Blagdon Hall stands close to the former Great North Road, a few miles north of Newcastle upon Tyne. At the end of the lake stands a circle of Doric columns known as The Temple. The columns were first erected as part of a rotunda ,with an unusual domed roof, at Heaton Hall, on the edge of Newcastle. Part of the grounds of Heaton Hall later became a public park, but when it looked as if the Temple was going to be a drain on corporation funds, it was removed to Blagdon in around 1937.

Matthew Ridley (1711-1778) of Heaton Hall was a successful businessman and represented Newcastle as mayor and as Member of Parliament. He succeeded his father to Heaton Hall in 1739, by which date the ‘beautiful house’ already stood amongst avenues, gardens and a wilderness. Ridley added a new stone front to the existing brick mansion, with towers at the corners and by 1766 Heaton Hall was noted by Sir Roger Newdigate as a ‘well looking house with round Towers at each End sashd & modern’ (confirming that the house was remodelled by Matthew Ridley, and not by his son Sir Matthew White Ridley in the 1770s as has previously been stated). An account in 1787 confirms that the architect of the new front was William Newton of Newcastle.

Ridley must also have been laying out his grounds in the then fashionable natural style: the park was described in 1769 as planted with ‘small clumps of young forest-trees’ (there is a tantalising mention of the landscape designer Richard Woods leaving Harewood in Yorkshire to visit ‘Mr Ridley’ in Northumberland in 1765). The watercolour below shows that there was a vista through a plantation to the Temple as a distant eye-catcher when approaching the estate.

The Temple probably also dates from this period of improvements. It is described as a ‘tempiato’ in Wallis’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Northumberland… of 1769, and in the 1770s William Beilby painted it for the Duchess of Northumberland’s album of views. It may also be the work of William Newton, although no evidence is known to survive.

Sadly no trace survives of some ‘mock ruins’ built by Ridley ‘as ornamental objects from Heaton Hall’. This folly, also extant by 1769, stood on an eminence at nearby Byker and as well as being an object from Heaton Hall, it gave a ‘most extensive prospect’ of the town of Newcastle and the shipping on the Tyne.

The Ridleys left Heaton in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the estate became home to the Potter family. In 1878 Addison Potter sold part of the pleasure grounds to the Corporation of Newcastle for use as a public park – this portion included the ‘ornamental temple-like building’, which was one of the first things to be seen when entering the new park via the South Gate. The Gardeners’ Chronicle magazine liked how the corporation had conserved the pleasure garden ‘very much as it was as a residential place’. Picture postcards show the Temple at the top of a slope, with steps rising through a rockery, although it is not clear if this was created by the Potter family or if it is a later landscaping by the Parks department.

In 1932 the Potters sold Heaton Hall, and the remainder of its ground, to a firm of builders. Under the headline ‘The End of Heaton Hall’ the local paper announced that the hall would be razed and the land developed for housing.

Meanwhile, the Temple in the park was not being kept in good repair and in December 1936 a corporation working group discussed its future. The councillors were divided, with some wishing to see its immediate demolition and others keen that it should be repaired. By that date Viscount Ridley of Blagdon (the viscountcy was created in 1900) had already been consulted, and had agreed to take the columns if the Temple was to be pulled down. The vote was won 4:3 in favour of keeping the Temple, but by autumn 1937 no action had been taken and it was roped off from the public and declared unsafe. Contractors were called in to give estimates for taking the structure down and re-erecting it at Blagdon – a deal must have been struck and the columns were moved the few miles to Blagdon. History does not seem to record what happened to the domed roof, but the columns form a charming eye-catcher at the head of the lake.

Blagdon Hall is a private home but the gardens open for charity on a few days each year. You can find forthcoming dates here.

Heaton Park, with adjoining parks along the valley of the Ouse Burn, is a Grade II registered public park and is freely accessible.

The Flâneuse is grateful to Dr Michael Cousins for sharing his transcript of the travel diary of Sir Roger Newdigate. Thanks also to Fiona Green for sharing her research into Heaton Park and to Richard Pears for information on Blagdon Hall.

