Falstone is a small village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

Northumberland Northumberland ( ) is a ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North East England, on the Anglo-Scottish border, border with Scotland. It is bordered by the North Sea to the east, Tyne and Wear and County Durham to the south, Cumb ...

, England, just east of

Kielder Water Kielder Water is a large man-made reservoir in Northumberland in North East England. It is the largest artificial lake in the United Kingdom by capacity of water and it is surrounded by Kielder Forest, one of the biggest man-made woodlands in ...

. The village is from the

Anglo–Scottish border The Anglo-Scottish border runs for between Marshall Meadows Bay on the east coast and the Solway Firth in the west, separating Scotland and England. The Firth of Forth was the border between the Picto-Gaelic Kingdom of Alba and the Anglian ...

. Much of the village is clustered around its two churches, St. Peter's Anglican and the United Reformed Church. Falstone holds a popular annual agricultural show.

Etymology

The name ''Falstone'' is first attested in 1255, as ''Faleston''. This derives from the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

words ''fealu'' 'yellow, grey, mottled' and ''stān'' 'stone; thus it originally meant something like 'speckled stone'. The district of Falstone also once contained a place called ''Powtreuet'', first attested in 1325 as ''Poltrerneth'', whose name comes from the

Brittonic language The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic; ; ; and ) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages; the other is Goidelic. It comprises the extant languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh. The name ''Brythonic'' was ...

History

On 24 October 1985, near the village, Luftwaffe

Panavia Tornado The Panavia Tornado is a family of twin-engine, variable-sweep wing multi-role combat aircraft, jointly developed and manufactured by Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany. There are three primary #Variants, Tornado variants: the Tornado IDS ...

'44+45' of

Jagdbombergeschwader 32 ''Jagdbombergeschwader 32'' (Fighter-Bomber Wing 32; abbreviated as: ''JaBoG 32'') was a fighter-bomber wing of the German Air Force (''Luftwaffe''). The wing was based in the south of Germany at Lechfeld Airbase and flew Tornado IDS and Tornado ...

crashed, with two aircrew killed, taking part in 'Operation Mallet Blow', Hans Joachim Schimpf and Holger Zacharias.

Governance

Falstone is in the

parliamentary In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

constituency of

Hexham Hexham ( ) is a market town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, on the south bank of the River Tyne, formed by the confluence of the North Tyne and the South Tyne at Warden nearby, and close to Hadrian's Wall. Hexham was the administra ...

. Falstone has its own Parish council. Falstone parish was created in 1811 when the ancient parish of Simonburn was divided by Act of Parliament.

Transport

Falstone was served by

Falstone railway station Falstone railway station is a former railway station that served the hamlet of Falstone, in Northumberland, England. History The station was on the Border Counties Railway which linked the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, near Hexham, with th ...

on the

Border Counties Railway The Border Counties Railway was a railway line connecting in Northumberland, with on the Waverley Route in Roxburghshire. Its promoter had hopes of exploiting mineral resources in the area, and it was taken up by the North British Railway, wh ...

which linked the

Newcastle and Carlisle Railway The Newcastle and Carlisle Railway (N&CR) (formally, the ''Newcastle upon Tyne and Carlisle Railway'') was an English railway company formed in 1825 that built a line from Newcastle upon Tyne on Britain's east coast, to Carlisle, on the west co ...

, near

, with the

Border Union Railway The Border Union Railway was a railway line which connected places in the south of Scotland and Cumberland in England. It was authorised on 21 July 1859 by the ( 22 & 23 Vict. c. xxiv) and advertised as the Waverley Route by the promoters—th ...

at Riccarton Junction. The first section of the route was opened between

and

Chollerford Chollerford is a village in Northumberland, England, approximately four miles (seven km) north of Hexham (via the A6079 road) on the B6318, the Military Road, not far from Hadrian's Wall. There is a roundabout in the village where the B6318 a ...

in 1858, the remainder opening in 1862. The line was closed to passengers by

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commis ...

in 1956.

References

External links

GENUKI
(accessed: 1 November 2008)

(accessed: 1 November 2008)
Falstone ShowFalstone Parish Council
Villages in Northumberland Northumberland places with etymologically Brittonic names {{Northumberland-geo-stub