Christon Bank is a small village in

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land on ...

, England, 9 miles north of the town of

Alnwick Alnwick ( ) is a market town in Northumberland, England, of which it is the traditional county town. The population at the 2011 Census was 8,116. The town is on the south bank of the River Aln, south of Berwick-upon-Tweed and the Scottish bor ...

. Prior to 1847 it was a small farming hamlet, which was transformed by the building of the

East Coast Main Line The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain running broa ...

railway.

History

The village is named after the Christon (originally Cryston) family, who were local

yeoman Yeoman is a noun originally referring either to one who owns and cultivates land or to the middle ranks of servants in an English royal or noble household. The term was first documented in mid-14th-century England. The 14th century also witn ...

farmers and members of the

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

movement. In 1598 Thomas Cryston was recorded as the freeholder who held a quarter of a freehold in a local farm. The family eventually purchased the land outright from Henry Darling before it was sold in 1759 to Henry Taylor of

Rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

, who extended the property to the west. The farm was further expanded in the 19th century as it embraced the onset of modern farming methods such as new fertilisers, drainage and machinery.Keys To The Past
Farm extended in 19th century. Today Christon Bank Farm is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

British Listed Buildings
Grade II and history. and is still the predominant farm in the area. The predominance of farming in the locality led to the setting up of commercial

lime Lime commonly refers to: * Lime (fruit), a green citrus fruit * Lime (material), inorganic materials containing calcium, usually calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide * Lime (color), a color between yellow and green Lime may also refer to: Botany ...

production in the area in the early part of the 19th century. The lime was produced as fertiliser for the local farms. A kiln was constructed in the early 1800s followed by a second one later in the century. The OS map of 1865 also shows a lime works on the site and a small quarry. The site of the lime kilns is south-east of the village; both kilns are grade II listed buildings and received some renovation in 2005 with funding from

DEFRA DEFRA may refer to: * Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, United States law * Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, United Kingdom government department {{Disambiguation ...

and co-operation from the local landowner.Stackyard News
Details of Lime Kilns.Keys To The Past
Details of Lime Kilns. Other industry in the immediate area at that time included small-scale

coal mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

; the mine to the south of the village on the road to

Rennington Rennington is a village in Northumberland, England about north of Alnwick. Governance Rennington is in the parliamentary constituency of Berwick-upon-Tweed Berwick-upon-Tweed (), sometimes known as Berwick-on-Tweed or simply Berwick, ...

produced coal to burn at the lime kilns and for local use.Embleton website
General History. Prior to the opening of the railway in 1847, Christon Bank consisted of just fourteen dwellings including two

public houses A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...

, the Blink Bonny and the Rising Sun. The arrival of the railway and the accompanying station transformed Christon Bank from a quiet farming hamlet to a busy village with the facilities of a main line station, which in 1885 dealt with over 10,000 passengers, over 6,000 livestock and 2,000 tons of raw materials. The raw materials included

whinstone Whinstone is a term used in the quarrying industry to describe any hard dark-coloured rock. Examples include the igneous rocks, basalt and dolerite, as well as the sedimentary rock, chert. Etymology The Northern English/Scots term ''whin'' is f ...

quarried at Embleton to the east and brought by cart. A -long tramway, known as Johnny’s Line, was built in 1895 to bring the stone directly from the quarry to the station. The tramway ran alongside the road from Embleton and had fallen out of use by the end of World War II.Visit Uk
Details of station and quarry. The expansion of the village continued with the construction of a

Primitive Methodist The Primitive Methodist Church is a Methodist Christian denomination with the holiness movement. It began in England in the early 19th century, with the influence of American evangelist Lorenzo Dow (1777–1834). In the United States, the Primiti ...

chapel in 1891 on the initiative of the station master Theopilus Moor and James Young who approached the Liberal statesman

Sir Edward Grey Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, (25 April 1862 – 7 September 1933), better known as Sir Edward Grey, was a British Liberal statesman and the main force behind British foreign policy in the era of the First World War. An adhe ...

for a donation of land which was approved; the first stone was laid in a special ceremony on 3 August 1891.Chronicle Live
Details of chapel. Three more cottages were also built by the end of the century. In 1900 a laundry was set up by Lady Grey of nearby

Fallodon Fallodon is a hamlet and former civil parish, now in the parish of Newton-by-the-Sea, in the county of Northumberland, England. It is the territorial designation of Viscount Grey of Fallodon and Baronet Grey of Fallodon. It is pronounced with ...

to provide employment for local women; at that time the village had a population of 105.Visit Uk
General History.

Present day

A major expansion of the village started in the late 1980s with the building of the Mount View residential estate on land to the west of the railway. Further housing was built on the site of the old railway sidings to the east of the line. The station itself closed in 1965 as part of the

Beeching cuts The Beeching cuts (also Beeching Axe) was a plan to increase the efficiency of the nationalised British Rail, railway system in Great Britain. The plan was outlined in two reports: ''The Reshaping of British Railways'' (1963) and ''The Develop ...

, leaving the village with a feeling of a dormitory village, although the

level crossing A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, Trail, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line crossing over or under using an Overpass#Railway, overpass ...

is in constant use with 100 trains a day passing through.ABC Railway Guide
States 100 trains a day. The old station buildings have been converted to residential use. The Rising Sun pub is now closed and is rented as a

holiday cottage A holiday cottage, holiday home, vacation home, or vacation property is accommodation used for holiday vacations, corporate travel, and temporary housing often for less than 30 days. Such properties are typically small homes, such as cottag ...

. The Blink Bonny remains as the only public house in the village; dating from the 1820s, it was named after the race horse Blink Bonny, the winner of The Derby in 1857: two of the horse‘s hooves are on display in a cabinet in the pub.Northumberland Gazette
Details of Blink Bonny race horse. The village also has a

convenience store A convenience store, convenience shop, corner store or corner shop is a small retail business that stocks a range of everyday items such as coffee, groceries, snack foods, confectionery, soft drinks, ice creams, tobacco products, lottery ticket ...

, Post Office and art shop. There are two caravan sites, the large Christon Bank Caravan Park and the smaller Pippins Park. A further housing development of twelve detached houses known as Horsley Grange was completed just to the east of the village in 2013.Chronicle Live
Horsley Grange new build. In 2011 it was estimated that 220 people lived in Christon Bank.

References

{{authority control Embleton, Northumberland Villages in Northumberland