Flodden: Full Muster at Little Bolton (NU105136)

© Copyright Phil Thirkell and licensed for reuse 

under this Creative CommonsLicence.

What exciting and worrying times they must have been. The build-up to, and preparations for, any historical battle on home soil must have been quite an experience for all concerned. The influx of fighting men into what were often small, rural backwaters, the drain on local resources, the fear of defeat and the aftermath – to say nothing of the small matter of loss of life. And in September 1513, the villagers of little Bolton, near Alnwick, braced themselves. For it was here, in the days leading up to the immense battle at Flodden Field, that the English army descended for their first full muster to the number of some 26,000 men.

The leader of the English army, Sir Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, arrived at Bolton on 3^rd September 1513, some six days before hostilities, where, the following day, “all the noblemen and gentlemen met with him with their retinues … among whom were Lords Clifford, Coniers, Ogle, Scroope and Lumley, Sir William Percy, Lionel Percy, Sir George Darcy, Sir William Bulmer of Brancepeth Castle and Richard Tempest Esq.” All of the aforementioned (and a few others besides) would have crammed into little Bolton Chapel on a number of occasions to offer up prayers for the fighting ahead.

They stayed for a couple of nights before moving further north to Wooler Haugh, and thence to Barmoor and beyond. Then, on 9^th September, Surrey and his English forces inflicted a crushing defeat on the Scots in the largest ever battle between the two kingdoms … and the villagers of little Bolton thereafter picked up the pieces of their quiet existence.

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Kirkley Hall Shenanigans (NZ150772)

© Copyright Andrew Curtis and licensed for 

reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The man who would become the first (and last) individual to be known as Lord Kirkley was born as William Joseph Noble in Newcastle in January 1863. He married Margaret Dixon and they had four children. Noble made his name and his considerable fortune in shipping – primarily with the Cairn Line – and rose to serve as president of the Chamber of Shipping in 1920.

On his way to the top of his profession he also served on the Tyne Improvement Commission and acted as an advisor to the Ministry of Transport. He served on a number of national and local committees during World War I, and led the British Economic Mission to South Africa in 1930. By this time he was a Baronet and when, in 1928, he bought Kirkley Hall in Northumberland from the Ogles, he soon found himself bearing the title of Lord Kirkley.

He was to die, aged 72, in 1935, but the last few years of his life were eventful enough. First off, his wife, Margaret, died in September 1928 and was interred in Ponteland churchyard. Then his newly acquired mansion was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1929 – which he quickly rebuilt in much the form we see today.

Noble was a staunch Presbyterian and even had his own chapel at Kirkley. He was most vociferous towards the local C of E vicar at Ponteland, who is known to have warned his bishop of “difficulties ahead”. And he wasn’t wrong. Sir William was soon trying to poach worshippers from him by parking a bus outside the parish church at Evensong. But worse was to come…

Keen to do all he could to upset his rival, Sir William then hit upon the idea of exhuming his wife’s body from Ponteland churchyard and reburying her in the garden of his own little chapel … and in very much unconsecrated ground. When the old man himself died in 1935, he joined her. And with no surviving sons to inherit his title, that was the end of the Lords of Kirkley, too.