IN 1984, Ravensford Farm was derelict and its a garden was a field of weeds with one old apple tree harking back to its productive days.
By 2024, the centuries-old farmhouse has been lovingly restored and next weekend the garden – now a beautiful mix of lawn, woodland, herbaceous borders, free-flowing water and, of course, one old apple tree – is open for the 25th and final time to the public.
Ravensford, just south of Hamsterley, is the home of Caroline and Jonathan Peacock who have spent the decades bringing this historic corner of south Durham – the earliest known resident of Ravensford was Alice Galonn in 1408 – back to life.
For instance, most visitors to the open gardens on Sunday, September 22, will approach from the south, using a bridge to cross the Linburn Beck just before they arrive. This must once have been the ford where the ravens drank or nested – or perhaps a Viking called Hraefn, a common Scandinavian name, settled here.
But one day in the early 1720s, when the beck was in flood so the ford was impassable, Jack Dowson of Ravensford Farm went across a rickety footbridge with his horse. A travelling piper, touring the area playing for money, followed.
As Jack and the horse passed the centre of the bridge, it gave way behind them. They scrambled to safety, but the poor piper was washed away.
One version of the story says: “When the people of Hamsterley asked Dowson where the piper was, he replied, with the utmost coolness, that “he was drowned all to rags”.”
The body of the unfortunate fellow was found the following day in an eddy which is now called Piper’s Hole.
Another sad story concerns the newly married Sandersons, John and Margaret, who arrived at Ravensford in 1812, and their daughter, Margaret, was born there in 1815. As the family grew, they moved a couple of miles north to High Shipley.
The children, including Jane who was born in 1826, still went to school in Hamsterley, where, on December 10, 1834, “during the dinner hour, she accidentally set her clothes on fire and was so dreadfully burnt as to occasion her death shortly afterwards”.
Jane, only eight, seems to have been working on her sampler at the time of her death.
Jane’s elder sister, Margaret, completed the work on her behalf, poignantly stitching in the date of her death at the bottom.
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Not all the Ravensford stories are sad. The Peacocks have been told that the reason there are unusual curved walls in their kitchen is that when the Ravensford farmer heard that a railway was going to be built nearby, he saw an ideal opportunity for diversification. He set curved benches along his new walls and imagined they would soon be lucratively occupied by railwaymen and travellers buying refreshments from his wife.
Disappointingly for him, the railway pioneers chose a route via Witton-le-Wear, and so Ravensford was left deep in the agricultural countryside which gives today’s gardens such great rural charm.
- Ravensford Farm gardens at Hamsterley (postcode DL13 3NH) are open on Sunday, September 22, from 2pm to 5pm. Admission for adults is £4. Refreshments available. It is part of the National Open Garden Scheme.
DO you have one of your ancestors’ samplers? Many people have them framed and hanging on the wall because they can be extraordinarily beautiful and are a fascinating connection with a family member.
The earliest known sampler in this country is in the Victoria & Albert Museum and was made by Jane Bostocke in 1598, although it was not until the early 19th Century that they become really widespread. Each area – each school, each church – had its own design ideas, so we can learn a lot by the motifs they reoccur in a locality.
If you have a sampler you’d care to share, please send a picture of it to chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk with some details.
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