West End Farm, Dated 1723

This farm building probably dates to around 1723. Matthew White Ridley of Blagdon Hall owned the farm and he had the helpful habit of adorning his major building projects with a cartouche of the date inscribed along with his initials (a cartouche is a piece of stone which looks like a scroll). Unfortunately, the date and the initials inscribed on the cartouche do not tie up. The first Matthew White Ridley was only twelve years old in 1723, so is unlikely to have built the farm. At that time, the Blagdon Estate was owned by his future wife’s father, Matthew White. The date stone probably commemorates later work on the farmhouse, with the original date it was built.

Like almost every farm in Northumberland, this was a tenanted farm owned by a local landowner, in this case the Ridley’s, who leased the farm and land to professional farmers. Sometimes the farmers could stay at a farm for generations but at other times the tenancy could change frequently.

The situation is even more complex in Berwick Hill, as this was not the only farm owned by the Ridley’s. Occasionally, a tenant would run more than one of the farms making the individual tenants of each farm difficult to trace. During the 19th century, there were two families which dominated the farms here; these were the Reay’s and the Lamb’s. A trade directory of 1855 lists Edward Reay as the tenant of this farm along with Middle Farm (later known as South East Farm. The 1861 census shows Robert Lamb as farmer of 600 acres employing seven labourers, which also suggests he was managing more than one farm. By 1881 census West End Farm is individually named in the census when it is being run by Robert Lamb and described as a farm of 353 acres employing three men and one boy.

After the Second World War, running small local farms became increasingly untenable in the face of international competition. By the 1980’s the EU introduced milk quotas and compulsory set-aside programs which required farmers to take land out of production. The Ridley Estate responded to this by converting many of the farmhouses they owned into residences and setting up business units adapted outbuildings. This happened here in 1984.