In 1934, Bedlington Urban District Council began to lay out a site for a new council housing estate at area known as Millfeld to the south of the town, on land above Attlee Country Park.
During the start of the works council workers were levelling a ridge and revealed five sunken cist burials. The cists were constructed with sandstone side slabs and cover stones. One contained the remains of a female burial and an earthenware pot. The skeleton was complete and its position indicated that it had been buried in a crouching position. It was also in a good state of preservation. Another was a burial with a ‘beaker’. There was what was described as a large chamber with a side opening, containing only a few human bone fragments and a flint knife. Next to this chamber was a small cist which contained the remains of a cremation and an earthenware pot later described as a ‘vase’. The final cist contained a burial only.
There was no controlled excavation done at that time and the cists and contents were apparently damaged by on lookers.
The bones were taken away for forensic examination by the South Northumberland Coroner and then given to the vicar, Reverend J. B. Purvis to be buried in the grounds of Saint Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Bedlington.
The beaker was once housed at the Museum of Antiquities which was an archaeological museum at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne; its collections were merged into the Hancock Museum which is now what is known as, The Great North Museum.
A photograph in the Newcastle City Library Local Studies Collection shows one of the burials in situ, while another in the collection shows an enclosure with a round barrow found near the Millfield area, Bedlington and dated 1920.
On Monday afternoon, while driving down the Main Road at High Gate, a horse belonging to Robert Norris, Tweedmouth, took fright to such an engine blowing its whistle, and bolted down Main Street. A man named James Douglas, who was on the cart, fell off, and was cut and bruised about the head, and, continuing its career, the horse came in contact with a stationary motor car. Norris, who had kept his head, managed to draw the frightened animal up. The mud-guard of the car was torn off. Douglas, who was stunned by his fall, was taken to Berwick Infirmary for treatment. He is doing as well as can be expected.
TRACTION ENGINE GOES ON ROUND A CORNER ON ONE WHEEL
THE DRIVER’S PLUCK
On the morning of Thursday last a serious accident was averted by the presence of mind of an engine driver named Jack Morrison. He was bringing a traction engine and mill from Tweedmouth Station to Messrs Bain’s down the South Side of the High Gate when a gear pin on the engine became detached, and the engine commenced to free wheel at great speed down the hill. Knowing the danger of running down Main Street, where there are always children playing about, Morrison made up his mind to take the hairpin turn into Shielfield, the hill there being calculated to stop the engine’s career.
The traction engine took the turn at great speed, going round practically on one wheel, and then Morrison came face to face with another problem, several motor cars being on the road further up. At great danger to himself, he took the only course open to him, and swung the engine dead into the wall at Turret Villa. The engine knocked a clean hole in the wall and came to a stop. Morrison being little worse of his adventure. The foreman jumped off the engine before they reached the railway bridge.
SNIPPET FROM LETTER
Some time ago you had a report in your paper in reference to the “Bridge Toll House,” and the place stated was at the end of the bridge. Now, this was not the case, for it was in one of the recesses at the top of the bank on the bridge — the one next to the Sundial. I can remember seeing this, seeing I had to pass it so often when a young man. I was told by father, and also my grandfather, the gates were just on the Bridge End. My grandfather, being one of the Coastguards, helped to pull them down.
There is another report in reference to Holy Island Castle, and I can endorse part of the history given by you about the Coastguards living in the Castle: for my mother’s father was banished from Spittal to the Castle because of my father’s grave misdeed in marrying his daughter. This was the punishment meted out to him, and I can remember paying a visit there when a boy. I mention this to show the difference then and now. Even after 50 years’ absence except for annual visits, I have still a kindly feeling for the old town. — I remain, yours sincerely. James Scott, 30, Chatterton Street, Southwick, Sunderland.
LOCAL NEWS
On Sunday a most successful motor char-a-banc tour of the Borders was held by the clerical and locomotive staff of Berwick Station. Leaving Berwick about nine o’clock in the morning, the journey was made through the beautiful pastoral scenery of the Merse, by way of Duns, Greenlaw, and Earlston, on to Melrose, where an alfresco lunch was very much enjoyed.
Adam Logan’s charabanc pictured in Sandgate in the early 1900s, with a patry about to set off on a trip. Adam Logan himself is pictured standing on the left of the picture. A similar vehicle transported the clerical and locomotive staff of Berwick station on their tour of the borders. Image in the collection of Fred Kennington.
The company then proceeded on to Selkirk, where a most enjoyable tea was served in the Fleece Hotel. A few hours were spent in song and sentiment, and Selkirk being left behind. Kelso was reached by way of St Boswells, and a little time was spent looking round the pretty little town. While here the trippers saw the competitors in the reliability run of Berwick Motor Club pass through. Berwick was reached about 9.30, the entire company being highly satisfied with the tour, upon which the sun had smiled all day
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.
