Adderstone Hall

Adderstone Hall (gbmapping|NU141303) is a privately owned Georgian Grecian mansion situated on the bank of the River Warn near Lucker, Northumberland. It is a Grade II* listed building from which the present owners operate a holiday park.

Adderstone was held by the Forster family, Governors of Bamburgh Castle from the 12th century. A pele tower of which no trace now remains existed on or close to the site in 1415. Thomas Forster (1659-1725), High Sheriff of Northumberland, built a new manor house in the early 18th century. The Forsters lived on the estate for over 600 years until they were ruined by the financial excesses of Sir William Forster (d 1700) and the involvement of Thomas Forster (1683-1738) in the Jacobite uprising of 1715.

The property, already leased and subsequently acquired by the Watson family, passed briefly to John W Bacon of Staward Hall in 1763. The present hall was built in 1819 to a design by architect William BurnThe first Watson to be born at Adderstone (in 1760) was Captain John Watson whose son Sir William Watson, an MP and a baron of the Exchequer (1856) married Anne the sister of the great industrialist 1st Lord Armstrong of Cragside. Their son John William (born at Adderstone Hall 1827)had one son, Willam, who inherited Cragside and the Armstrong fortune from his great uncle (and subsequently bought Bamburgh Castle), with the result that Adderstone was left to his only surviving sister Dorothy who married Noel Villiers in 1903 and lived at Adderstone Hall until she died in 1961, when the property was sold for the benefit of her many nephews and nieces.

References

* [http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/Details/Default.aspx?id=237830&mode=quick English Heritage: Images of England]
* "The History and Antiquities of North Durham" (1852) Rev James Raine MA pp307-310
* [http://homepage.mac.com/philipdavis/English%20sites/2295.html Adderstone Tower]
* Burke's Peerage 1930