Burnopfield
| Burnopfield | |
|---|---|
 Burnopfield
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| Burnopfield shown within County Durham | |
| Population | 4,533 |
| OS grid reference | NZ180572 |
| Unitary authority | |
| Ceremonial county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE |
| Postcode district | NE16 |
| Dialling code | 01207 |
| Police | Durham |
| Fire | County Durham and Darlington |
| Ambulance | North East |
| EU Parliament | North East England |
| UK Parliament | |
Burnopfield is a village in County Durham, in England. It is situated north of Stanley and Annfield Plain, close to the River Derwent and is 564 feet above sea level. There are around 5,000 inhabitants in Burnopfield. It is located 10 miles from Newcastle upon Tyne and 15 miles from Durham.
The name Burnopfield probably comes from the Old English meaning "field by the valley stream", although local legend says that the village got its name after an attempted Scottish invasion of England was foiled by literally burning up the fields to stop the advancing armies. In the 19th century, Burnopfield was usually referred to as the Leap, or in local dialect, as the Loup, after the area of Burnopfield named Bryan's Leap.
Burnopfield was the site of a leper hospital, High Friarside Hospice, which was founded in 1312, but was demolished in approximately 1450. The remains of the original Chapel can still be seen today. Other historical buildings in Burnopfield include Burnopfield Hall, which was constructed in 1720 by the Newton family, a wealthy mine-owning family, Leap Mill Farm, a classic example of an 18th-century mill with a working water wheel, and the Gibside estate, which is located between Burnopfield and Rowlands Gill.
The families of Burnopfield Hall and Gibside are linked by the scandalous adventurer Andrew Robinson Stoney: in the late 1760s, Hannah Newton, daughter and heiress to the Newton family fortune, married Stoney, an Irish Lieutenant and adventurer who was stationed in Newcastle. They went to live at Colepike Hall in Lanchester, where his ill-treatment of her became a local scandal, and within a few years she died. In control of her £20,000 fortune, he set off for London, where he met the widowed Countess of Strathmore, who owned the Gibside estate. Stoney eventually tricked her into marriage, and having to adopt her family name of Bowes, became the notorious Stoney Bowes. Her subsequent miserable life with him became one of the biggest scandals of the period. His story was fictionalised by William Makepeace Thackeray in The Luck of Barry Lyndon. Stanley Kubrick later adapted the novel into the 1975 film Barry Lyndon. The family at Gibside Hall eventually became the Bowes-Lyon family, one member of the family being Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. The Hall itself is now owned by the National Trust. In 1815, J. M. W. Turner produced several landscapes of Gibside Hall, which are on display in the Tate Britain.
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Wikipedia