Capheaton
| Capheaton | |
| Northumberland | |
|---|---|
 Capheaton | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | NZ038804 |
| Location: | 55°7’8"N, 1°56’28"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 160 (2001) |
| Post town: | Newcastle Upon Tyne |
| Postcode: | NE19 |
| Dialling code: | 01830 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Northumberland |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Berwick-upon-Tweed |
Capheaton is a village in Northumberland about twenty-five miles north-west of the county's great city, Newcastle upon Tyne. Capheaton was built as a planned model village in the late eighteenth century.
The name Capheaton is from Caput Heaton, meaning the head of Heaton parish: nearby Kirkheaton was the original Heaton Parva ('Little Heaton').[1]
Sights about the village
The Devil's Causeway passes the village just over a mile to the east. The causeway is a Roman road running north of the Roman frontier – it starts at Port Gate on Hadrian's Wall, north of Corbridge, and extends 55 miles northwards across Northumberland to the mouth of the River Tweed at Berwick-upon-Tweed. A Roman-British silver treasure was found in the village in the eighteenth century. Known as the Capheaton Treasure, it is now in the British Museum.[2]
Capheaton Hall, is a country house, the seat of the Swinburne Baronets and the childhood home of the poet Algernon Swinburne. It counts among the principal gentry seats of Northumberland.[3] It is a Grade I listed building.
The house, which was built for Sir John Swinburne in 1667-68[4] by Robert Trollope of Newcastle, is a provincial essay in Baroque, of local stone with a giant pilasters on high bases supporting sections of entablature dividing the main front into a wide central bay and flanking bays, under a sloping roof with vernacular flat-footed dormers. The estate was improved with a model farm in Gothic taste, designed by Daniel Garrett for Sir John Swinburne, ca 1746, one of the earliest examples of the Gothic Revival. The north front was rebuilt for Sir John in 1789-90 by a local architect, William Newton.
The house stands in rolling parkland in the manner of Capability Brown. The naturalistic setting of Sir Edward's Lake south of the house was designated a Site of Nature Conservation Importance in 1983 for the wintering and breeding wildfowl it harbours.
Two miles north-east of the village is East Shaftoe Hall, a mostly 16th century house, much altered in the 17th and 18th centuries, which incorporates a pele tower dating from the late 13th or early 14th century.[5]
See also
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Capheaton) |
References
- ↑ Hugill, Robert (1931). Road Guide to Northumberland and The Border. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Andrew Reid & Company, Limited. pp. 17.
- ↑ British Museum Collection [1]
- ↑ National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland, 1868.
- ↑ Dated contract, noted in Colvin, sv. "Robert Trollope".
- ↑ East Shaftoe Hall, Capheaton - British Listed Buildings
