2 - Northumberland Sandstone Hills : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

The Northumberland Sandstone Hills NCA extends north-east in an arc from the Border Moors and Forests NCA, with the Tyne Gap and Hadrian’s Wall NCA to the south and the Mid Northumberland NCA to the south-east. It encircles the lowland plains of the Cheviot Fringe to the west, separating them from the lowlands of the North Northumberland Coastal Plain and Mid Northumberland NCAs to the east. The hills provide panoramic views of the Cheviots to the west, the coast to the east and Scotland to the north, and form the backdrop to views inland from the coast.

The River Till arises in the Cheviots, flows across the Cheviot Fringe and then gets deflected by the Fell Sandstone ridge to run north to join the River Tweed. The rivers Coquet and Aln, which have arisen in the Cheviots and Cheviot Fringe respectively, meander across the Cheviot Fringe and break through the Northumberland Sandstone Hills to flow east to the coast. The rivers Font and Wansbeck arise in the Northumberland Sandstone Hills and also flow east to the coast. While there is some flood risk in this NCA, particularly around Rothbury on the Coquet, the greatest flood risk occurs in downstream NCAs. The Coquet, Wansbeck, Font and the Fell Sandstone Aquifer, part of which underlies the north-western tip of this NCA, provide public water supply for much of northern Northumberland whereas the rivers Till and Aln predominantly provide water for crop irrigation in the Cheviot Fringe, North Northumberland Coastal Plain and Mid Northumberland NCAs.

There are relatively few major roads but two of the three principal crossborder routes pass through this NCA with the A1 skirting around the eastern edge and the A68 cutting through to the south. Other key transport routes include the A696 and A697 linking the rural border communities to Tyneside and the A1. These transport links play an important role in the haulage of timber from this and adjacent NCAs to processing destinations and provide access for military vehicle convoys to the Otterburn Military Training Area.

There are close links with adjacent NCAs as much of the area forms the in-bye and moorland grazing component of larger holdings located in the Cheviot Fringe, North Northumberland Coastal Plain and Mid Northumberland NCAs. The middle section of the Northumberland Sandstone Hills falls within the Northumberland National Park.

The Northumberland Sandstone Hills today

The Northumberland Sandstone Hills curve across central Northumberland, standing above the coastal plain and encircling the lowland valleys of the Cheviot Fringe to the west.

The broad hill tops undulate in a series of ridges, characterised by distinctive skylines created by dramatic escarpments, sandstone boulders and craggy outcrops, and reducing in height towards the north. They are pierced by a number of rivers and streams including the Grasslees Burn and the rivers Coquet and Aln.

The ridgetops and upper slopes are dominated by heather and grass moorland which is managed as rough grazing for hardy sheep and some cattle, and a small number of estates manage their land for red grouse. The chain of moorland is interrupted by a number of extensive conifer plantations including Harwood and Rothbury forests and Harbottle, Thrunton and Kyloe woods.

Below the moorland improved pasture dominates with some cropping on the lower and dip slopes. There is a mixture of piecemeal and regular enclosure; medieval strip fields and large, regular fields from 18th- and 19th-century enclosure are bounded by drystone walls and subdivided by fencing, often broken up by coniferous shelterbelts and blocks dominated by Scots pine and spruce.

The moorlands comprise diverse mosaics of dry and wet heath, mires, blanket bog, fens, flushes, acid and calcareous grasslands and waterbodies, and support a diverse range of amphibians, invertebrates and upland birds. A number of sites are designated for their high biodiversity value: Simonside Hills and Harbottle Moors are designated as Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) for their European dry heath and blanket bog habitats, and along with Bewick and Beanley Moors as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) for their upland and woodland habitats. Holburn Lake and Moss is designated as a Ramsar site and Special Protection Area (SPA) for its lowland raised mire and greylag goose roost. Red squirrels are still found throughout this area and Kyloe, Harwood and Raylees plantations have been designated as red squirrel reserves.

Notable areas of ancient semi-natural woodland comprising oak, ash, rowan and birch occur on steeper slopes below the scarp face, along incised burns, and on the dip slopes. Nationally important relict stands of juniper are found in a few locations such as Bewick and Beanley Moors, Harbottle Moors and Simonside Hills SSSI.

