Beltingham

BELTINGHAM, a hamlet, in the township of Ridley, parish and union of Haltwhistle, W. division of Tindale ward, S. division of Northumberland, 5½ miles (E. by S.) from Haltwhistle. This place is beautifully situated upon a gentle eminence on the south side of the South Tyne, and is said to have been anciently a market-town, but now consists only of four dwellings: the Newcastle and Carlisle railway passes in the vicinity. Here is a chapel supposed to have been formerly a domestic chapel to the castle of Williamswyke, but at present appropriated to public worship; it is an ancient and handsome edifice of the period of Henry VII., with elegant windows, so large and numerous, as to have led Mr. Hodgson the historian of Northumberland, to call it "a cage of light." The living is a perpetual curacy, in the patronage of the Vicar of Haltwhistle, with a net income of £75.