Thockrington One-Place Study

Thockrington is a parish in rural Northumberland, about ten miles north of Hexham. It covers an area of about 7000 acres[1] and largely consists of rough pasture. There are four townships within Thockrington; Thockrington itself, Carrycoats, Sweethope and Little Bavington. In 1851, the four hamlets contained 39 houses, of which four were empty and 173 inhabitants. The parish was historically in Bellingham registration district but is now covered by Northumberland west and it lay within Bellingham Poor Law Union. Thockrington is bounded on the western side by Watling Street and is surrounded by the parishes of Corsenside, Kirkharle, Kirkwhelpington, Kirkheaton, St. John Lee and Chollerton.

The main occupation was agriculture, notably sheep farming, with a little opencast coal mining in Carrycoats.

A note on the Parish Registers

The early parish register entries for Thockrington have been lost. A few pages only have survived from what was probably the original register. In 1820, Thomas Scurr, the perpetual curate made an imperfect transcript and sadly, we have to rely on this for the period up to 1759. The first surviving baptism is 1715 and for marriages and burials is 1736.

There appear to be very few marriages, perhaps because the records weren’t kept, they were marrying elsewhere, or perhaps they were not marrying at all. There are no records of any marriages between 1753-1769 and 1776-1812 inclusive.

“A parish, with four townships, in Bellingham district, Northumberland; 4¾ miles NNE of Chollerton r. station, and 10 N by E of Hexham. Post town, Hexham. Acres, 6,943. Real property, £3,064. Pop., 166. Houses, 36. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Durham. Value, £228. Patron, the Bishop of D. The church is ancient.” Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales John Marius Wilson 1870-1872.

Between 1801 and 1951, the population ranged from 111 (in 1911) to 203 (in 1831), with a significant drop between 1881 (195) and 1891 (127). I have not yet found an explanation for this. A number of sources, including the church website for St. Aiden’s Thockrington and an interpretation board in neighbouring Great Bavington, mention a cholera epidemic in 1847, which allegedly wiped out the population and led to many cottages being burned. Nothing in the burial or census records supports this.

[1] 6943 acres according to History, Topography, and Directory of Northumberland, Whellan, (1855). 7011 acres according to Hodgson, John Crawdord, A History of Northumberland Vol. IV Andrew Reid and co. (1897).