LOW Butterby Farm lies on the same river bank as Shincliffe, but the river twists and turns so much that if a crow were to fly the one-and-a-half miles north-east direct to the village, it would have to cross the river twice.

The farm sits in a river meadow tucked away inside a meander.

Further protection is offered by dense woodland and a marshy wetland formed by an oxbow lake adds to the isolation.

It was formed by the old course of a long redundant loop of the River Wear that was abandoned by nature centuries ago.

As if all these natural defences were not enough, Low Butterby also has a deep moat.

The first inhabitants were clearly security conscious and at a guess you would expect them to have been Vikings of the Danish variety. The reasoning is simple. Place names ending in the letters "by" are generally Danish in origin and that would make Butterby one of the most northerly Danish place names in the county.

However, don't be fooled, the first settlers were a Norman family called D'Audre and they gave the site the French name Beautrove meaning "beautiful find". Locals corrupted it to Butterby.

Sadly, only the moat and walls of the old manor house remain and the present farm is a private residence of the 17th or 18th Century.

Low Butterby never grew into anything more than a farm and there was certainly never a church. In a local saying to "go to Butterby Church" was to skip church altogether.

High Houghall Farm lies across the Wear north of Butterby, but the nearest bridges are at Croxdale and Shincliffe, not encouraging to neighbourliness.

Houghall covers a wider area than many people realise, stretching a mile from north to south. High Houghall Farm is at the southern extremity, while the agricultural college, near the A177, is at the northern end.

The college was founded in 1938 and merged with Peterlee's East Durham Community College in 1999.

Houghall Farm, a part of the college, is the site of the original Houghall manor. It lies half-way between High Houghall and the main college. The name derived from Heugh-Halh meaning "hill spur-water meadow" and it neatly describes the setting of flat land surrounded by hills.

In early times Houghall belonged to the Prince Bishops but passed to the monks of Durham Cathedral in the 13th Century. The manor house was built at this time and, like Butterby, was protected by a moat.

The house was rebuilt in the Jacobean period but was demolished in 1966.

The present buildings are of a later date but a surviving barn is possibly medieval.

The more southerly High Houghall Farm was probably sub let from the main farm in the 15th Century.

The Durham monks farmed at Houghall throughout much of its history. They built flood defences along the river to protect the land and carried out fish farming in the ponds near the manor house. As at Butterby, this wetland was created from a redundant loop of the Wear.

The oxbow at Houghall was 8ft deep in places. In 1961, it was filled with material excavated from land being prepared for Durham University's science block at Elvet and was planted with trees.

The Houghall Farm is reached from a lane just north of Shincliffe Bridge. This lane is popular with walkers and leads to the Hollinside and Great High Woods that crown the ridge to the west of Houghall.

A sign-posted discovery trail highlights many features of local and natural history interest. They include a Victorian pump house at the beginning of the lane near Shincliffe Bridge. Dating from the 1840s, it provided the first tap water to Durham City but was abandoned long before the end of the 19th Century, after water pollution from local collieries made its work impossible.

There is no such problem today and the building has recently reopened as a restaurant.

The lane from Shincliffe Bridge runs along the northern bank of the Wear to the site of an earlier medieval bridge. Then after another 200 yards it reaches the site of a wooden bridge, a Victorian structure that carried a colliery wagonway to Croxdale Colliery that lay to the west. This is rather confusing since Croxdale itself is actually to the south.

Part of the lane follows the course of the wagonway through a small wood on the site of Houghall Colliery.

The colliery was sunk in 1840 and operated for 44 years, employing 241 men. It had its own village with a church, a school and 153 houses by 1870.

The houses were demolished in the 1950s and virtually nothing other than rubble and bricks remain in this woodland site.

Joseph Love, who also owned Bank Top colliery at High Shincliffe, was owner of Houghall mine and village and some of the bricks are imprinted with the word Love.

The village school stood further west on the edge of Great High Wood in a field called Hospital Field north of Houghall Farm. The school served as an isolation hospital in the 1930s and was demolished in 1956.

The hospital field is interesting because it includes the old course of the River Wear now marked with trees. The wet nature of the field makes growing conditions difficult for anything other than grass.

The fields in this part of Houghall suffer from a natural phenomenon called a frost hollow or frost pocket caused by the wooded hills that surround them in a semi-circular fashion trapping pockets of cold air.

These features are no doubt interesting topics of study for the students of the local college.

Published: 17/10/2003