Historic Settlement Patterns in Weardale

Westgate Village

The settlement pattern around Westgate has been varied throughout time. In late prehistoric times, the main settlement type was the dispersed farmstead with small areas of clearance, gradually leading to large-scale clearance of woodlands. This pattern of settlement is unlikely to have changed during the Roman period, although there are hints that already this part of Weardale was becoming the playground of the Roman rich. The Norman Conquest and the subsequent harrying of the north may have left a blank canvas upon which a new settlement pattern might be planned. Indeed the “apparent decline in pollen of plantains and other farm weeds at a date within a century of AD1100 could be attributed to the Conquerors vengeance by the imaginative reader” (Rackham, 1993, 314). The grand design for medieval settlement here became the Bishops hunting ground. This forbade any settlement within the Park, but the bishops had to provide shelter for their servants who cared for their park and further services for their tenants who joined them for the annual hunt. An infrastructure to administer justice, collect rents and to entertain was established at Westgate and around the castle, a settlement must have grown. After 1250, the parkland was enclosed and settlement permitted outside its boundaries and soon, the desire to exploit the Dale’s mineral wealth led to further settlement in the landscape. It was to this time that the farmsteads at Weeds, then called New Close and Windyside were created. The scattered farmsteads remained the dominant settlement characteristic of the dale outside the hamlets. A beef rearing farm, known as Westyatshele was located in High Westgate c.1419, with pasture and meadow land running south to the river.
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