Strange Neighbours of Hutton Magna (NZ127124)

© Copyright Oliver Dixon and licensed for 

reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Hutton Magna’s two most curious items are located within a few feet of each other in the centre of the village. Both are contained in the image above and they are very different in their nature.

The first is, obviously, the red telephone box – or the ‘News Box’ as it is affectionately known. It is always a delight to fall upon one of these distinctive and well-loved landmarks, especially as they have been disappearing from our landscape at an alarming rate of late. When the same fate threatened to swallow up Hutton Magna’s specimen in 2009, the villagers asked if they could buy it from British Telecom – and they did… for £1. Unfortunately, it then cost them £250 to have the phone disconnected!

Suitably phone-free, the locals decided to turn the little box into their very own multifunctional village ‘News Box’, complete with community notice board, lending library (books and DVDs) and newspaper distribution point – together with any other bits and bobs which folk are happy to pass on. Nice.

Just behind the ‘News Box’ can be seen an old water tap and commemorative tablet. The latter pays tribute to one Cuthbert Watson of nearby Ovington, who, in 1858, laid a water pipe from Warden Hill to the spot in order that the villagers might at last have a fresh water supply. It ran for 1,200 yards and was initially a great success … until, twelve years later, the iron that the pipe was made from rusted up and, well, that was the end of that. They should have seen that one coming.

An 1890 account tells us that the supply had still not been reinstated. One assumes that the problem has now been rectified.

Wrekenton: Named by a Historian! (NZ274590)

You don’t have to look far into the history of Wrekenton to discover that it appears to have been named by a historian. The famous antiquarian, Rev John Hodgson – he of the History of Northumberland fame – is said to have manufactured the word. He wrote, “After the enclosure of the common (in 1822), Mr Watson, of Warburton Place, Carrhill, founded a considerable village at this place, which, at my suggestion, he called Wrekenton.”

Hodgson created the word from the nearby Roman road, the Wrekendyke, which runs from this spot all the way to South Shields. Thus, ‘Wrenken-ton’ means ‘the homestead by the Wrekendyke’. Clever, eh? And so antiquarian-like!

‘Wrekendyke’ itself is an Anglo-Saxon word derived from the Old English wraecca, meaning ‘fugitive, or criminal’. So we have ‘the fugitive’s ditch/dyke’. We can just about recognise the old term in the modern word ‘wretch’.

It is possible that a Roman fort sat hereabouts, too – perhaps on the local golf course – but no trace of any such structure has yet been found.

Why not come along to...

The National Family History Fair

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE

Saturday 7th September 2013

North Seaton Hall (NZ297866)

You can barely imagine it today, but in the middle of a 1960s housing estate in North Seaton, near Ashington, there once stood a fine classical house which went by the name of North Seaton Hall. Pictured above in its declining years, it may even hold the distinction (according to his daughter) of being architect John Dobson’s very first commission in 1813.

However, there was without doubt a building already on the site – and known by the same name – throughout most of the eighteenth century. Directories give 1710 as a possible starting point, when the Watsons were in early residence. It is more likely that Dobson carried out alterations in 1813 – and was most certainly back on the estate in 1831 to add some outbuildings (workers’ cottages and, possibly, the Gothic lodge).

The grounds occupied a wooded site north of the present B1334, near to the junction with the A189. The Watsons remained in residence until deep into the Victorian era, the estate falling into the hands of prominent industrialist Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell in the 1880s. In the 1950s, Pevsner noted the hall’s “very neglected” state; and in 1960 it was razed to make way for modern housing.