| Content Description | See sections Pl E11/1-11/10 for further details.
The Northumberland estates were primarily those of the Ogle family, which passed by descent to the Cavendishes, and thereafter followed the 'maternal' estates of the Duke of Portland down through the Holles and Harley families to the 3rd Duke's mother. As part of the reorganisation of the 3rd Duke's affairs a private Act of Parliament was promoted in the early 1780s to facilitate the sale of the Northumberland estates. Outlying portions were disposed of over the coming years, leaving the three core estates of Bothal (supplemented by recent acquisitions in the adjacent area of Ashington), Hepple and Ogle and a few oddments such as land in Jesmond near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Hepple and Ogle were sold in the 1800s; by 1830 Ogle, appropriately, had passed to a cadet branch of the original Ogle family.
The Bothal estate, centred on the Portland's family seat at Bothal Castle (usually occupied by their estate agent), was retained, and had been enhanced by the Ashington purchase. Coal under the Bothal estate led to the creation of modern Ashington, the largest pit village in the country. Much of the material (listed in sections Pl E11/4 and E11/6) deals with minerals and the leasing and sale of buildings and building sites in Ashington. As well as the sales of building plots and urban properties, several thousand acres of the outlying portions of the Bothal estate were sold in the years after the First World War (a time when large landowners were in general selling off peripheral lands and estates, usually to sitting tenants). Most of the railway material is also linked to coal and its transportation to local ports.
From the 1890s to the 1920s the pattern of developments in Northumberland closely echoes that of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Likewise the exploitation of minerals was left primarily in the hands of well-funded joint stock companies.
Although lands in southern Northumberland had been among the first sold off in the time of the 3rd Duke of Portland, a small urban estate in and around Newcastle-upon-Tyne was retained into the early 20th century.
The management of the Northumberland estates was for long in the hands of the Sample family, a longer lasting dynasty than the Turners at Welbeck.
Various Ogle/Cavendish settlements will be found listed in section Pl F3/1; mortgages and trust deeds from the time of the 3rd Duke of Portland will be found in section Pl F5; 18th century correspondence relating to the Harley estates in Northumberland is in section Pl C 2. |