Heddon-on-the-Wall Local History Society
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Gardens of Northumberland

7/7/2012

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A talk by John Grundy on Monday 25th June in St Andrew's Church, beautifully decorated for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Flower Festival weekend. It was good to see as many as 100 people in the church for the talk.
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Jubilee Flower Festival, St Andrew's Church. Photo by A Curtis (2012)
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Jubilee Flower Festival, St Andrew's Church. Photo by A Curtis (2012)
John, in characteristic humour, made this an illustrated talk 'with no flowers' but did sneak one or two flowery slide photos for those who were watching carefully. My notes don't allow me to give a full detailed account of all he told us and I can't hope to cover all the gardens he mentioned. I just give you lots of photos (mainly from Geograph) and flowers without the jokes!
The talk covered the history of gardens in the county from speculated gardens around our earliest castles to the planned landscapes of the big estates in the 18th and 19th centuries, many based on features shown in romantic paintings and the grand tours of classical Europe.
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East end of the Italian Garden, Chillingham Castle. Photo A Curtis (2004).
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Chillingham Castle. Photo A Curtis (2004).
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Wallington Clock Tower. Photo A Curtis (2009).
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Urn in walled garden, Wallington. Photo A Curtis (2009).
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Quarry Garden, Belsay Hall. Photo A Curtis (2004).
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Belsay Hall. Photo A Curtis (2004).
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Belsay Hall. Photo A Curtis (2004).
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Bavington Hall. Photo by Peter McDermott (2011).
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Bywell Hall. Photo by Bill Cresswell (2008).
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Rothley Lakes. Photo by A Curtis (2010).
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Kirkharle, the birthplace of 'Capability' Brown Photo A Curtis (2010).
Many of these gardens cost a great deal to make, a tradition which still continues with the garden at Alnwick Castle. Redevelopment of the garden was instigated by Jane Percy (the current and 12th Duchess of Northumberland) in 1997, with Belgian landscape designers Jacques and Peter Wirtz. It is the most ambitious new garden created in the United Kingdom since World War II, with a reported total development cost of £42 million (Wikipedia).
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Tree house, Alwick Garden. Photo by Mark Evans (2008).
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Cherry Orchard at Alnwick Gardens. Photo by David Clark (2010).
Magnificent (and numerous) though they are, it is not just the mansion houses that dominate the gardens of Northumberland. Smaller properties and even the productive miner/farmer small holdings of our once industrial valleys are also part of the floral mix.

John mentioned the yards of terraced houses, cottage gardens of our villages and the gardens of the pit cottages at Beamish that would also house a pig and some chickens. Gardens by man in God's own garden of Northumberland.

Personal spaces created by their owners. Contrast merely in scale.
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Back lane in Blucher. Photo A Curtis (2010).
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Cragside. Photo by Mike White (2010).
My favourites belong in this category too - the garden at the disused Langley Station, and the wonderful quirky Cement Menagerie at Branxton.
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Langley Station. Photo by Charlie Bell (2008).
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The Cement Menagerie, Branxton. Photo A Curtis (2010).
THE GLORY OF THE GARDEN
by Rudyard Kipling

Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.


For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You will find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all;
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dungpits and the tanks:
The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.


And there you'll see the gardeners, the men and 'prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.


And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.


Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:--"Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade,
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.


Read the rest of Rudyard Kipling's poem at Project HappyChild - linking children all across the world.
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Gardens of Northumberland by the Borders by Susie White (2006)
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Heddon Beagles

5/7/2012

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Heddon Beagles, Easter Tuesday 1910.
The photo above caught my eye recently while trawling through the Local History archives for an exhibition of old photos at the Jubilee Flower Festival in the village Methodist Church. Hunting is no longer a recreation associated with the village and there are certainly no longer any packs of beagles.

The picture has a strange unworldly quality, in places looking more like a painting. We have a copy so I'm a bit unsure as to how the original might have appeared. The sky seems to have brush marks and there are rounded blobs next to the right hand figure almost as if something had been painted out. It could be water damage, I suppose.

The photo shows only a small group of people, posing on a hillside by a wooden fence. There are three well dressed men, two possibly accompanying family members, and one to the right (possibly the master of hounds). The one lady appears to be dressed in her Sunday best with a long skirt, jacket with tie, and a large hat. Four children complete the group, two of them carrying hoops.

If it is really Heddon, there are few clues as to location. It could be on the Common  (before it was taken over by trees) or the Crag Field (now covered in houses of of the Bainbridge housing estate). The fence could be protecting a drop to the sandstone quarry on the north side.
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The hare - former quarry of the beagle. Photo A Curtis (2010).
The history of the Newcastle and District Beagles was covered in an article in the Hexham Courant published on 1 April 2010 marking the publication of a book, 'See Ho! The First Hundred Years of the Newcastle & District Beagles' by A S Collier (Jt Master) A Haywood Smith (Chairman) G Kenny and S Restall (2010).
The hunt was founded by Charles Bigge who joined up  Mr G.A. Renwick’s Beagles, from Morpeth, with the pack kept by the Army at Fenham Barracks in Newcastle.

