Stannington Sanatorium collection will feature in a play broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this week by Newcastle University’s senior Lecturer in Creative Writing Margaret Wilkinson. The play will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 each day from Monday 3rd October to Friday 7th October at 10.45am, with a repeat at 7.45pm. Margaret often uses archival research in her plays, including working with post graduate students to tell the story of the 1649 Newcastle witch trials in The Newcastle Witches, performed at the Newcastle Guildhall in 2014. Margaret’s play Queen Bee has been performed at the Northern Stage and 8 other venues, and Blue Boy has been performed at the Durham Literary festival. She won the Northern Writer’s awards Time to Write award in 2000. We asked Margaret to tell us a little of what it was like to write the play and the sources of her inspiration for it.
My inspiration for writing ‘Stannington’ came from the wonderful resource I found at Northumberland Archives based at Woodhorn, Ashington and the kind assistance of the