The weird and wonderful tumbledown farms of Weardale

Descendants of Timothy Hackworth at Larkseat in Weardale: Josef Akehurst, g-g-g-g-grandson, Jane Hackworth-Young, g-g-grand-daughter and Ulick Loring, g-g-grandson

Jane is the great-great-grand-daughter of Timothy and Jane. Timothy, of course, was the first locomotive superintendent of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. He built his reliable Royal George engine at Shildon in 1827 and it was his engineering skills that made the line a success.

Spain’s Field was one of the 160-plus abandoned farms in Weardale – it was given up as too small in the 1950s – but it has been transported from its hillside near Stanhope stone-by-stone to Beamish where it has just opened as part of the museum’s 1950s tableaux.

Arthur Golightly farmed next door to Spain’s Field at Larkseat. His first wife died in 1772 so he quickly remarried Ann Bell, whose family farmed just below Spain’s Field in High Farm. Ann was a good choice, as she could care for Arthur’s three children and she brought a little money with her.

She had two more children with Arthur, who were called Anthony and Jane, but when Arthur died in 1805, Larkseat was claimed by one of their half-brothers from the first marriage, forcing them to leave home.

Jane, 17, (above) went to live with relatives in Prudhoe, where she became a Methodist and met Timothy Hackworth, who was so devout in his Methodism that he left Wylam colliery because he felt unable to work on a Sunday.

Jane and Timothy (below) married in 1814, and raised their family in Soho House which was attached to Timothy’s Soho engineering works in Shildon.

“Anthony Golightly had a difficult life but married and had six children and at the end of his life became storekeeper at the Soho Works,” says Jane Hackworth-Young. “He lived in a cottage that was attached to Timothy’s Soho House.”

Anthony died in 1840; Timothy Hackworth in 1850 and Jane in 1852 at Soho House.

Then and now: Timothy and Jane Hackworth's Soho House

RITA COPELAND, now in Staindrop, lived at Larkseat for a few years in the 1940s as her parents had connections with many of small farms of Weardale. Now in her eighties, she remembers the six weeks she spent in the isolation hospital above Stanhope, suffering from scarlet fever.

“It was rife in the dale, and my parents could only look in through the windows at me when they came to visit,” says Rita, whose maiden name was Forster, a well known Weardale farming family.

She took exception to us calling the Spain’s Field byre in which pigs lived on the ground and hens roosted on the upper floor a “ham and egg” house or a “poultiggery”.

“I’ve spent many, many years in Weardale and no one has ever used those words,” she said. “It was either a pigsty or a hen hut or a hen house.”

The pigs in a poultiggery not only kept the hens above them warm but were also believed to deter foxes. Historic England says that “poultiggery” is a genuine word that it has found in use in Shropshire and Northumberland, although not in Weardale.

Spain's Field Farm, near Stanhope, before it was dismantled and taken to Beamish. Note its wonky chimney pot, which was a navigational feature of the dale. It has been rebuilt wonky at Beamish Picture: Chris Ruskin

Below: Spain's Field Farm as it has been rebuilt at Beamish museum

MANY of the dale’s farms have obvious names – Thrush Nest, Broad Bush, Ashy Bank – but there are plenty in the dale that intrigue Rita, like Ambling Gate, Brandon Walls and Spain’s Field, as well as Larkseat which was once known as Laverock Seat.

Chris Ruskin has charted the changing face of the dale in her book, the Disappearing Farms of Weardale, which is also a Facebook page, and she has collected many of explanations for the more unusual names.

For example, Ambling Gate gets its name from “to amble”, which was what the Bishop of Durham’s men did to local dogs when they cut their paws to prevent them from chasing the animals in the bishop’s deerpark – only the bishop was allowed to hunt in his park, which stretched from Eastgate to Westgate, although hungry local people may well have poached for their tea.

Laverock is the Old English name for a lark (above), so that name becames obvious. Other farms also bear old names for birds: Ulsfield is a field where owls were once found, and High Earnwell is where an “earn”, or eagle, made home.

A fortnight ago, we suggested Spain’s Field came from the Weardale dialect “spean”, which meant “to wean” – you kept young animals in the spean field.

However, among Chris’ other suggestions for Spain’s Field are that the word “spean” meant “to chip wood”.

Or that in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, Spanish soldiers were stationed in the dale.

Or that in 1180, Gilbert the Spaniard is mentioned in document and over time the field that he owned became known as “Spaynesfield”.

Larkseat in 1984 when it still had a roof and, below, in 2019. Pictures: Chris Ruskin

WEARDALE had an unusual agricultural set-up with small, almost subsistence, farms scattered across the fields – Chris’ research has identified at least 164 of them.

The women did much of the work on the farms as the men of the household were leadminers or quarrymen.

There were two big periods of emigration away from these small farms. The first was in the 1860s, when the lead price dropped due to Spanish imports, and the second was after the Second World War.

“The Milk Marketing Board said the herds had to be tested for tuberculosis otherwise they wouldn’t buy the milk,” says Chris. “The farms had to invest in the new equipment and get their byres up to standard, and it just wasn’t worth it for two or three cows.”

Neither was it worth buying a tractor or a combine when you only had a couple of small, inaccessible fields.

So some farms were abandoned as unviable in the 1950s, although a few found a new lease of life as holiday lets for people from the cities of Sunderland and Newcastle. However, by the 1980s the lure of an old farmhouse in chilly Weardale with no running water or mains electricity was up against the attractions of a sun-drenched casa in Spain, and so there was another wave of abandonments.

Larkseat today lies in ruins, although its neighbour, Spain’s Field, does have a new lease of life at Beamish.

Chris’ book about the lost farms of Weardale is now out of print, but there still a few copies left of her second book, The Disappearing Mills & Bread Ovens of Weardale, available for £5. Email: chrisruskinwaterhouse@hotmail.co.uk