Thank you for reading. As ever your thoughts or observations are very welcome. The comments box can be found at the foot of the page.

On the former Stella Hall estate, high on the south bank of the River Tyne, are the remains of an elegant octagonal pavilion which gave its name to this lofty spot: Summerhouse Hill.

Stella, now in Tyne & Wear but historically in County Durham, was originally a seat of the Tempest family, before passing by marriage to the Widdrington family. Henry Francis, 5th Lord Widdrington (1700-1774) had technically been stripped of his title, but he remained commonly known as Lord Widdrington. In 1774 he left the estate to his nephew Thomas Eyre of Hassop (?-1792) and from there it passed by descent to the Towneley family of Lancashire.

A 1736 history mentioned the ‘magnificent House and Gardens’ and a century later the mansion was again described as ‘magnificent’, with the north front overlooking the river and the south facing ‘a beautiful small park, which is pleasingly diversified with rising ground and clumps of trees’. Frustratingly, the summerhouse is not mentioned in either of these accounts.

We do know that it was extant by 1755 when, known as The Mount, it was furnished as a banqueting room with a circular mahogany table, four Windsor chairs and a mahogany ‘footman’. The latter is a rare alternative name for a piece of furniture sometimes called a ‘Dumb Waiter’ with 3 or 4 revolving tiers from which guests could serve themselves in the intimate setting of the little pavilion. The basement room would have served as a space where the servants could prepare the meals. James Paine has been suggested as the architect on the grounds that he reportedly remodelled the house – but to date evidence that he, or any other architect,  worked at Stella has proved rather elusive.

The only known view of the building before it became derelict is an image in the collection of Gateshead Libraries. Sadly, its source has become forgotten over time, so we can’t even be sure it is a true representation, but it shows the octagonal brick chamber topped with a tall dome and a ball finial.

The octagonal building is shown on the tithe map of 1839 on land belonging to Peregrine Towneley. Its condition at that date is unknown, but by 1865 it was described as being in a ‘dilapidated condition’ and the ‘magnificent’ ceiling – presumably the decorated plasterwork interior of the dome – was lost. The same source, A Sketch of Stella Hall, notes that there were two statues close to the summerhouse which were commonly known as Adam and Eve, although the writer found this description ‘questionable’. Elsewhere it is written that the figures represented the god Apollo and ‘the playwright Aesculapius’. Again, time seems to have muddled the facts: Asclepius was Apollo’s son and the Greek god of medicine. The statues had been moved closer to the house by 1913, but neither figure is known to survive today, although they are remembered in the name of a slope in the former park: ‘Image Hill’.

In 1850 Stella Hall was bought by the Cowen family. Joseph Cowen junior (1829-1900) was a wealthy industrialist and radical politician whose friends included Giuseppe Garibaldi, who played a key role in the unification of Italy. Cowen erected a statue of his friend near the summerhouse but after Stella Hall was demolished in 1954 the statue was thought lost – until locals began to find fragments dotted around the area.

Garibaldi’s head spent some time as a garden ornament, but can now be seen in Blaydon Library. In 1992 the Newcastle Journal reported that his torso was part of a floral display in a private garden, whilst his legs were the ‘centrepiece of a flower bed’ at a local school. With regret the paper concluded that ‘Garibaldi, like Humpty Dumpty, will never be put together again’.

The summerhouse continued to decay until the mid-1970s. Local history societies then began to put pressure on Gateshead Council to consolidate the building, which was repeatedly subject to attacks by vandals. Gateshead Council pleaded poverty, and eventually Tyne & Wear County Council provided the funding, with the proviso that Gateshead Council would ‘maintain it in future to a high standard’.

Today Summerhouse Hill has been contracted to Summerhill, and you can still access the grade II listed summerhouse from this road. The building is now backed by vegetation, and has lost the full panorama it once commanded, but there are still great views over the (now heavily developed) valley.

There are no servants available to prepare a picnic today, but the Folly Flâneuse, who is constantly wondering where her next cup of coffee is coming from, is delighted to recommend this refreshment stop at the bottom of the hill.

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