The upland plateaux are drained by sometimes deeply incised tributaries which flow into the wide, fertile valleys of the rivers that cut through the arc of sandstone hills. The Aln meanders through a patchwork of arable and pasture enclosed by hedgerows, with localised parkland influences, small woodlands and conifer blocks. The highly dynamic Coquet, much of which is designated as SSSI for its woodlands and the species that it supports such as salmon, lamprey and otter, passes through steep, wooded bluffs. It meanders unrestricted through the gravel terraces of the flood plain or ‘haugh’, forming oxbow lakes and channel braiding. Remnant alder woodland still lines many of the watercourses and rich communities of upland oak and birch woodland are found in the gorges of the Coquet Valley.

The River Till, part of the River Tweed SAC, meanders through the lowlands of the north-western corner of the NCA. Many of the rivers and waterbodies in this NCA are important game fisheries.

Large reservoirs, natural loughs and lakes, often fringed with mixed woodlands, are prominent features of the landscape, as are the many quarries, mostly disused, which are scattered throughout the Sandstone Hills. A number of castles and country houses lie at the foot of the hills. These are typically set within gardens and parkland and include Alnwick Castle, Cragside and Chillingham Castle (famous for its herd of wild white cattle).

The Northumberland Sandstone Hills contain a variety of prehistoric sites including ‘cup and ring’ marked rocks and iron-age hill forts, which together form some of the most interesting archaeological landscapes in England. The extensive medieval remains including deserted villages, ridge-and-furrow cultivation patterns and bastles, and the Roman roads of Dere Street and the Devil’s Causeway with their associated marching camps and forts also contribute to the complexity of the historic landscape. Deserted medieval settlements and earlier monuments are concentrated in the moorlands, although they are also found across the farmed landscapes of this area.

Settlement in the Northumberland Sandstone Hills is sparse and characterised by a scattered pattern of individual isolated farmsteads and small hamlets, and by the market towns of Alnwick and Rothbury; there are no large settlements. The busy market town of Alnwick is located at the foot of the hills where the Great North Road (A1) crosses the River Aln. As the main town in the area, it is a focus for tourism and other development, retaining a distinctive historic character strongly influenced by Alnwick Castle, the grounds of which were laid out by Capability Brown. Rothbury, the ‘capital of Coquetdale’ and gateway to the Northumberland National Park, is also a thriving tourist centre, sited on the north bank of the River Coquet where it breaks through the Sandstone Hills.

The estate farmlands to the north around Alnwick tend to comprise large fields and farmsteads, the central area is interspersed with enclosed blocks of moorland, and to the south of the Coquet dispersed, smaller-scale settlement predominates. Buildings are traditionally constructed in locally quarried sandstone, either rubble or dressed. Many would have originally been heather-thatched but this has been replaced by local slate and, more commonly, Welsh slate when the railway reached Coquetdale. Most buildings date from or were extensively remodelled in the early-to-mid 19th century, as in the Cheviot Fringe and the North Northumberland Coastal Plain but in strong contrast to Mid Northumberland where earlier piecemeal enclosure and buildings are more common.

Only 22 per cent of the NCA is publicly accessible but 15 per cent is covered by the Northumberland National Park; visitors are attracted by the wild, semi-natural landscapes, extensive cultural heritage, recreational opportunities and tranquillity. A small part of the area covered by the National Park falls within the Otterburn Military Training Area and access is therefore restricted. The St Cuthbert’s Way and St Oswald’s Way long-distance routes and the Pennine Cycleway (Reivers Cycle Route) pass through this area, the extensive forests within the Forestry Commission estate provide recreational opportunities including walking, biking and horse riding, and the exposed crags are popular with climbers.

The sparse settlement, scarcity of major roads and low development pressure have historically contributed to the dark night skies and the perception that this is a tranquil area with little urban disturbance. There are, however, increasing development pressures and a number of wind farms and other vertical structures are now prominent in the landscape and visible from the Cheviot Hills and the coast.

The landscape through time

The Fell Sandstone that gives rise to these distinctive hills is a thick sequence of sandstones deposited in a series of mainly south-east flowing rivers during Carboniferous times, about 300 million years ago. These coarse-grained sandstones contain abundant evidence of their mode of deposition in the form of inclined bedding planes which are especially conspicuous on weathered surfaces.

Carboniferous Limestone, deposited in tropical seas, forms the lower-lying land towards the south and east of the area. Large areas of the bedrock geology are covered by thick layers of glacial till with small areas of sands and gravels around existing rivers.

The Fell Sandstone dips gently towards the east and south-east. Erosion of the weaker rocks has produced the highly distinctive series of bold ‘cuesta’ landforms of which the Simonside Hills and Harbottle Crags are fine examples. The underlying geology weathers slowly to produce thin, sandy, acidic soils.

