Northumberland Boundary Stones

In the section about Seaton Delaval Township in the the Northumberland County History series, published in the early 20th century, this paragraph caught my eye:

In all probability Seaton Delaval township contained at one time over three thousand acres; but only a small portion of this can have been cultivable. Barren sandhills and links still line the shore; scrub covers the northern slopes of Holywell dene and, on every other side, a broad belt of moorland once separated Seaton Delaval from the neighbouring townships.
Indeterminate boundaries, such as these, had to be more closely defined. The township limits were carefully marked out by march stones, and were perambulated once or twice yearly by the tenants of Seaton Delaval. Bounders of Seaton Delaval and Whitridsre commons are entered on the court rolls for 1533...

(click to enlarge)

What the writer is saying is that the inhabitants of  Seaton Delaval had a limited amount of good farm land and could not afford to lose any due to encroachment of their neighbours, which in this case would be of Hollywell and Horton townships.

A township in pre-modern times was a division of a parish similar in area, and geographical location, to County Council wards today.

Natural features, such as rivers and streams, were often used (and still are) to determine boundaries. When the passage talks of indeterminate boundaries the writer is referring to an artificial dividing line usually in a straight line across open land where a convenient natural feature did not exist. It would be necessary, of course, to mark this boundary and to keep the line maintained which is what the passage refers to.

The questions which immediately intrigued me were: Where were the boundaries? Do any stones still exist? What size, shape and form did the stones take?

Ancient hedge? Marking the line from New Delaval to Hartley

Looking west towards Keel Row Pub. Boundary to right on earthen rampart?

The Northumberland County History volume handily provided the answer to the first question with a map of township boundaries and a written description from the 1533 court roll. I was able to overlay this information on to modern satellite and mapping imagery. A good number of these "indeterminate" boundaries were identifiable, but surprisingly not many were accessible. I had been expecting that they would also be the course of paths, but that is rarely, it seems, the case. The boundary between Horton and Blyth is noticeable by what appears to be quite an ancient hedge, but is not accessible. This can be viewed when entering South Newsham on the Laverock Hall Road to Blyth. However, one line between Lysdon Farm and East Cramlington, via the Keel Row public house just North of New Hartley, seemed a perfect candidate to explore. Braving the snow I went in search of boundary stones, but none were found. It was probably extreme wishful thinking anyway considering the amount of agricultural and mining activity that has occurred in that area for the past 500 years. It was noticeable that the boundary line is on a earthen rampart with a modern hedge growing along its line, which compares to the other side of the path which is not on a rampart.

Then I read from the same Northumberland History book of a stone that was still in existence at Hollywell in the early 20th century:

This is near the site of the Bee Hive Public House and this intrepid explorer, machette in hand and wellies on my feet, set off in search of the "sixteenth century bounder". The search, however, proved to be fruitless.

It could become a lifetime obsession to find one of these stones locally, but scanning the Ordnance Survey mapping I can't find any as yet to still be in existence.

Presumably the stones must have been a reasonably substantial size so as not to be moved easily, and possibly carry some kind of marking relating to what they were.

The famous Scots Dyke border line came to mind as this was made in the sixteenth century separating England and Scotland across the "Debateable Lands". A Wikipedia article had this to say:

The various sources state that the terminal stones were square stones bearing the royal arms of England and Scotland

They no longer exist, however, and were probably quite substantial, being used to mark a national borderline. Another search on internet sites revealed that many boundary stones still exist in England and Scotland in relatively unspoiled rural areas. They have also been, surprisingly, well preserved in London and its hinterland. They can come in a variety of shapes and sizes from a cube not more than a foot high to a chest-high pillar. Some are elaborately marked. Some may carry a only symbol. Some are unmarked and no attempted has been made at carving the stone into a shape.

[These links have many images of boundary stones: Boundary Stones in Scotland  Various Southern England Boundary Stones ]

Will we ever find out what form our South East Northumberland stones took?

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Update 14 November 2013

A search in the sites and monuments listings found on the www.keystothepast.info website and on the English Heritage listings of scheduled monuments revealed around 40 surviving stones surrounding the parish of Edlingham. This is a little way west of Alnwick and a short distance north of Rothbury. The stones date from the 18th century and are usually of the form of local sandstone pillars slightly rounded at the top. Initials are carved onto both sides of the stone indicating the name of the landowner for Edlingham parish and its adjacent neighbour, eg S for the Swinburne family or WD for William Davison.

There are also around another 450 examples of boundary stones, or markers, in other rural areas of Northumberland.

