524 Low Buston. By J. C. Hodgson. 



intestate, and was succeeded by his sister Margaret Appleby, 

 who dying in 1830, by will left Buston Barns to her maternal 



kinsman Gradon of Whitburn and Sunderland, county 



Durham, with remainder to his sister and her issue. She married 

 Eichard Spoor of Whitburn, J. P., county Durham, sometime a 

 draper in Sunderland.' Some touching lines on the death of 

 his wife, who died in 1840, appeared in the Sunderland Times, 

 12th June 1840. Her son, Nicholas Appleby Spoor, an officer 

 in the 6th Regiment, in 185. . . .sold his estate to Mr Edward 

 Thew of Shortridge. 



The part of the township called Hounden is included in this 

 portion. It comprised a water-mill and some 60 acres of land. 

 There is no record of the building of the mill — but it was in 

 existence in 1663, when it was mentioned in the Book of Rates 

 as owned by Mr Forster of Buston — ' Hounden Mill, otherwise 

 Hounden Walk Milne.' The stream at this period of its course, 

 called the Hounden Burn, runs through a deep oak-clad dene, 

 and at its lower end joins the Coquet. Half-way down is a 

 precipitous freestone crag holed with jackdaws' nests. Above it 

 are the closes now or formerly bearing the picturesque names of 

 the Abbot's Wood, Hunters' Thorn, the Yardside 2 Close, and 

 Hounden Flower : the first is doubtless one of the parcels spoken 

 of in the 2nd Newminster Charter, -as being near the great road 

 going towards the north, and near the land of Hugh of Brother- 

 wyk ; the second possibly owes its name to that John Hunter of 

 Hounden, who in 1690 was married at Wavk worth to Jane 

 Todd of High Buston. In 1720, a sum of 20s. a year was 

 charged on Hounden, to be paid to the churchwarden of 

 Warkworth, and the churchwarden of Warkworth North Side, 

 for the poor. This has long been lost. 3 



Possibly once a fulling mill, Hounden was worked as a 

 Corn Mill until 1862, when on the night of the 19th March it 

 was burnt, and never repaired for the purpose of a mill, though 

 the shell stands almost buried in thick foliage. 



1 In Richardson's Table Book, Mr Spoor is mentioned as chairman at the 

 dejeuner at Tynemouth 18th July 1839, on the occasion of the opening of 

 the Newcastle and North Shields Railway. 



- Is Yardside a corruption of ' Yare ' side ? Tate says Yare or wear 

 ' an erection from the bank of a river to the middle to catch fish.' — 

 (Alnwick, vol. n., p. 26.) — This close was adjacent to the river Coquet. 



a Francis Forster's Will, 1720. 