Although officially founded in 1907, the first meet did not take until November 1908, because of the difficulty in finding suitable kennels.

The first kennels were at High Seat near Heddon, where the opening meet took place. Although the rank and beauty of Newcastle turned up for the event, in immaculate attire, the beagles failed to find any hares. Our photo was taken just 2 years later.

It wasn’t until the third meet, on November 14, that a hare was put up at Holeyn Hall, near Wylam, and “bowled over” after a chase of one and half hours, to the joy of a large field.

It could all have ended in 1914, when the original pack was lent to a Royal Engineers depot in Hampshire at the outbreak of the Great War.

By the cessation of hostilities, the Sappers had somehow lost all the hounds, and new master Captain Geordie Bell had to buy a complete new pack from Berwickshire.

The pack was re-established at Ponteland, but around 1921, the hounds were moved to fresh quarters at Heugh Hill, Stamfordham.
There are few hares to be found now at Heddon and we can't just blame the beagles. Greater changes have been wrought by agriculture and housing.  The sport to me seems cruel in many ways and hunting hares with dogs was made illegal in 2005. Tynedale's pack of beagles, though, is still maintained, now at Great Swinburne, and regular hunts in the season follow scent trails or rabbits.
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Some beagle photos from Geograph. Click thumbnail for details.

Links

Association of Masters of Harriers and Beagles (AMHB)
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North Lodge

1/7/2012

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There are two lodge houses on the Military Road in Heddon village. The most prominent is the one almost opposite the Three Tuns, at the road junction, which is the former lodge house to Bay's Leap Farm. This was a substantial property north of the Military Road but  the original farm was completely destroyed by open-cast coal mining in the 1960s. The modern farm and farmhouse were re-constructed on in-filled land further to the east.
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Heddon on the Wall from Bay's Leap Farm.
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Bay'sLeap Lodge and Village Pond, Heddon on the Wall.
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Bay's Leap Farm before opencast mining.
The last house on the left as you leave Heddon on the Wall walking west (as many now do on the Hadrian's Wall National Trail) is North Lodge, or 59 Military Road. Just after this building the road turns sharply right, a modern detour to take it over the A69 dual carriageway. The original  line of the General Wade's Military Road, built on the line and foundations of Hadrian's Wall, is regained after another sharp turn to the left, at the bottom of the hill below Rudchester.
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North Lodge, Military Road, Heddon on the Wall.
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North Lodge, Military Road, Heddon on the Wall.
Although quite a small house, it was owned for a time by a Mrs Murray who ran it as a Bed & Breakfast, café and shop, selling sweets and cigarettes. It was for a while a mystery to me as it now has no apparent function or geographical location at the entrance to an estate.
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North Road Café, Heddon on the Wall.
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Mrs Murray, North Lodge, Heddon on the Wall.
North Lodge lies between Hadrian's Wall near the location of turret 12b, which is now under the surface of the modern road, and the Roman vallum to its south. A Roman carved stone was found here in 1932, when repairing a garden wall. It shows the head of a person in a hood pointing to part of an inscription 'Cl[audius] P..... ' dating to the 2nd or 3rd century AD. Although it resembles the ordinary centurial inscriptions of the wall,  there is no centurial symbol, and the pointing figure is unique. The stone is now held by Vindolanda Museum.
North Lodge was originally built as a lodge for Close House presumably providing a short cut to the mansion for travellers on the Military Road saving them having to enter the village. The line of the original drive is no longer clear on the ground, and doesn't correspond to the current line taken by the footpath, but the 1865 1:10560 OS map shows its line running south-west below and to the north of Houghton Farm, emerging on the Hexham Road almost opposite the current Close House driveway entrance but with no lodge shown. There is a small building with the name Buckhorns shown on the map near this position, on the north side of the road,
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Heddon North Lodge on Greenwood's Map of Northumberland (1828).
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Heddon North Lodge on 1865 1:10560 OS map
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Heddon North Lodge on 1899 1:10560 OS map
By 1899, Buckhorns and the drive way from North Lodge are no longer shown, and the lodge house at the head of the current driveway to Close House is now depicted, on the south side of the Hexham Road, west of Houghton. This lodge still guards the current entrance to Close House estate. The function of North Lodge appears to have no longer been required.

As mentioned above, North Lodge was once operated as a shop and café. Interestingly, there has been a recent application to convert the Bay's Leap Lodge from a dwelling house to a café.
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