Scremerston

Scremerston Hill farm and cottages lie 1 mile (1.6 km) to the south, but have been largely cut off from the village by the busy A1 road.

[2] Prior to the 1957 edition, the village appeared on Ordnance Survey maps as 'Richardson's Stead', with 'Scremerston' referring to the wider area and a specific settlement just under 1 mile (1.6 km) south, now known as Scremerston Town Farm.

[3] Naturalist George Johnston, in his 1829 publication Flora of Berwick-upon-Tweed, refers to 'Richardson's-stead' and 'Scrammerston' as distinct places between which common barberry can be found.

[4] By the turn of the 20th century there was ambiguity, as typified by author and illustrator Charles George Harper when describing his journey up the Great North Road (the forerunner of the current A1) first published in 1901: "Always upwards, it passes collieries, the 'Cat' inn, and the hamlet of Richardson's Stead or Scremerston, whence, arrived at the summit of Scremerston Hill, the way down into Tweedmouth and across the Tweed into Berwick is clear.

The first cist, made of thin sandstone slabs, measured 1.2 metres (3.9 ft) square and contained a female skull, fragments of a beaker and two flints.

[6] A sherd of a Bronze Age food urn was found at Scremerston Hill in 1925 and is held by National Museums Scotland.

[11] Two much larger prehistoric double ditched curvilinear enclosures are visible as cropmarks on air photographs about 750m to the east of Scremerston Town Farm.

[19][20] The remains of ridge and furrow ploughing is also evident adjacent to Inlandpasture, suggesting this largely Georgian farmyard was built over an older settlement.

[23] During the 18th and 19th centuries Scremerston experienced rapid and extensive industrialisation, largely due to the accessibility of raw materials such as coal, stone and clay.

Records of the Committee for Compounding with Delinquents of 1650-52 show a colliery existed in Scremerston, although it had "drowned" and was "now useless to Berwick garrison".

[21] Following the village, colliery and surrounding lands passing to Greenwich Hospital in 1735, Nicholas Walton wrote to William Corbett, then secretary to the Greenwich Hospital[30] reporting that the coal seam at Scremerston had been on fire for a number of years and, due to an increase in workings, a subsequent "admitting of Aire, has Increased, & is at present to that degree as to lay the workmen off work and unless some expedient is found the Collierys will inevitably be destroyed."

By the early Twentieth Century the village had its own Workman's Institute and football pitch on what is now the site of Berwick RFC, and a bandstand situated behind Derwentwater Terrace.

[39] Scremerston was the site of Spittal Chain Home Low radar station during World War II and the generator building and set house remain largely intact to the north of the village.

A large concrete bombing range marker is sited on the clifftop above Saltpan Rocks between Seahouse and Cocklawburn Beach, although it is now buried.

[42] The gun house faces Cheswick Sands and Lindisfarne to the south-east and overlooks a substantial earthen ramp which was once topped with the limeworks tramway.

[44] For much of 1941 the unit was overseen by Captain John Anthony Quayle who, on leaving the army, returned to his acting career and became a household name.

Local coal seams were becoming exhausted and labour-intensive industries such as lime production found themselves unable to compete against larger more mechanised plants elsewhere.

[51] Many of the miners then travelled to Shilbottle Colliery, 30 miles away, until the National Coal Board built them new houses and their families left Scremerston permanently.

Salt Pan How, Philadelphia and Sand Banks were three clusters of cottages which sat along the coastline at Cocklawburn Beach when the coast was a centre of lime production.

[59] While this allowed for a degree of continuity of governance under local Earls and Bishops of Lindisfarne and Durham for many centuries, the Liberty was repeatedly overrun by armies from the north and south.

Scotland expanded southwards, annexing all land north of the River Tweed, just 2 miles (3 km) from Scremerston, in 1018[60] but border wars continued until the nearby fortified port of Berwick-upon-Tweed changed hands for the final time, becoming permanently English in 1482 and moving the border with Scotland a further 2 miles (3 km) from the village.

[61] Being south of the Tweed, the Scremerston area had effectively become part of England in 927 when Ealdred I of Bamburgh accepted Æthelstan as King of the English,[62] but the local rule of Islandshire by the Bishops of Durham meant royal authority remained largely excluded from the area until jurisdiction was transferred to the Crown by the Durham (County Palatine) Act 1836.

It was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972 and Scremerston formed part of the Borough of Berwick upon Tweed until 2009, when the county of Northumberland became a unitary authority.

[72][73] Some current and recent economic activities in the Scremerston area include agriculture, self-employed trades such as plumbing and joinery, tourism and holiday accommodation and retail.

[86] The coastal path also forms part of the North Sea Trail, a transnational long-distance hiking route that passes through seven countries.

All of the unprotected railway foot crossings in the area have been closed due to safety concerns as the local speed limit for trains is 110 mph.

Scremerston Lime Works had its own wagonways linking the coastal kilns at Cocklawburn to the main line at Cockley Burn Woods.

The main pitch and stand sits on the former site of the Borewell Tile Works and clay pit which had been closed since the late 19th century.

1722 – 24 February 1808) was a wealthy American merchant, slave trader and indigo planter from Charleston, South Carolina who was born in Scremerston.

[98] This collection provides insight into the economic impact of the American Revolution on Charleston planters and merchants, from the prices of slaves to restrictions on imports and exports.

Old cottages at the original village of Scremerston, now known as Scremerston Town Farm.
Drawings of the beakers discovered near Scremerston in 1948
A Romano-British hinged bracelet found at Doubstead Field, Scremerston, Northumberland during an excavation by George Jobey in 1980.
Ruins of Scremerston Mill, designed by John Smeaton in 1776 to house an unusual 'norse' water wheel .
Spittal Chain Home Low radar station. The set house stands behind the half-buried generator building.
Scremerston Beach Defence Battery on a tramway ramp built to load the Scremerston Lime Works kilns
The remains of lime kilns can be found at Cocklawburn Beach
Scremerston station served the village until 1951. Just beyond the station is Seahouse.