Celebrating good life on top-notch estate

Mar 10 2008 by Tony Henderson, The Journal

Tony Henderson on the plots and prisoners past behind one of the region’s top addresses.

TOP notch Darras Hall is one of the North East’s loftier locations.

But what is now considered to be a particularly pricey place to live has its origins in an altogether more down to earth organisation – the Northern Allotment Society.

The society, in turn, harks back to a yearning to return to the land which surfaced among various movements in the 19th Century as a reaction to the horrors of industrialisation and which, as reflected in TV’s The Good Life, has never really gone away.

It was the Northern Allotment Society (NAS) which, in 1907, bought just over 1,000 acres at auction on the edge of Ponteland in Northumberland in the shape of Darras Hall Farm, Little Callerton and Callerton Moor Farm.

The land was divided up into five-acre plots, in a move which one newspaper described as the creation of a “garden city,” although sizes were later reduced.

The central figure in the NAS was Joseph Wakinshaw, who was born in 1858 at Poplar Cottage in Byker, Newcastle, which became the site of Headlam Street police station.

Joseph was one of five children from a Methodist family who moved to Woodbine Terrace in Gateshead, where their neighbours were William and Catherine Booth, who founded the Salvation Army.

Joseph was a vegetarian and teetotaller who loved gardening, and who worked for the same Newcastle engineering company all of his life. He was elected secretary of the NAS when it was set up in 1890 after a conference on allotment culture and small fruits farms held in the Vegetarian Restaurant in Nelson Street in Newcastle. Joseph had gone along in his capacity as secretary of the local committee of the National Fruit Growers’ League.

It cost a shilling a year to join the NAS, and when land came up for sale interested members would join together to put in a bid, as was the case at places like Westerhope, Whickham, Cleadon, Stocksfield and Rowlands Gill, as well as areas like Fenham in Newcastle.

The society’s first venture was to lease from the Freemen of Newcastle a 10-acre intake at Nun’s Moor in Newcastle to provide 100 allotments, with Joseph Wakinshaw as secretary.

Historian John Griffiths, who lives at Gosforth in Newcastle, has studied the NAS and Joseph Wakinshaw for his MA at Northumbria University and will give a lecture on the topic later this year to the Newcastle Society of Antiquaries. He says: “Nun’s Moor were the first modern allotments in Newcastle.”

Next came a decidedly more ambitious move – the purchase by society members of the 100-acre Red Cow Farm on the Stamfordham Road, four miles outside Newcastle.

The land was divided between 22 “settlers”. It was here Joseph built his own home, which he called Runnymede – perhaps, says John, to reflect the liberty connotations of the Magna Carta. There is also a Runnymede Road in Darras Hall.

Joseph lived in the house until his death in 1923, aged 64.

At the funeral, his friend J Parmley Graham said of Joseph: “His great life work was developing garden cities, bringing people back to the land, and no man in England has done so much in this direction.”

It is believed, says John, that the name of Westerhope was suggested in 1895 by one of the settlers, Robert Hisco, because the land was west of Newcastle and they were going out into the countryside in hope.

John discovered a newspaper report of the time which said of the Westerhope venture: “They proposed to have no public houses, nor any other nuisance that would be prejudicial to its horticultural occupation. The soil was well adapted for…..soft fruits and its position made it highly suitable for small poultry farms.”

The attraction for many, says John, was a healthier life in the countryside and their own patch of land. “There was also the prospect of building and owning a house,” says John. “It was somewhat visionary because at that time renting was the norm before the expansion of suburban housing between the two world wars.”

When the society came to Darras Hall, its planning was more sophisticated and the estate was run by a committee, with Joseph as secretary. The North Eastern Railway was persuaded to build an extension from its Ponteland branch line, and Darras Hall station opened in 1913.

The First World War hindered development but later growth was still slow. Ponteland local historian Leslie Almond, who has lived in Darras Hall since 1953, has also investigated the NAS.

“Joseph Wakinshaw was giving people the opportunity to get out into the countryside and to enjoy fresh air, and perhaps make some money in the process,” he says.

By the 1920s there were still less than 40 houses on Darras Hall. Leslie says: “In the 1940s and 50s people were limited to what they could do. Those coming out in the 1950s were very ordinary people and they were modest houses.”

Now, says Leslie, developers are interested not in the houses but the plot where larger homes can be built. “The capital value of the estate must be in the hundreds of millions of pounds.

“I think Joseph Wakinshaw would have been very surprised. He was a remarkable character and it is unfortunate that he has not been recognised, and that he is not commemorated in any way on the estate. After all, if it has not been for him, there would not have been a Darras Hall estate.”