The Field Ponteland United Played On

This field down Callerton Lane used to be used as Ponteland United’s football ground.

Organised football began in the communities of South East Northumberland in the 1880’s and Ponteland was part of this trend with the Ponteland Cricket and Football Club. The organiser behind the founding of the club was a Miss Holt, the choirmistress of St. Mary’s Church. She encouraged her choristers to form teams and James Jameson, who went on to captain Ponteland’s cricket team for fifty years was one of the players. The oldest team photograph to survive from around 1904 shows James and his brother Edward playing for the football team. These early games are said to have taken place on a pitch behind the Diamond Inn on land now occupied by Ryehaugh.

The first mention of Ponteland United in local newspapers is in 1928 when their games started to be regularly reported. There is a wonderful aerial photograph taken of the Callerton Lane area dating sometime after 1936. On it, you can just make out the football pitch marked out in a field in the bottom corner of the photograph. Amateur football was in abeyance during the Second World War with so many young men away fighting but a subsequent photograph of the field in 1947 shows a small hut at the corner, presumably used as a changing room.

It was during the 1930’s that the Miners’ Welfare Fund was intervening to provide pitches in many of the pit villages in this area but of course, Ponteland with its rural background was not able to take advantage of this. After the Second World War, Castle Ward Rural District Council set up the Ponteland Playing-fields Committee. A large area of open space was included in the Council’s new housing estate in the fields behind North Road at the other end of the village. A new football pitch was laid out there to replace the one down Callerton Lane. When this received an upgrade from the remainder of funds raised to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, these were renamed the “Queen Elizabeth Playing Fields”.

Ponteland United played there until 1967 and a new sport centre was built towards the top of Callerton Lane. They moved to a new ground provided there just a short distance from their original ground.

The pitch at this site had reverted to agricultural use as shown on another aerial photograph from 1958. However at the beginning of the 1970’s two new schools were opened up almost adjacent to these fields. This land was once again laid out as sport pitches, this time for the schools. These lasted for forty years until the 1967 sport centre was recently replaced by a new complex which includes the High School and a wide area of new pitches leaving this area again free.