Boundary Stone near Black Belling, Kielder Forest by Les Hull

It was in the urban area of South-East Northumberland that I was most interested, however. Could any have survived the building and industrial development in the area? No boundary markers appeared to have been listed. But quite by chance I happened to be looking at an estate map of the Bedlington Iron Works from the 1840s. This showed a boundary stone very close to the banks of the River Blyth. It was a long shot that it may have survived, but I set off in search of it hoping that, although it may not be in-situ, it could have been re-used in another structure or fallen into the river. I didn't find it. I did say it was a long shot! 

Bedlington Iron Works 1840s

Newsham Mansion

A mansion house once stood on the site of the recently demolished North Farm at Newsham, very near to the present grounds of Blyth Town FC. In fact, North Farm was a stone-built building and it is possible that the materials from the mansion house were reused in the construction of the new farmstead.

John Wallace writes of it in his “History of Blyth”  published in 1863:

“John Ogle occupied the mansion house at Newsham in 1581, and farmed the estate, and indeed the Bebside estate as well, of which he was proprietor. This wealthy gentleman, ...of the house of Ogle, was second son of Sir William Ogle, of Cockle Park…”

“This mansion is still standing, and has long been occupied as a farmhouse by the Wilson family. It presents a fine example of the dwellings of the lesser gentry of 300 years ago. Its massive walls, five feet thick, and stout oaken beams, give evidence that the builder intended it to serve more than one generation of tenants. To see it is well worth a journey to Newsham. It has little outward attraction, but the interior examined with a reference to the Inventory of John Ogle, will amply repay the labour.”

The 19th century Northumberland County History series also states:

“After the Cramlingtons had finally abandoned their connexion with Newsham, their mansion became a farmhouse upon the Ridley estate. It stood on the site of Newsham North farm, on the north side of the road leading inland from the Link-house and at the east end of the present hamlet of South Newsham. Unhappily it was demolished about the year 1880, and little information can be gathered respecting its architectural features. Warburton, writing about the year 1720, describes it as 'an ancient structure but something ruinous.' So far as can be ascertained, the hall was a plain structure of sixteenth century date. The main building was two stories in height, and was flanked at one end by the pantry, and at the other by the dairy, which communicated with the stables and other farm buildings at the rear of the house.”

The historic area of Newsham was roughly bounded by Meggies Burn to the South, Plessey Road to the North, the sea to the East and just a little way further than the rail line to the West. The manor, after some legal wrangling in the 13th century, became fully the property of the aristocratic Delaval family of nearby Seaton Delaval.

By 1311 Newsham had been granted to the second son of Lord Delaval. It became a family custom to grant the manor to a younger scion of the family.

The legal dispute involving the Delaval family mentions a manor house and a small hamlet being present at Newsham in 1208, but 19th century historians quoted above believe that the mansion house was built in the 16th century, although it is possible it may have been on the site of the earlier manor house.

In 1461 the junior male Delaval line died out and the estate came by marriage in the female line to the Cramlington family of Cramlington. There was a degree of dispute between the Cramlingtons and more senior Delaval family members as to ownership, each claiming respective title to the estate. The case came to court in 1536. Cramlington won the case and Lord Delaval signed a deed releasing all claims to Newsham.

Landowner, Thomas Cramlington, died in 1573. He was under twenty one years of age. The estate was inherited by another male family member, but his widow, Anne, was by law and custom allowed to retain one third of the manor as a dower for the rest of her life. She remained living for over fifty years at the mansion house which, if the historian’s analysis is correct, was built in the earlier part of that century. 

Anne remarried, first to Edward Delaval of Tynemouth and then another junior member of a local gentry family, John Ogle, as mentioned in the quote by Wallace at the beginning of the article.

Ogle died leaving a will. An inventory was also made of his possessions. From the early 16th century to the late 18th century it was the custom of the ecclesiastical courts that proved wills to insist that the executors should appoint two or three local men to make “a true and perfect inventory” of the personal estate of the deceased, so that any dispute over the will could be more easily settled. The inventory was then filed with the will. The appraisers proceeded to list every item of furniture and utensils in the house, often room by room. Then they noted livestock, crops, equipment, tools, clothes, ready money and whatever else was moveable. Ogle’s inventory is a fascinating and lengthy document but it lists the rooms of the mansion house, which were:

• Chamber over the parlour

• Parlour

• Hall

• Butterie

• Chapel

• Garret Loft

• Kitchen

• Malt loft Brewhouse

• Milkhouse

• Study

By 1635 Robert Cramlington was the occupier of the house and estate and was titled “squire” on a report filed to the Justices of the Peace when a Spanish Privateer vessel took refuge in Blyth harbour from a pursuing Dutch Man-o-war ship. Cramlington was sent for by the frightened inhabitants of the port and rowed across the river to speak with the captain just as the Dutch ship opened fire bombarding the port with cannonballs.

