) (a) Which Department? (b) Why is this building called “Abbey
House”?

Continue anti-clockwise around Palace Green. The very old building on your right is
now a café-restaurant.
(3) (a) Who was this building for before 1666? (b) after 1666?
 Bonus question 2: What happened in London in 1666?

Go on until you reach the University Police Station.

(4) Why does the University have its own Police Force?

Stop and look around you. Take a photo! After the University Police Station, there
are two red boxes. Find “VR”
(5) What does VR mean?

Continue going anti-clockwise until you reach the Castle. The Castle is now
University College, Durham.
(6) Who lived in the Castle until 1832?

Continue walking anti-clockwise. Just past the bus stop, on the wall on your right,
there are a series of official university notices.
(7) What do these notices advertise?

Continue past the University Music Library and turn right down a narrow alley. At the
bottom, turn left and walk along the footpath below the Cathedral. On your right is the
River.
(8) What is the name of the river?

Above you there are some gigantic buttresses [controapposti] which support the
Cathedral.
(9) How many buttresses are there?

After the buttresses, about halfway down the footpath, turn left (through open black
metal gates) and go up the path. On your right in the corner is the entrance to the
“Slype”. Walk up the “Slype”. Mind your head!
(10) What is a “Slype”?

You are now in “The College”. On your left, on a wall behind the tree Glenn is sitting
under, you can tell the time.
(11) How?
Near this wall (round the corner), there is a small flower garden.
(12) Who does this garden commemorate?

Turn around and walk anti-clockwise back to the “time machine”. Follow the wall
around to the Cathedral Shop. Look in the shop (incidentally the cheapest place to
buy postcards and a good place to buy souvenirs, too!).
(13) What was the Cathedral Shop originally used for?

Leave the shop and continue walking anticlockwise around the College until you
reach a School.
(14) What do the schoolchildren do every weekday evening and every
Sunday morning?
 Bonus Question 3: Name two world-famous ex-students of this
school.

Continue anti-clockwise past some very old houses (they are actually 12th-13th
Century in origin). When you get to House Number 5, stop and look around you.
(15) House Number 5 is different. In what way?

Leave the College Green via the old archway. Look at the walls as you go out.
(16) Edgerton has four; Durham has one; Trevor has one.
How many does Crewe have?

Turn right – the red letter-box in the wall has the cipher EiiR on it.
(17) What does EiiR mean?
 Bonus question 4: What is the exact relationship between VR and
EiiR?

Continue down the road passing Saint Cuthbert’s. Go through the old city walls and
go out onto Prebend’s Bridge. On the other side of the bridge is the best view of the
Cathedral. Take a photo!
(18) “Grey Towers of Dvrham…half church of God half castle ‘gainst the
Scot…”. Who wrote these lines?
 Bonus question 5: What is the name of his most famous novel?

Go back over the bridge. Turn right and go down the “River Footpath”. You will see a
small colonnaded building. This was once the home of an émigré Polish Count.
(19) What was unusual about this Polish Count?

Continue along the river until you come to a concrete footbridge. Go up the steps,
under the concrete footbridge, on your left.
(20) These steps are sometimes called “The Century Steps”. Why?

Continue up Bow Street into North Bailey. Turn right when you can see the
Cathedral.

Assuming you are not hopelessly lost, you should now be back outside St. Chad’s College.
Congratulations!

 Super-Bonus Question: Who was Saint Chad?

© Glenn Sweet 2011