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THE PARISH OF ST. JOHN LEE.
nephew, Mr. John Atkinson, to the late Mrs. Catherine Anne Trevelyan.1
It now belongs to her only child, Mrs. Florence Trevelyan Cacciola of
Hallington, Taormina, in Sicily, whose Hallington estate2 consists of the hall
and the farm called Cheviot.3
The most characteristic feature of Hallington is that which strikes the
eye of the wayfarer on the Watling Street when he reaches Beukley, and,
looking northward over the wide valley of the Erring burn, sees at a distance
O j O /
of three or four miles a thin blue line. This line marks the Hallington
reservoirs of the Newcastle and Gateshead Water Company (constructed
under an Act of Parliament obtained in 1868); that at East Hallington has
a surface area of 131 acres, and when full will contain 686 millions of gallons.
By another Act obtained in 1877 another reservoir was constructed at West
Hallington (but within the township of Colwell) to contain 722 millions of
gallons. These two reservoirs are connected by a tunnel and open aqueduct,
about two and a half miles in length, with other reservoirs of the company at
Coltcrag and Little Swinburn.4
1 In the Parliamentary Return of Owners of Land of 1873 (the new Doomsday book) Mrs. S. Trevelyan
of Hallington is entered as owner of 745 acres of land, with a rental of .£971, and Catherine A. Trevelyan
of Hallington of 227 acres, with a rental of £317. The two entries refer to the same person, viz., Mrs.
Spencer Trevelyan.
2 About half of the area occupied by the Water company’s reservoir at East Hallington was purchased
from Mrs. Trevelyan.
3 The conveyance to Leonard Wilson is dated 1st and 2nd November, 1825, and the consideration was
£11,200. Mr. Wilson’s will is dated 15th July, 1837, and was proved at York, 27th December, 1839, by
his nephew, Mr. John Atkinson. The latter sold a portion of land in 1859 to the Whittle Dean Water
company for water courses, and, 2nd August, 1862, conveyed the estate to Mrs. Catherine Ann Trevelyan
of Longwitton hall, widow, in consideration of £10,400. Hallington Title Deeds, communicated by Mr.
Jos. A. Philipson.
4 A great variety of birds frequent the reservoirs: redshanks, the common sandpiper, the snipe, and
the coot breed regularly; the common tern and the Sandwich tern sometimes. Several hundreds of
black-headed gulls breed upon the island in the East Hallington reservoir ; and ducks come in great
number, such as the mallard, the teal, the golden eye, the widgeon, the sheldrake, the pochard, the
gadwall, and also the common gull and the black-backed gull. Goosanders, grey-lag and been-geese,
and Bewick’s swans, come as visitors. Herons are common; and there are to be, or have been, seen, the
cormorant, pintail duck, great northern diver, the common and bartailed godwit, the little and the eared
grebe, whimbrels and dunlins, the ringed plover, and the little stint. R. C. Hedley, Trans. Tyneside Nat.
Club, vol. xvi. p. 398.