Because they had fallen on hard times the Cramlington family sold the estate in 1695 to Ralph Brandling of Felling and Nathanial Wyresdale, a draper of London. They did, however, lease half of the premises from the new owners but their final connection with the manor came in 1700 when the estate was sold to the Radcliffe family.

Colonel Radcliffe was also known by the title Earl of Derwentwater. The Radcliffes were a long established aristocratic Catholic family from Dilston Hall in the West of the county of Northumberland. The Colonel died in 1705 and the estate was left to his sister who in a document of 1717 listed the mansion house and land being leased to Margaret Robinson, a widow and the mother of Lady Susanna Delaval, for £36 per year. A certain Madam Errington is stated to have been in occupation of the house previous to then in 1715. The Erringtons were also a well established Catholic landholding family from West Northumberland. The Radcliffes were involved in the rising against the monarch to install a Catholic Stuart on the throne. When this failed their lands were confiscated.

The Ridley family purchased the estate and set about developing the port and town of Blyth. The mansion house was leased as a farmhouse but eventually pulled down and rebuilt. The 1st edition OS map of c1860 shows the buildings as they would have been prior to demolition in 1880.

Morpeth Racetrack

Browsing Armstrong's 1769 map of Northumberland  I noticed a large circular feature marked in the landscape just North of Morpeth. The feature is larger than the town itself, which I first suspected was down to the inaccuracy of the cartographer. It did sufficiently interest me, however, to see if the feature is still visible in the landscape. Satellite imagery confirmed this to be the case and my first thought was that it is probably a racetrack. A hedge and fence mark the line of the feature in the present day.

Location of Morpeth Racetrack (click to enlarge)

Armstrong Map of Northumberland 1769

The feature is 1.15 miles in circumference and is located just north of St George's Hospital and Cottingwood Lane on an area historically known as Cottingwood Common.

Research in the "Keys to the Past" sites and monuments website for Northumberland and Durham revealed:

Although the town was a centre of trade for the surrounding countryside, the citizens of Morpeth enjoyed their leisure hours. In 1730 they built a racecourse for horse racing. It was still in use in the mid-19th century. It only fell out of use when the asylum was built. The area around the two castles became a park in the late 19th century, and the people were able to follow riverside walks along the Wansbeck.

Internet searches aimed at racing websites yielded this from greyhoundderby.com

The earliest recorded racing in... Morpeth was in 1720... and racing certainly took place prior to 1720. The course... [was] approached by a steep but narrow road. This would have meant that carriages would have found it difficult to access the course. Baily’s Racing Register first provided detailed results from races held at Morpeth in 1730, with the meeting being held in September... It is known that the famous poet, Lord Byron, owned horses which ran at the track in the early and mid-1750’s. By 1800 the only Northumbrian meetings to be sufficiently important to be included in Sporting Magazines and Racing Calendars were Morpeth and Newcastle. Racing ceased at the Collingwood course in 1854, and it took a further 17 years to re-establish racing at Morpeth. The new course, just ¾ of a mile from the town centre, was on Morpeth Common and included a grandstand which was opened by Robert Wilkinson, the Mayor of Morpeth, on 10th September 1875.  http://www.greyhoundderby.com/Morpeth%20Racecourse.html [This site lists some memorable races and winners on the track]

 Subsequent editions of mapping all the way down to the 1970s and 1980s have shown the site to be reasonably well preserved. It is only in this latter period that buildings begin to be shown on the on the central part of the site and foliage masking the course. The site of the course does not seem to interfere with the asylum (now St George's hospital) so it is a question for further research as to the track's demise and, in fact,   horse racing in general  in 17th-18th century Northumberland.

To Be Continued...

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Update 11th November 2013

So... this one tantalisingly posed more questions than it answered. And, quite by chance, some further information on racetracks came my way.

A flyer is featured on the www.communities.northumberland.gov.uk website advertising "The Amble Races" to be held on Monday August 20th 1888. Twenty people are listed as officials for the race meeting. We can therefore presume that it wasn't too small-scale an affair. Searching the OS mapping even from just a few years after 1888 revealed no trace of a racetrack in Amble. An appeal was made to Amble folk on Twitter for any info, most of whom were surprised to hear of a racetrack once existing in the town. A comment was returned from an elderly resident that horse racing and fairs used to be held during feast week at Mark's Bridge, which is now the site of the middle school. Modern satellite photography actually shows a racetrack pattern etched into the school playing field.

