One of our trustees, William Browne-Swinburne, whose family has deposited many important documents with the Archive Service, provides this fascinating glimpse of his family history.

Given land in 1066 at Chollerton by William The Conqueror the De Swynburnes were lowly French squires. Over the centuries the Swinburne Family grew its estates to over 40,000 acres to include much of what is covered by the hideous sitka spruce of Kielder Forest, Stamfordham, Capheaton, Edlingham and more besides.

As a catholic family, constantly on the wrong side of the political and social agenda one might have thought that the estates would have very quickly diminished. This was not the case and despite being on the wrong side in the Civil War and at the forefront of two disastrous Jacobite rebellions not an acre was lost. It was social and economic change that reduced the estate when Sir Hubert Swinburne, 8th Baronet, managed to lose the majority of it in one generation between the wars, by simply selling it to pay for his lifestyle.

The Swinburne Archive is a testament to the services of the Northumberland Archive. Every element of what is a substantial and, in many cases, ancient collection was stuffed into one room at Capheaton Hall while the house was requisitioned in WW2 and sat, untouched, until the 1950’s when the then County Archivist came and collected it all.

 After a number of years, the collection was fully catalogued and safely stored. Restoration of some of the oldest documents continues to this day.

The first catalogue of manuscripts was completed by HA Taylor (county archivist) and his assistant Miss Thomson in June 1962. It runs to over 130 pages of entries covering documents from October 1173 up to the 1850’s. As with all archives of merit, it continues to grow and we, as a family, make sure that documents of interest are passed to the Archivists.

The Swinburne Archive is, of course, available for the public to view.