Byrness, Northumberland

Memorial WindowByrness lies in west-central Northumberland inside the Northumberland National Park and the Border Forest Park. The village is situated in the upper reaches of Rededale only 8 km from the border with Scotland at Carter Bar. Today Byrness comprises two main settlements:

• firstly a hamlet clustered beside the late 18th-century church and much older graveyard, and
• secondly the Forestry Comission village, established in the 1950s and '60s, less than half a mile further up the valley.

Both settlements lie in close to the main A68 road leading from Tyneside up the valley to Scotland. To the north and south the village is overlooked by extensive conifer plantations of the Redesdale Forest.

Byrness never seems to have been a township in its own right, though it did eventually become a parish. Between the 17th and 19th centuries it fell within the large township or ward of Rochester, which in turn formed part of the even larger historic ecclesiastical parish of Elsdon.

Both these territories - township and parish - were far too extensive to use as the basis of this study. Accordingly, a smaller study area has been adopted which is focussed on Byrness village and covers a 5km stretch of Redesdale from Catcleugh Reservoir in the west down to Cottonshopeburnfoot in the east.

To the north, the study area incorporates the entire catchment of the Spithope Burn (which flows into the Rede on the north side of the Forestry village) extending right up the border on Greyhound Law at a height of 484m O.D. The hills on the east side of the Spithope Burn rise to a maximum of 527m O.D. on Cairn Knowe. The development of the parochial and township structures is discussed more fully in the history of Byrness.