410 Notices of Heathpool. By James Hardy. 



philosopher, once the rejected suitor of Sarah Eoddam, composed the 

 inscription engraved on his tomb. 



In 1774, John Erasmns Blackett, Esq., Newcastle, and Alex. Carlyle, 

 D.D., each vote for a " Moiety of Heathpool."* Of the first " the Newcastle- 

 Chronicle records the funeral on the 18th July, 1775, of Mrs. Sarah Blackett, 

 his amiable consort, and within twelve months announces the death of his 

 son and heir." Mr Blackett himself died 11th June 1814, aged 86. He 

 was buried in St. Nicholas Church, Newcastle. Blackett Street in that 

 city, named in his honour, " preserves the name of a family that produced 

 rulers of Newcastle — aldermen and sheriffs, mayors and members of 

 Parliament, for the greater part of two hundred years."f 



Sarah, eldest daughter of John Erasmus Blackett and Sarah Roddam, 

 eventually proprietrix of Heathpool, about the 18th June, 1791, became 

 the wife of Captain Cuthbert Collingwood of H.M. ship Mermaid, after- 

 wards Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Baron Collingwood, of Hethpoole and 

 Caldburne, the great naval hero. He was descended of the Collingwoods 

 of East Ditchburn, who were direct heirs of the Collingwoods of Eslington, 

 forfeited in 1715. Their residence at Morpeth looked out on the S.W. on 

 a garden sloping down to the banks of the Wansbeck, which he enjoyed 

 nothing better than to assist the old gardener Scott, to dig and embellish. X 

 Here he raised a colony of seedling oaks which he was very solicitous to 

 have transplanted to Heathpool to raise " knee timber" for naval purposes. t 

 When absent his daughters were careful to weed his oaks.|| To 

 his daughters he writes in 1806, " be kind to old Scott, and when 

 you see him weeding my oaks, give the old man a shilling."^! He 

 ordered a guinea for him on another occasion.** In March 21,1806, writing 

 to Lady Collingwood, he says : " I wish some parts of Hethpoole could be 

 selected for plantations of larch, oak, and beech, where the ground could 

 be best spared. Even the sides of a bleak hill would grow larch and fir. 

 You will say that I have now mounted my hobby ; but I consider it as 

 enriching and fertilising that which would otherwise be barren. It is 

 drawing soil from the very air."-ff On this favourite subject he writes again 

 in December of that year — " It is very agreeable to me to hear that you 

 are taking care of my oaks, and transplanting them to Hethpoole. If ever 

 I get back I will plant a good deal there in patches ; but before that can 

 happen, you and I shall be in the churchyard, planted under some old yew 

 tree."^ Murray's Guide Book says that the wood " of most curious, old 



* Poll Books. 



f Richard Welford, Monthly Chronicle, u., pp. 498, 499. 



£ Correspondence and Memoir of Lord Collingwood, p. 91. 



|| lb., p. 271-2. 



§ lb., p. 96. 



% p. 184. 



**p. 86. ftp. 199. 



^Selection from the Correspondence of Yice-Admiral Cuthbert Lord 

 Collingwood, with his Life, by G. L. Newnham Collingwood, Esq., F.R.S. 

 p. 257. 



