Low House: The Farm by the River Pont

Low House is a remote old farm house which has now been converted into private residences. It was a tenanted farm which stood at the very edge of Berwick Hill just next to the River Pont close to where it joins the River Blyth. It probably dates to the early 18th century and formed part of the Stapleton Estate; the family who also owned Park House, and East Farm.

Its position next to a curve in the river meant it did not follow the normal east-west alignment of farms in this part of Northumberland. The farmhouse faces south-east rather than the more traditional due south. The farm buildings arranged to the east of the farmhouse follow a similar alignment arranged around a farmyard which was open to the south-east. The west range (now demolished) had an attached gin-gang. These pre-steam engines where horses were driven around a central drive shaft to power machinery (usually threshing machines) were very common in this part of Northumberland. Many of the distinctive circular buildings which housed them have been preserved as unusual architectural features. What is very unusual in this case is that the actual wooden engine has been preserved and was transferred to Beamish Museum in 1976 and can still be seen today.

The farm has had some notable tenants. An early one was John Green who went on to have seven sons. He named his seventh Josephus Septimus Green. Josephus himself went on to have seven sons himself naming the seventh Edwin Septimus Green, who went on to become a doctor and well known as the almost mythical “seventh son of a seventh son”.

The tenant in the first half of the 19th century was John Nicholson who unfortunately fell into the river and drowned aged 74. From 1889, it was the Hall family who were tenants right up until the end of the Second World War.

Since at least 1986, the farmhouse and outbuildings have been in private hands.