For centuries the moorlands, many of which were cleared in the Neolithic and Bronze Age to provide grazing land, have been used by the surrounding communities for summer grazing, with heather and bracken cut for fuel, bedding, roofing and fodder. Extensive prehistoric settlement and ritual remains are concentrated in the moors, together forming some of the most interesting archaeological landscapes in England. There are Neolithic standing stones and burial cairns, ‘cup and ring’ marked rocks, and bronze-age burial and field clearance cairns. Later prehistoric features include a number of ironage hill forts, enclosed farmsteads, shielings and upland grazing pastures, the more accessible of which developed as farmsteads in the medieval period.

Evidence of the Roman occupation can be seen in the form of the marching camps and forts associated with Dere Street (A68) to the south and the Devil’s Causeway to the north of the NCA.

Village-based settlements and the market towns of Rothbury and Alnwick were established by the 12th century. The area was dominated by arable cultivation in the 12th to 14th centuries, and the summits and upper slopes were used as hunting chase and common pasture with some emparkment for deer such as above Rothbury and at Billsmoor Park, and land above Chillingham became cattle park.

The surviving remains from the medieval period, which include deserted villages, individual settlements and ridge-and-furrow cultivation patterns, still make an important contribution to the character of the hills today. They suggest a period of greater population before the border conflict, raids, famines and epidemics of the 13th century onwards drove people from the area and led to the building of towers or ‘peels’, defensible bastles and castles such as Alnwick Castle. Mixed farming with an emphasis on rearing cattle and sheep for their meat and wool became prevalent. The Union of the Crowns in 1603 paved the way for more settled conditions although the rieving (raiding) continued well into the next century; there was an increase in the droving of cattle from Scotland and improvements in pasture and arable production by estates, which often continued to build bastles to attract tenants into the area.

There was localised industrial activity from the medieval period onwards such as iron working, coal mining and water milling, particularly in the Grasslees Valley and in the fringe farmland in the south of the NCA. Parts of the Fell Sandstone, especially the pale-pink Doddington Stone and sandstone outcrops in the south, have long been worked as building stone for use both within and outside the area and some workings are still active today.

With the exception of earlier bastles and tower houses, the present pattern of dispersed settlement with isolated farmsteads and hamlets dates from the large-scale re-organisation of the countryside in the late 18th and 19th centuries which was driven by the large estates and associated with agricultural improvement. The Parliamentary enclosure of communal townfields and common pasture on the hills resulted in large fields defined by drystone walls which remain as features of today’s landscape. Country houses and castles, such as Chillingham, Cragside and Alnwick Castle, with extensive estates and designed parkland were built or significantly embellished, many sustained by industrial wealth in the later 18th and 19th centuries.

The 19th century also saw the development of the railway network across Northumberland with the Alnwick to Cornhill and Morpeth to Rothbury lines passing through this NCA. Both have now closed but the abandoned lines, stations and bridges are still evident in the landscape.

Many of the estates planted conifer blocks and shelterbelts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the 1920s this area was targeted for its suitability for large-scale commercial conifer planting; plantations such as Harwood and Thrunton woods were established whose geometric shapes still dominate the landscape and which resulted in the drainage and loss of large areas of heather moorland. Reservoirs such as Sweethope Loughs, Fontburn Reservoir and Colt Crag Reservoir were built around the end of the 19th century to provide the wider area with water.

There was further extensive loss of semi-natural habitats from the 1940s onwards, driven initially by the ‘plough up’ campaigns to quickly increase the amount of land under cultivation following the onset of the Second World War. Large swathes of moorland fringe and grassland, particularly on the dip slopes along the eastern edge of the hills, were ploughed up for arable cultivation, and wetland areas were drained. More recently, agri-environment schemes have begun to reverse this trend, restoring some of the rough pasture.

While the area generally has a low population density with relatively little housing development pressure or industrialisation during the 20th and 21st centuries, the main town of Alnwick continues to expand its housing and employment land provision. Other 20th-century additions to the landscape include the establishment of the Otterburn Military Training Area in the western tip of the NCA resulting in some intrusive features such as roads, security fences, safety notices and overhead power lines, but this has ensured continued extensive management of the moorland. Other features include the Royal Air Force’s ‘golf ball’ radar at Brizlee Wood, Second World War anti-invasion defences including pillboxes along the Coquet Valley, the establishment of a number of caravan parks, and the introduction of numerous vertical structures including radio and television transmitter masts, electricity pylons and mobile phone masts. Several wind farms have been built and are prominent in the landscape. Sand and gravel were extracted at Caistron in the Coquet Valley until 2012 and restoration of the former workings is creating a mosaic of wetland habitats.