Lord Crewe Arms, Blanchland (NY966503)

The Lord Crewe Arms, taken by the

 author in 1991. Other than the cars, 

not a great deal has changed.

One of the North-East’s most picturesque villages, Blanchland sits quietly in a fold in the moorland landscape near the head of the Derwent Reservoir. It is situated on the Northumberland side of the nearby border with County Durham and gets its name from the order of ‘White Canons’ – the Premonstratensians – who settled there in the twelfth century.

The religious order obviously had its abbey, and, though there isn’t a great deal of this left today, a sizeable chunk of the complex forms the present-day Lord Crewe Arms, one of the most famous inns in the region. Essentially, the former abbot’s guest house is understood to have occupied the building utilised by the paying public today; and the pub’s garden was once the abbey’s cloisters.

The abbey was dissolved in 1539, and the old buildings found themselves in the hands of, firstly, the Radcliffe and then the Forster families – it essentially becoming a manor house, used regularly to host upper class hunting parties. When the Forsters fell from grace thanks to their Jacobite tendencies, Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, took over the reins. And this is, of course, where the establishment’s name comes from. And though he died within a few years of his takeover (1721), he left the estate to the Lord Crewe Trustees – in essence, leaving it to charity.

Then came the leadminers, and the general growth and prosperity of the village. The old manor house then became a pub, pretty much out of necessity, and, in time, the site developed into the impressive inn we see today.

And though it doesn’t openly boast about it, the Lord Crewe Arms has quite an interesting history – much of it surprisingly recent. Quite apart from being able to hark back to the days of the White Canons and their abbey, ex-owners the Forsters brought infamy upon the place when ‘General’ Tom Forster hid in the establishment’s giant fireplace during the Jacobite rising of 1715. The Blanchland days of this infamous family are also recalled in Walter Besant’s historical novel, Dorothy Forster.

Then there is the rather well-known W. H. Auden, who stayed at the Lord Crewe Arms at Easter 1930, remarking that “no place held sweeter memories.” Auden and Christopher Isherwood’s play The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935) may have been partially set in the village, too.

Poet Philip Larkin is also known to have dined at the Lord Crewe Arms; and in 1969 Benjamin Britten and tenor Peter Pears stayed at the inn.

Needless to say, that due to its timeless beauty, TV and film cameras have made regular use of Blanchland’s byways – from Catherine Cookson dramas to recent children’s fantasy effort Wolfblood – so you may well have seen the old pub pop up on the small or silver screen from time to time.

And to add to all of this, the inn is, of course, haunted – by not one but three ghosts (at the last count, that is). See here for a full account of the spooky goings-on at this fantastic old place.

Codger Fort (NZ044901)

© Copyright Andrew Curtis and licensed for 

reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

If you’re looking for examples of the useless excesses of the upper classes, then you can do little better than run your eye over the rocky outcrops around Rothley, Northumberland. For, hereabouts, you will find several pointless indulgences of the very rich Sir Walter Blackett (1707-77) of nearby Wallington Hall.

Firstly, there is Rothley Castle, a mock medieval stronghold designed by Daniel Garrett and built in 1755. Then there are the Rothley Lakes: man-made creations, and again built by the above mentioned Sir Walter. Several eminent architects and landscapers are rumoured to have been involved in their planning and execution – among then, notably, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

Finally, there is Sir Walter’s daftest effort, Codger Fort. Sitting on a rocky eminence by the roadside of the B6342, it looks very much like it has been hurriedly put together by a giant toddler – and may just as easily, perhaps, be accidentally knocked over by a clumsy playmate. Having sped past it numerous times, I was never quite sure what to make of it.

It transpires than no one else has been able to make head nor tail of it either, in fact. It certainly seems to have been erected by the aforementioned Blackett; local legend holding that it was built as a genuine defensive structure against the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. However, thanks to documentary evidence unearthed at Wallington Hall, it is now accepted that it was no more than another of Blackett’s pointless follies, and probably thrown up on his orders around 1769-70 by a certain Thomas Wright. And, as it is sits so neatly above a fold in the aforementioned Rothley Lakes, this seems as likely an explanation as any.

But why ‘Codger’? Well, they say it used to be known as ‘Cadger’s Fort/Castle’. But other than that, I can’t help you.

The Demise of Gateshead House (NZ257632)

(taken from the iSeeGateshead website – copyright expired. 
Click on image to enlarge)

In the early days of 1746, everyone south of the border with Scotland was a little agitated. Both anti-Scottish and especially anti-Jacobite sentiment was running high – well, among the protestant majority, at least. In January of that year, a few weeks before the decisive encounter at Culloden, King George II’s son, the Duke of Cumberland, marched north, passing through Gateshead and Newcastle en route.

Delayed by troublesome roads, he arrived in Gateshead at 1am on the morning of 28^th January …

…  where he was welcomed by a kind of illumination which gave his royal highness great uneasiness to see. The mob having set a mansion-house, with a popish chapel within it, on fire, at that place on the occasion. The outrage is said to have proceeded from the following circumstances. The family being from home, the house, chapel, &c. were left to the care of the gardener whose name was Woodness; when the duke and his attendants were coming down, the mob being anxious to see them, several of them climbed upon the garden walls to have a better view, when the gardener afraid of his master’s property, let loose some dogs upon them which bit several who were keelmen; being exasperated, they attempted to catch the gardener, who, no doubt, would have fallen a victim to their rage. Finding the object of their fury had eluded them, they set fire to the mansion-house, &c.

The mansion in question was Gatshead House, which used to stand to the east of the present-day St.Edmund’s Church on the High Street (aka Holy Trinity). Once the property of the Riddells, a catholic family, at the time the house was torched it was the seat of the Claverings, who were related to them. The fire rendered the property uninhabitable and it fell into ruin. It was eventually demolished – and the site is now taken up by high rise flats and a major trunk road. A repositioned gateway from the house remains in the grounds of St.Edmund’s Church. 

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Widdrington Castle (NZ256957)

 
Of all the lost houses, castles and mansions of the region, Widdrington Castle is one of the more notable losses.  Today, a little to the south of the village church, lies a barely discernable collection of lumps and bumps in a field – it seems that not a single stone or brick has survived from pictures I have seen – yet this is how it was supposed to have looked in its prime, c.1728:

Not that it enjoyed much as regards a ‘heyday’, you understand. For despite its apparent grandeur, its history is brief, unremarkable and somewhat cursed. Earliest records indicate that Gerard Widdrington was granted a licence to crenellate in 1341, and the pile was still in use by the same family in 1415. King James VI of Scotland stayed at the house on his way south to claim the throne of England in 1603, providing the pile with perhaps its greatest claim to fame. It seems the house was greatly rebuilt and/or added to shortly after this, attaining its above form.

The Widdringtons ceased using the castle as their main residence in the 1640s, then subsequently disgraced themselves for their part in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715 – the castle being confiscated by the Crown and sold to Sir George Revel. In 1720 it was described as ruinous. By marriage, it then passed into the hands of Sir George Warren in 1761, who demolished what was left of the place. Warren attempted a rebuild, but the new erection was destroyed by fire prior to completion. Undaunted, he tried again sometime after 1778, but this new Gothic-style effort fell into disuse as early as 1802. In 1832, it was described as “now obliterated” by historian Hodgson, a state assisted towards the end of the nineteenth century by the requisitioning of the remaining stone for the construction of a new vicarage.

And that was that.