College Valley - A Beautiful Place
College Valley
Cheviot Hills
The College Valley is one of the gems of the Northumberland National Park. Located at the northern end of the Park the valley runs north/south and give access to some of the most amazing upland and archaeological landscapes in Northumberland. Nature meets history head on in this beautiful highland place and exploring the College Valley is like getting to know a great piece of music or a work of art. There is the huge first impact and then the pleasure of returning and seeing it in a different light, so that you understand and discover something more each time.
The Valley is owned and controlled by the College Valley Estate. It is managed it with great care and in a highly sympathetic way. There is much to see here that is of great natural beauty and power especially the rocky gorge of Hethpool Linn. In autumn, sea trout and salmon can be seen leaping up the Linn on their way to spawning grounds upstream. A welter of rich wildlife habitats lie within the valley, including native woodlands, such as Harrowbog, providing shelter for roe deer, feral goats and hares. You may see a buzzard patrolling the skies or the white rump of a wheatear as it flits between walls and rocks. Above the College Burn, the rounded hills rise majestically skyward. They were formed from the lava flows of a great volcano that erupted here hundreds of millions of years ago. At its core was a great chamber of molten rock, which solidified deep in the earth. Over millions of years the overlying rocks have eroded away leaving mighty Cheviot standing proud at the southern end of the valley.
From a settlement history point of view the College Valley may have been lived in for at least 7,000 years. The people who worked, played and died here have left behind clues to the way they lived their lives. We know that the valley has been home to farmers and hunters, peasants and aristocrats. It has seen a changing procession of people: from the first hunter-gatherers in search of wild animals, to modern visitors in search of peace, solitude and, maybe, a sense of the past.
We think that the earliest settlements in this area were probably those of the first farmers who arrived in the neighbourhood during the late Stone Age. Little is known about where they lived and the types of houses they built, though they did leave behind the remains of ceremonial monuments, known as henges. Of particular importance are the remains of the once great stone circle on the haughland just next to the National Park car park at Hethpool.
We know that in the Bronze Age people began to make a big impact on the Cheviot Hills. They began to fell much of the wildwood to make way for farming – a way of life that has persisted from that time until the present day. Today’s Cheviot farmers would recognise many of the problems that their forebears faced 4,000 years ago. They would, however, notice a difference in climate. The early part of the Bronze Age was several degrees warmer than today, allowing crops to be grown quite high on the hills. Some of the cultivation terraces which survive in the valley may date back to this time and the numerous Bronze Age burial cairns suggest that the Valley was well-populated then.
Towards the end of the Bronze Age and the beginnings of the Iron Age, around 2,800 years ago, much more evidence has been found for settlements. These consisted of timber-built roundhouses set within a palisade enclosure (large timber fence). At that time the climate was getting worse and conflict over the remaining good agricultural land may have meant that people needed better defences. Archaeologists have found evidence that many of the valley’s 10 known hillforts, such as Ring Chesters were built on top of earlier palisaded settlements.
Maybe those early fenced settlements represent the beginning of the many centuries of cattle rustling that became endemic in these Border lands. The valley has seen much bloodshed and conflict throughout its long history, and it may not be surprising to learn that all the owners of the valley, before the Union of England and Scotland in 1603, were absentee landlords. From then on, the owners of Hethpool spent at least some time at Hethpool House. Notable amongst these were Admiral Lord Collingwood (of Trafalgar fame) and Sir Arthur Munro Sutherland, the noted late nineteenth/early twentieth century Tyneside industrialist.
