The estate was acquired by the Ellisons, a family of merchant adventurers in Newcastle. Robert Ellison, Sheriff and Member of Parliament for Newcastle, replaced the 14th-century Tower house with a new manor house in the mid 17th century.
His descendant Henry Ellison ( who was High Sheriff of Northumberland in 1734) rebuilt the property in a somewhat grander style in 1790, creating, it is said with the assistance of architect William Newton, a three-storey, nine-bay mansion house. Improvements were made about 1819 by architect John Dobson.
When Henry's son Cuthbert (High Sheriff in 1808) died without male issue in 1860, the estate passed to his nephew Colonel Cuthbert Ellison, then to the colonel's sister, Mary Ellison, in 1867 & finally, in 1870, to Ralph Carr of Dunston Hill, Gateshead & Hedgeley Hall, Northumberland. After this the house soon fell out of use as a residence. At the request of Cuthbert Ellison, from 1871, Ralph Carr was granted permission to call himself Carr-Ellison even though he wasnt a Ellison by birth.
In 1886 with Carr Ellison's permission the west wing and some outbuildings were converted for use as a rectory & Church of St John the Evangelist.
The east wing as most of us 'oldies' remember served as an infirmary at ground level & Hospital upstairs from 1897 until 1976, and then very briefly the 'Free Mason's' used it for a short while in the later 1900s.
In 1999 new owners refurbished the property and restored it for residential use.
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