Cecil Court: From Contract House to Flats

Carrying on down the road into Ponteland, the next set of buildings I want to cover is Cecil Court.

Cecil Court was opened at the end of 1991. It was a £3m development by Adamson Developments Ltd. a Gosforth based property development company founded by Richard Adamson. The first couple to move in was Richard's aunt and uncle, Mary and Cecil Wright. It was Cecil Wright who spotted the potential of the site and persuaded his nephew to buy it and this is why it is named after him.

There was a major property boom in the UK in the late 1980's which resulted in these new forms of speculative developments. Financial deregulation enabled property developers to build blocks of leasehold flats, something new for Ponteland. Leasehold allowed developers to retain ownership of the land and collect ground rents, creating long-term income streams. These multi-occupancy buildings were also much cheaper to build making them especially popular for property developers.

The complex was built on the site of two properties which were demolished to make way for them. One was a private house called Leaholm, the second was a commercial property called Contract House.

Contract House was built around 1960. At that time there was a garage where Sainsbury's now it. The garage was rebuilt at this time and the main contractor carrying out the building work was H. R. Atkinson & Co. Ltd, a local firm. There must have been some kind of commercial arrangement between the two as the building firm erected a new building called Contract House on the land just next to the garage as a building supplies yard and their headquarters.

Around 1980, the building supplies business was taken over by Raine & Co. with H. R Atkinson continuing to focus on the construction side of the business. At the end of the 1980's H. R. Atkinson relocated to more suitable premises at the western end of the village on the Meadowfield Estate which they also named Contract House after their old premises.

This became Matthew Charltons in 1996 and then later Jewsons.