Background

During the latter part of the medieval period, the northernmost part of the North Tyne Valley had experienced both a cessation in agricultural activity and a loss of population.

As a result of the intermittent wars between the English and Scottish crowns and the dislocation of the civil population, no restoration of reasonable government and economic activity was possible until the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

The policies of James I of England and VI of Scotland restored peace to the region and permitted some resettlement of population and reoccupation of some of the previously deserted farms.

However, residual feuding between the leading families of the area, interruption in government during the Civil War and Jacobite agitation leading to open rebellion in 1715, militated against the development of a settled economic infrastructure. Reasonable prosperity and population growth did not return until the mid-eighteenth century with the development of better-organised agriculture in the North Tyne Valley.