With the recent republication of A History of Shawdon Hall, this prompted me to search for a vintage image of the Hall, as the ones we’ve had access to are relatively recent images. I eventually found and purchased a postcard from Berlin. Yes! Berlin in Germany. Who’d have thought that you’d have to go back to the EU to obtain old images of your local area?
Not a lot to be said, really…2020 has been unprecedented.
But now with the positive news of vaccines against coronavirus starting to be rolled out, there’s good reason to hope for a happier 2021.
This below article was originally published in two parts in Issue 15 (October 2013) and Issue 17 (March 2014) of the former Cheviot Views newsletter. It was written by Richard Poppleton of Titlington who adapted it from May, M. (1988) Aln & Breamish Local History Society.
John Carr-Ellison of Hedgeley Hall has kindly given us a copy of an unusual and amusing document that he found among his grandfather’s papers. It’s a typewritten copy of the lyrics to a humorous song written by Mr Sam Dunn sometime between 1917 and 1923.
However you celebrate the Christmas season, songs and carols are such a staple. We hear them on the radio, as background music in shops, rousingly played by brass bands in our streets, and on the tinkling pianos and other instruments that our children and grandchildren are learning to play. And we would have enjoyed singing them as a local community around the Christmas tree such as Powburn’s Community Garden.
Well…it’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? It’s been kind of:
Mmm…the list goes on.
We have today received some helpful guidance information from Ruth Armstrong, Locality Coordinator North Northumberland (part of Northumberland County Council’s ‘Northumberland Communities Together’). It focuses on Christmas Bubbles, the local Tier System, so-called ‘winter guidance’ and more.
I’ve enjoyed visiting and re-visiting the area around the Hedgeley Lakes in recent weeks. How things change, though! The valley floor looks so different now from the yellow Hedgeley of April 2020:
Having walked along and thought about the lanes where we live, that prompted a thinking about the fields around us.
an area, usually covered with grass, used for playing sports (Cambridge Dictionary)
I’d reflected recently on the inexorable changes that occur around us and how environmental changes are perhaps more obvious in the countryside: the falling of trees, riverbank erosion and our attempts to halt the effects of erosion.
