Out of the Blue: Cockle Park Tower

© Neville Young and licensed for reuse

under this Creative Commons Licence.

Just when you begin to think of yourself as a bit of an 'expert' as regards the history of your particular patch of the country, up pops another little unknown nugget to knock you down a peg or two. Whilst casually exploring the back roads of our new home near Morpeth the other day, my wife and I drove past this beauty a couple of miles or so north of the town. I didn't have time to stop and get a photo, so nicked the above image from Wikipedia.

I'm sorry to say that I didn't even know Cockle Park Tower existed! And it must be, I reckon, the best-looking (and best-preserved) pele tower in the whole of the North-East. I mean, just look at it. Magnificent! It was one of those famous defensive creations of the sixteenth century, when the threat from the Scots to the north still dominated the thoughts and minds of well-to-do families with plenty to lose.

Those who lived in the border lands at this troubled time were always looking for ways to protect themselves and their possessions from bad-tempered Scotsmen, feuding border reivers and marauding mosstroopers. Fairly well-off families built bastles, and the ranks above them built pele towers. The Cockle Park affair was built by Sir William Ogle, the 4th lord of his line, and dates originally, we think, to around 1520 - ostensibly as a 'hunting lodge', but clearly also built for defence. As you can see, it has three stories (plus an attic), and is topped by what are described as "corbelled-out bartizans, with machicolation between" - a clear indication of the builders' defensive intentions.

It has been altered plenty over the centuries, of course; and after the Unification of the Crowns in 1603, it gradually softened its look and feel as the threat from the dark corners of the region began to subside. The female Ogle line married into the Cavendish family, who themselves became the Dukes of Portland. When the old Ogle property of Bothal Castle was being renovated in the 1800s many of the fitting of the tower were transferred there.

It survived for many years as a simple farmhouse, though it had its periods of decline and neglect. Interestingly, the farm as a whole (tower included) was utilised by the Duke of Portland as long ago as the 1820s as a ground-breaking experimental farm, which, coincidentally, it still operates as today, under the guidance of Newcastle University.

Anyway, that's the gist of it. More can be found at the Fabulous North website, and there is much interesting detail to be found in Issue 21 (2014) of Archaeology in Northumberland (in an article compiled during its recent renovation).

Newcastle's 'New' Cemeteries

(click on image to enlarge)

The Burial Act of 1853 finally brought an official end to the near blanket use of urban parish churchyards for regular burials. London had grasped the nettle a little earlier, but the Act of 1853 cast the net for the new way of life (or rather death) across the whole of England. An Order of Newcastle’s Council issued in 1854 took advantage of the governmental guidance, effectively forbidding the use of the town centre churchyards of St.Nicholas’, All Saints’, St.John’s and St.Andrew’s. They were rather full anyway, especially after the cholera epidemic of 1853.

The four ‘official’ churchyards weren’t the only burial spots in and around the town. A ‘commercial’ cemetery had been opened near the Big Lamp (Westgate Hill Cemetery) in 1829, and a similar affair popped up in Jesmond in 1836 (known initially as ‘Newcastle General Cemetery’, and latterly as ‘Jesmond Old Cemetery’). A few small Quaker and Jewish affairs had long been in existence, too. And, of course, there was the huge expanse of the Ballast Hills Cemetery on the east bank of the Ouseburn catering, in the main, for nonconformist burials.

And so four new cemeteries were “tastefully laid out and ornamentally planted” in the suburbs. To the north-west there popped up St.Nicholas’ Cemetery, on the southern edge of Nuns’ and Hunter’s Moors; St.Andrew’s Cemetery was laid out on the western edge of Jesmond, near the Great North Road; All Saints’ Cemetery was created off Jesmond Road; and St.John’s Cemetery was formed in the then empty expanses of rural Elswick. These were all speedily laid out during 1855-58, and proved to be a roaring success. Dead popular, you could say.

The massive change in direction for the disposal of the dead was supervised by the new ‘Burial Boards’, whose members were elected ratepayers - a democratic process which itself was overseen by the ancient parishes’ vestry committees.

The first of the four new ‘municipal’ burial grounds, that of the mother church of Newcastle, St.Nicholas’, amounted to a modest five acre site opened in 1857. Though it is now accessed from Studley Terrace to the north, when built entry was gained from the Newcastle-Carlisle turnpike down a minor road (now the back lane of Wingrove Avenue, known as Cemetery Lane). It was handily-placed (perhaps deliberately so) for the adjacent and recently constructed Newcastle Workhouse, latterly known as Newcastle General Hospital.

To the north, in 1854 the Burial Board of Jesmond merged with that of Newcastle St.Andrew’s to form a joint board. The following year land was purchased from the ancient Hospital of St.Mary Magdalene in order to facilitate the creation of the brand new St.Andrew’s Cemetery.

Also in Jesmond there already existed the private Newcastle General Cemetery, laid out in the 1830s between Jesmond Road and Sandyford Road. This creation came, in time, to be termed ‘Jesmond Old Cemetery’ following the formation of the even newer All Saints’ Cemetery across the road (Jesmond Road) in the mid-1850s.

St.John’s Cemetery, also known simply as Elswick Cemetery, was at the same time laid out in the open fields to the west of the town centre. Here many thousands of the working class fodder of the Armstrong Works and neighbouring industries and manufactories would find their final resting places over the coming decades. St.John’s is Newcastle's largest cemetery at some 28 acres, following its extension in the early twentieth century. Over 100,000 folk are buried there.

[All OS maps reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland. Surveyed 1858, published 1864]

[For further reading on the subject matter the reader can do little better than Alan Morgan’s Beyond the Grave: Exploring Newcastle’s Burial Grounds, published by Tyne Bridge Publishing (2004)]