Throckley, Engine Plantation

HER Number:
15506

District:
Newcastle

Site Name:
Throckley, Engine Plantation

Place:
Throckley

Map Sheet:
NZ16NE

Class:
Agriculture and Subsistence

Site Type: Broad:
Land Use Site

Site Type: Specific:
Plantation

General Period:
Early Modern

Specific Period:
C19

Form of Evidence:
Documentary Evidence

Description:
This plantation is shown on a plan of 1805. It is named Engine Plantation on the Ordnance Survey first edition map. Plantations were deliberately planted, usually with fast-growing species like larch and Norway spruce conifers. Conifers provided good shelter for the newly enclosed fields from the wind as they do not shed leaves. They also enlivened the landscape of hedged fields. Plantations are of geometric shape. The plantation may also have served as a fox cover, in which to rear and shelter game (pheasants, hares, partridges and rabbits) or where foxes could be encouraged to live and breed. Game-keeping, shooting and fox hunting were popular elite pastimes from the C18.

Easting:
1532

Northing:
6583

Grid Reference:
NZ15326583

Lats/Lons:

Sources:
Greenwich Hospital Estates, no date but probably 1805, Plan of Throckley manor in the county of Northumberland, NRO 691/1/19 (Woodhorn); Rackham, 1986, The history of the countryside - the classic history of Britain's landscape, flora and fauna, p 64, 98; T Williamson and L Bellamy, 1987, Property and Landscape - a social history of land ownership and the English countryside, pp 193, 196, 200-201; R. Newton, 1972, The Northumberland landscape, p 119; T. Wild, 2004, Village England - a social history of the countryside, p 33; JH Bettey, 1993, Know the landscape - estates and the English countryside, p 101; Jennifer Morrison, 2007, Newburn Manor - an analysis of a changing medieval, post-medieval and early modern landscape in Newcastle upon Tyne, unpublished MA thesis, University of Durham, pp 131-133