Prestwick Carr

Little evidence remains of the vast body of water which used to exist to the north of Prestwick village near Ponteland. Ditches and channels can be seen along the main street which once fed Prestwick Carr, an expansive lake and wetland fed by the river Pont which had defined the landscape from the earliest human habitation of the area until relatively recently.

Thomas Hodgkin, secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle, commented in 1890: “Prestwick Carr forty years ago; the favourite haunt of and breeding place of various sorts of wild-fowl … a favourite place of pilgrimage for the naturalists of Northumberland”. What was once a “picturesque, unprofitable waste”, was by then “two square miles of common-place Northumbrian cornland”.

The area had likely always been challenging for travellers as indicated by the discovery of 13 assorted bronze vessels by William Shotton in 1890. Bronze hoards, especially near water, are often speculated to be votive offerings but these vessels are more likely to belong to the kitchen supplies of a Roman camp, perhaps having sunk with a cart into the boggy ground. 

The earliest historic mention was to “Merdesfen” in the twelfth century. One might suspect from the modern-day French that the fen was not viewed fondly at the time but it actually appears to be derived from “Merdo’s Fen” which gradually became “Mason’s Fen”. Interestingly an area of nearby Dinnington was still known as Mason into the twentieth century. The landowners granted rights for extracting peat and turf to Newminster Abbey and St Bartholomew’s Nunnery in Newcastle- Upon- Tyne. Tynemouth Priory were given access in the thirteenth century for pasture of draft oxen and to divert some water by means of a dyke.

Fishing and shooting permissions were managed by the lord of the manor of Mitford from at least the sixteenth century and by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries walking and nature studies had also become another source of income. Expanses of the bog dried out in the summer allowing naturalists to study and providing common land for grazing alongside tenanted plots. Original records of some of these tenancies are available in the archive. These failed to produce the desired income for the land and in 1809 J. Watson proposed draining the carr by means of a straight cut in the river Pont to bypass the area entirely. This may have kickstarted the process of enclosure which would continually stall due to uncertainty about viability.  

The first recorded instance of legal proceedings for trespass, thereby establishing manorial rights, was in 1816. Plans for drainage were revived in 1835 by Thomas Bell and in 1840 and act of the Newcastle and Gateshead Union Stock Water Company allowed water to be diverted south from the river before reaching the carr. The land boundaries were formalised in 1843 and the land was finally enclosed in 1853 under the General Enclosure acts. 

Little evidence of the construction work remains but a grave stone at St Matthews in Dinnington commemorates William Betts of Ragnall, Nottinghamshire, who “died suddenly at Dinnington where he was engaged upon the Car [sic] drainage works”

By 1857 some works were completed and the land was sold at auction with roads and allotments following one year later. It remains unclear whether the land had been sold prematurely to raise extra money for the completion of work but the anticipated profits never materialised. From 1861 onwards the land was exploited for its mineral rights including the Hartley coal seam.

The last attempt to improve the carr came in 1945-6 but the land remains susceptible to flooding and agriculturally poor. While drastically and permanently changed, Prestwick Carr still provides unique natural habitats and plays an important role in alleviating local flood risk. 

The collapse of mining works further along the Hartley coal seam at Brunswick Village in the 1920s led to the creation of a new subsidence pond, today known as Big Waters nature reserve. While nowhere near as large as the carr had been its nice to imagine it fills from some of the same, albeit redirected sources of water.