The Blue Bell

Houghton Moor Cottages at Blue Bell. Photo A Curtis (2013)

Houghton Moor Cottages at Blue Bell. Photo A Curtis (2013)

One of the three cottages at Houghton Moor, west of Houghton and Heddon on on the Wall on the Old Hexham Road is called Blue Bell Cottage. It provides a memory of the Blue Bell Inn which stood either where the cottages are today, on the north side of the road, or with another former cluster of cottages that used to stand at the top of Blue Bell Lane, a narrow lane that leads south to Close House and Wylam.

Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury - Saturday 25 September 1847.

The above sale advertisement shows that in 1847 there was one dwelling house and eleven cottages close to the Blue Bell Inn at this location.

OS 1:10,560 (1859).

The first edition OS map above indicates the presence of a toll gate here on the turnpike road but the actual location of the inn is unclear. The road from Corbridge to Heddon-on-the- Wall was converted into a turnpike in 1800.

OS 1:2500 (1897).

The situation is clearer on the 1897 map. The inn is no longer named but the hamlet is still called Blue Bell. All the earlier buildings close to the north side of the road have been demolished and replaced with the terrace of three houses that stand today, located further back from the roadside. It is possible that the most easterly of the original row of houses here was the inn.

Two rows of four cottages are still shown on the south side of the road, west of the junction. Three more that made up the west side of the courtyard on the 1859 map have gone. Perhaps the original eleven here are those referred to in the 1847 sale.

The newspaper article below shows that one proprietor of the Blue Bell went missing in 1780. In 1834, the proprietor of the Blue Bell Inn at Houghton Moor House is named as Hannah Nesbit.

The catalogue entry for one of the the Blackett Wylam Colliery records at Woodhorn (Account, no.24, working charges for Haugh Pit & Peggy Pit, ZBK/A/1/83) apparently details the rental of cottages at Houghton Moor from the Houghton Iron Company in November 1838. However this is the only mention I have seen of such an occupation in this location.

The Blue Bell Inn receives a mention in the Newcastle Journal on Monday 30 September 1867 (page 2 column 4) in a report of the Moot Hall Petty Sessions held on the previous Saturday (28 September 1867)  before Messrs GC Atkinson, R B Sanderson , A H Bell and Capt. Blackett,

John Elliott (29) a stone mason from Stamfordham was charged with stealing £2 15s from James Henderson at the Blue Bell Inn, Heddon on the Wall. The landlady at the time is named as Mrs Hepple. Her husband and a servant girl were also present at the time. The policemean who took Elliott into custody is named as PC A Rutherford.

Newcastle Courant 20 May 1780 p.1

The Northumberland OS Name Book for Heddon on the Wall (c.1860) describes The Blue Bell (PH):
"About 50 Chains South West of Houghton"
"A small comfortable PH  the occupier Licensed to sell Spitits the name is also applied to the few dwellings around it &c"

The following page has:

The Blue Bell (TP [Turnpike or Toll Gate]
"About 130 links West of the Blue Bell PH"
"A Bar or Gate thrown across the Newcastle & Carlisle trust for the collection of legal Dues &c"

130 links is approximately 26 metres.