A visit to the small museum of Belford in North Northumberland brought me face to face with another flyer for a now-defunct racetrack. This was from 1803 and titled the "Belford Feast Races". It featured many categories of races including one for ponies.

A colleague emailed me to enquire if there had ever been a racetrack at Allendale. He was staying at a cottage which was rumoured to be on the site of an old racetrack. A look at the 1st edition OS mapping of the 1860s did show a racecourse to be marked at this location. It was not a very clear feature, however, and was not evident on subsequent mapping.

There was also evidence from 19th century mapping of a racetrack having existed on the links at Blyth. It is no longer in existence, but one weekend every summer a horse event is held at this location. This indicates a continuity of the tradition of equestrian activities being held there. 

It would appear from this evidence that most towns in Northumberland had a racetrack at sometimes during the 18th-19th centuries and that racing was often held on public holidays. I am making a presumption here that the racetracks served mostly a local population as it would have been impractical and expensive to transport horses to a larger and more central course as happens nowadays at say Gosforth Park.

The racetracks were clearly small-scale affairs. They did not leave much of a trace on the ground and there was no indication of buildings on contemporary mapping. Again, a presumption can be made that temporary structures or tents would have been erected for the race meetings. This continues until this day on some sites, although on a more ad hoc and informal basis.

This is also the case at Morpeth where the racetrack was moved out to Tranwell Woods and point-to-point racing is still held here. Point-to-point is a form of horse racing over fences for hunting horses and amateur riders.

Horse racing is now the second most popular spectator sport in the country. But it didn't really become a mainstream activity until the mid 18th century. Cromwell had the fledgling sport banned, and horses confiscated, during the 1650s. Even in the 1740s Parliament passed an act trying to restrain the increase in horse racing. The law was largely ignored however, and in 1752 the aristocracy, wealthy breeders and racecourse owners formed the Jockey Club and introduced regulations.

The smaller racecourses became no longer viable during the 19th century and the race meetings ceased.

Cowpen Alkali Works

I was browsing the map made in 1828 of Northumberland by Christopher and John Greenwood and noticed something that I hadn't picked up on previously: an alkali works at Cowpen near Blyth.

Google Earth Image of site (click to enlarge)

Link to location on Google Maps http://goo.gl/maps/IyJ5h

Overlaying Greenwood's map onto modern satellite imagery it is found to be located at the site of what is now a boatyard on the River Blyth. This can be discovered by travelling North on a path directly opposite Cowpen Road Cemetery to the river near the old Bates colliery.

Greenwood's 1828 map of Northumberland

It is often mentioned in brief histories of Blyth that the river was a small centre of salt manufacture, coal mining, shipping and ship building. The alkali works are much less often mentioned.

The local historian John Wallace published a history of Blyth in 1863 and had this to say on the alkali works:

About thirty years ago Blyth seemed in a fair way of getting a large and important manufacture permanently established. An enterprising firm, with capital at command, began the manufacture of alkali. Their first factory was erected at the low quay, the concern was under the management of Mr. Leighton, an eminent manufacturing chemist; they afterwards built what was termed the high factory, at Camboise point, where they made the vitriol, which they used in immense quantities in producing the chemicals they sent to market. Unfortunately the concern which promised to be so great a benefit to the town, failed to remunerate the spirited proprietors, who, after losing a great amount of capital, had to abandon the enterprise. After this, Mr. Richard Wilson got a patent for making chimneypieces, &c., out of clay, in imitation of marble; buildings were erected in which to conduct the manufacture, but after a trial the project did not succeed.

From the Wikipedia article on Alkali I learned that soda ash (sodium carbonate) and potash (potassium carbonate), collectively termed alkali, are vital chemicals in the glass, textile, soap, and paper industries. The process uses salt, coal and lots of energy which are available in abundance at this site. The river estuary, of course, provides the means to transport the product.

Wallace does not give the detail as to why the venture failed. To summarise Norman McCord's North East England : The Region's Development 1760-1960, p141, Tyneside had become a large centre of chemical works in the early 19th century making alkali by the wasteful Leblanc process. The competitive position of the Tyneside plants was eroded rapidly by chemical works works on Teesside and overseas who had adopted the much more efficient Solvay process. The Tyneside manufactories had been reluctant to do so. This, however, was from the 1870s.

The Ordnance Survey mapping 1st and 2nd edition, from c.1859 and c.1897 respectively both show the site as "Old Alkali Works" with what looks to be abandonded buildings in situ. By the time of the 3rd and 4th edition Ordnance Survey maps the site is being used as a remote part of a nearby infectious diseases hospital. From 1966 to the present day Ordnance Survey label the promontory as "Factory Point" on their maps. The 1993 map shows that a boatyard has been established.