Brownrigg School was a boarding school at the foot of the fells near Bellingham, built as a camp school and used to house evacuated Newcastle children during the Second World War. A page of former pupils' memories on the school's old boys and girls website includes one account by a boy who arrived in 1957 or 1958.
He says every newcomer was told the story of Rebecca. An old mansion stood where the school was built, and one night while the owners were out it burned down. Their mother Rebecca arrived at the height of the fire, heard her sons crying inside and could not save them, and died of a broken heart soon after. On the full moon she came looking for her sons, one fair, one dark, one ginger. Anyone found in the morning with a blood cross on the forehead had been chosen.
The writer woke on his first night to find the cross, and says he rubbed it off and smelled ox blood boot polish. So the marks were pupils' pranks and the legend was an initiation story. He also describes a night when footsteps came down the dormitory and something jumped on a bed, which proved to be a stray foxhound looking for warmth. This entry is kept as school folklore with no claim that anything was seen. The school is now closed and the exact site was not located, so the pin is approximate.
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