Embleton, Northumberland

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Embleton village (grid reference NU231226) in the English county of Northumberland is about half-a-mile from the beautiful bay which carries its name. The sandy beach is backed by dunes where a variety of flowers bloom: bluebells, cowslips, burnet roses and, to give it its common name, bloody cranesbill, amongst others. Dunstanburgh Castle stands at the southern end of Embleton Bay. Close by to the south is the pretty fishing village of Craster.

Embleton Church, Late 19th Century

Embleton has an attractive little main street with one shop. There is a small well-kept green with the village pump on it, out of use now but at one time the source of the water supply. The church is large with several interesting features and is historically connected with Merton College, Oxford. Close by is a pele tower, Embleton Tower, which was, until 1974, the vicarge. The village hall, the Creighton Memorial Hall, is said to be the largest in the county and is named after Mandell Creighton, vicar 1875-1884. The hall is the venue for a lot of the social life which goes on there. One road is named after the Embleton-born W. T. Stead, a journalist and social campaigner who lost his life on the RMS Titanic.

Creighton had a poor opinion of the villagers:

“In many ways the moral standard of the village was very low, and it was a difficult place to improve. There was no resident squire, the chief employers of labour were on much the same level of cultivation as those they employed, and in some cases owned the public-houses and paid the wages there. Writing two years after he had left Embleton, Creighton said: ‘I always felt myself engaged (at Embleton) in downright warfare, and strove to get hold of the young ... working through the school, the choir, the G.F.S., any possible organisation of the young, that here and there one or two might be got hold of who would make a testimony. The unchastity of Embleton was terrible—low, animal.’”^[1]