Northumberland

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This article has not been researched and written yet

This article has not been researched and written yet

This article has not been researched and written yet

This article has not been researched and written yet

Morpeth lay on the Great North Road at the point where it crossed the River Wansbeck, some twelve miles north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It was described in 1673 as ‘a very fine town’, and its market was esteemed the best in Northumberland, ‘being sufficiently stored with corn, all provisions and living cattle, which from hence are dispersed to divers parts of the kingdom’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 181. As this description implies, Morpeth’s principal source of wealth was its large cattle market. J. Hodgson, Hist.

Northumberland was described in 1673 as ‘a county of a sharp and piercing air and much troubled with pinching frosts, boisterous winds and deep snows in the winter … It is a country but thinly inhabited, which is occasioned through its near neighbourhood to Scotland and its barrenness, being for the most part exceeding rough, hilly and very hard to be manured’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 179. The majority of the county’s inhabitants eked out a living as small-scale livestock and arable farmers.

Lying on the Scottish side of the River Tweed at the point where it entered the North Sea, Berwick had been a key border fortress in medieval times. It was reckoned a good natural harbour at high tide, but nevertheless a town of ‘no trade because it affords no commodities for transportation. Fishing is their best, but they wholly neglect it, except only for salmon, which is very plentiful’. Six North Country Diaries ed. J.C. Hodgson (Surt. Soc.

Seventeenth-Century Newcastle was the metropolis of northern England and, in terms of population and wealth, was inferior only to London, Norwich and Bristol. Although not easily defensible, the town occupied a vital strategic site, commanding the intersection of the Great North Road as it crossed the River Tyne and the main east-west route between Tynemouth and Carlisle. It was also well-placed as a commercial centre, lying at the eastern end of the Tyne gap and near the heart of the northern coal field.