Ninebanks Hearse House

Hearse Houses are a bit like the 62 bus. You wait a lifetime to see them and then three turn up at once!

This is Ninebanks Hearse House and it's rather special.

Until this year, hearse houses were something I was blissfully unaware of. Then I came across a beautiful example at Chollerton earlier in the year, which was like a little time capsule of heritage on a bend in the road.

Again, I stumbled across Ninebanks Hearse House by taking a wrong turn, but it's those little mistakes that often lead to joyous new finds like this. I was trying to find St Mark's Church, which pokes its Bavarian-looking spire out of the trees, and which I can see from the A686 heading from Whitfield to Hartside. Can you spot it?

Anyway, I skirted underneath it and overshot, finding not just this beautiful limekiln with no name but also, on the return down the road, this compact double Hearse House.

Even though there wasn't a soul in sight, the place was inviting. The emphasis was on welcoming the stranger to delve into the literature and learn a little of its history.

In 1856, amidst lead mines and the calls of curlew, low clouds and rough roads, an ex-lead miner and itinerant tea merchant, Isaac Holden, wanted to give back to the small community where he'd grown up. Born at Mohope, he travelled the North Pennines on foot with a pack on his back, selling tea to people in remote cottages and farms.

Upon each exchange, he'd offer a tiny photograph of himself for a small donation. In tramping the Pennines, his pennies piled up, and whilst always humble and discreet, Holden never spoke of his accumulating finances or what his intentions were for the sum of money, even to his beloved wife.

Across this corner of South West Northumberland and beyond, Victorian values very much upheld the moral concept of dignity in death. Diseases like typhoid, whooping cough, cholera, scarlet fever and tuberculosis were rife, especially in areas of poor hygiene with unsanitary water. Men died young from lead ore poisoning. Industrial injuries would have been common.

Unbeknown to his community, over time, Holden had saved enough from his curious crowd funding project to buy a hearse for the people of Ninebanks, to give a dignified final journey to St Mark's for burial.

A low key, local hero right there.

Upon entering the hearse house, we found it crammed with cups and conversation. It's a beautiful array of information which covers the history and heritage of the building, the benefits of a good brew, the flora and fauna found in this beautiful patchwork landscape of rugged hills and rushing rivers. It's a convivial collection of bits and bobs shared by locals who have a love of the tea-ee tale and Isaac's Tea Trail.

The building itself had fallen into disrepair and hadn't been used since the 1930s, but in 2015, with a leg up from The North Pennines AONB Partnership and a peppering of pounds from the Heritage Lottery Fund, a little breath of fresh air was blown into the battened down doors, and a shelter was developed for walkers by the Allen Valleys Landscape Project.

Hearse houses were built to house the horses and hearse for the local church. Now, increasingly rare, the compact buildings fell out of favour when roads and transportation were improved, but with ingenious plotting and planning, following the pathways that Isaac took, Roger Morris began working on a walk that would celebrate the history and heritage of the tea seller.

Over four years from 1998 to 2002, a seed grew in Roger's head from a desire to share with others “An interest in local history and the chance in Isaac Holden to bring to a wider public knowledge to an identifiable representative of the thousands once employed in the centuries-old lead mining industry in the hills of the North Country.”

Roger developed an idea into a tangible exercise which would pave the way for countless others to understand the morals, methods and meanderings of Isaac's Holden's work.

Roger said “Undoubtedly, a character, who also made the transition to an itinerant tea seller and won a reputation for his success as an accomplished fundraiser”.

He developed Isaac's Tea Trail, a 37 mile circular walking trail in Northumberland, following in the footsteps of the Victorian tea seller, to commemorate his life story and significant altruism.

Ninebanks Hearse House offers a welcome out of the wind and rain for walkers to rest, fill up from their flasks en route, and digest and invest in the tales of the region.

Magazine articles were lovingly laminated and strung up peg to peg on whitewashed walls. Information about the legacy of the lead mines was mixed in with feathers and fossils, clay pipes and copper kettles.

Sensitive words that upheld Holden's beliefs about approaching the end of life openly and with dignity were available to read, prompting positive discussion about planning for and celebrating your own honest conversations about death.

It was such an eclectic mix of tea, history and philosophy. And without another soul in the building, you felt more than welcome to idyl away some time getting to grips with the significance of the landscape and industry of this remote and unspoilt pocket of peace.

The way that people were cared for at the end held great meaning for Holden, and to give people the dignity of being carried by hearse to church was his way of giving back to his small, close community.

The bier similar to that which would have carried the villagers to St. Marks is shown in these pictures above and it's a grave irony that Isaac himself was one of the first bodies to make use of it in his final journey to St Cuthbert's in Allendale when he died in 1857. He was just 51. During his time serving the community, he had endeared himself so greatly, held in such high esteem by the people of the Allen Valleys, that over 600 people contributed to a public memorial stone to mark his life.

The epitaph on his gravestone, which stands head and shoulders above any other in the churchyard, reads:

IN MEMORY OF ISAAC HOLDEN

A NATIVE OF THIS PARISH WHO DIED NOVEMBER 12TH 1857 AGED 51YERS

HE GAINED THE ESTEEM BY HIS UNTIRING DILIGENCE IN ORIGINATING WORKS OF CHARITY AND PUBLIC USEFULNESS

UPWARDS OF 600 PERSONS SUBSCRIBED TO ERECT THIS MONUMENT

I asked Roger what his hopes were for the legacy of the hearse house.

“I'd like it to remain a place of special heritage value to the community, a link with the past, which also serves present-day needs, such as The Positive Death Movement & Library from a comparatively little known part of the north.”

If you're passing and need to take the weight from your feet, I'd really recommend trying the door.

Always open. Always interesting.

Thanks to Roger Morris for his hard work and warm words.

If you're in the area, you could also add Ninebanks Tower or Rowantree Stob Bastle to your to do list!