The celebrated Canon Greenwell was the brother of the poetess Dora Greenwell. He was educated at Witton-le-Wear and Durham School, and lived at 27 North Bailey in Durham. He was an expert on burial mounds and wrote British Barrows, but he has a more curious claim to fame. He used to fish the River Browney near Consett, and invented Greenwell's Glory, one of the most popular fly fishing patterns in the world. The 'Wilkinson' salmon fly, was, incidentally, invented by Percival Wilkinson of Mount Oswald, Durham. In 1898, Greenwell said that he could remember when the Gaunless at Bishop Auckland was 'a clear stream and full of trout', but that it was now 'little more than a filthy puddle in which a water beetle could scarcely manage to exist.' Disillusioned with the modern world, he wrote in 1900:

'There is no peace, no repose now, but there is hullabaloo, this society and that society, this must be done and that must be done, until it has become to an old fellow like me by no means a pleasant world... I wish I could live again in those days when I saw Jory White, Tim Wheatley and Bill Sharpe looking over the bridge for hours at the fish working his tail.'