DOTTED all over the North East are the sites of lost country homes. In their heyday, these homes were the epitome of grandeur and luxury living, but times changed, and these large buildings were unsuited to what came next and so were demolished. Author Ian Greaves in his new book Lost Country Houses of the North East has identified 100 lost houses in County Durham and 120 in Northumberland, many created by the finest architects of the day: John Carr, Ignatius Bonomi, John Dobson, Daniel Garrett.
.. Some were undermined, like the amazing Ravensworth Castle at Gateshead, which Ian identifies as the greatest loss to the region.
Others, like Streatlam Castle, near Barnard Castle, were blown up by the Army. Most of them, though, just got too large. Ravensworth Castle, near Gateshead, is described by Ian Greaves as being the biggest loss of the all the country houses.
It was designed by John Nash for Sir Thomas Liddell and was eventually completed in 1846, although it sat inside a genuinely medieval castle. However, it suffered mining subsidence and was demolished in the early 1950s, although little bits of it – a lodge house, a gateway and the remains of a medieval tower – survive beside the A1. "The larger houses were simply too big to survive as private homes, ill-suited to modern living and too expensive to maintain from the resources of estates drastically reduced by death duties," he says.
But once they had been the home of centuries-old families, or of people who had made.