Hethpool And The Arts And Crafts Style

This modest 19th century farm hamlet was transformed a century with the construction of Hethpool House in 1919, creating one of the finest architectural assemblages in the National Park. This splendid mansion was executed in the Arts and Craft style for the Tyneside industrialist, Arthur Munro Sutherland, by George Reavell of Alnwick and further embellished by Robert Mauchlen in 1928, when the distinctive conical roofed tower was added.

The house 'thus bears the imprint of two of the most accomplished north-east domestic architects of the early twentieth century' (Frodsham 2004, 135). A summer house to the north of the main house formed part of Reavell's original assemblage and is likewise grade II listed, whilst to the south, a row of four farm cottages were built in the same Arts and Craft style by Robert Mauchlan in 1926 and are reckoned to be 'among the finest cottages to be seen anywhere in Northumberland' (ibid.). To the north of the village, the Elsdon Burn was dammed to form a small lake from which it emerged flowing over a series of water cascades.

A datestone of 1687 belonging to an earlier house was incorporated in the Arts and Crafts mansion, but the only earlier structure visible in the village today is the ruined medieval stone tower. The delightful early 20th century Arts and Craft architecture is therefore the dominant visual impression for any modern visitor walking around the village. However the architectural elaboration of the village provides a striking contrast with the austerity of the surrounding landscape and the obvious reminders of a much earlier human presence etched onto the rugged landforms.

Set in the narrow confines of the College Valley and overlooked by medieval (and perhaps earlier) cultivation terraces which cover the steep valley sides and dramatic Iron Age hillforts which crown the adjacent summits of Great Hetha and Little Hetha, the modern village thus provides a fitting tribute to that very special sense of place already recognised perhaps 5000 years earlier by the builders of Hethpool's stone circle.