Falstone, Northumberland

Falstone Village Hall Falstone

Today, Falstone appears to be a classic nucleated village nestling in the picturesque North Tyne Valley, a little distance below the mighty dam of Kielder Water and overlooked by the brooding presence of the coniferous forest on the hillsides to the north and south.

It would be easy to imagine that this settlement had a long and unbroken history, stretching back into the medieval era, as a significant centre of population amid a landscape of dispersed farmsteads and small hamlets.

However, the documentary references to the site during the medieval period are extremely sparse and suggest it was a religious focus for the surrounding district, but not necessarily an economic or administrative one.

There is no reference to a medieval township or vill of Falstone, nor to a manorial centre, in effect no indication that the settlement was any larger at this time than the other little hamlets and farmsteads which, then as now, dotted the valley above Bellingham.

Falstone's real emergence as 'a proper village' has come in more recent centuries.

Nevertheless, like every village covered in the study, Falstone has its own distinctive features, its own particular contribution to the history of settlement in the Northumbrian uplands.

Thus it has yielded a group of early medieval sculpture as yet unique within the Pennine-Cheviot uplands of the National Park, pointing to a history of religious activity at this spot stretching back perhaps as much as 1250 years.