The hill with the group of trees just beyond the farm is known as Goodwife's Hut. The Ordnance Survey Name Book (c1860) describes it as:
"A slight eminence in an arable field, owing to the great number of stones it is impossible to pass the plough over this place, it has probably in former days been a Camp of some sort but if so all traces of its lines are destroyed. Mr. Thos. Robson (the Duke of Northumberland’s Agent) supposed this eminence to have been the place for depositing the stones etc. taken from the land while improving it in former times, he says he is sure it is not a Camp."
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Archaeologist's now consider it as an irregular-shaped Romano-British settlement. It measures 104m long by 70m wide. The farmstead is made up of three enclosures, all joined together, with an entrance in the most southerly one. Inside the farmstead are at least two hut circles which measure 5m and 10m across. This is a Scheduled Monument protected by law.
Keys to the Past:
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Historic England:
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Northumberland etymologists suggest that before the OS fixed the name on their maps it was previously rendered as 'Goodwife Hot' (although these days that has other connotations). The second element, Hot, can then be derived from Old English, holt, a wood. There is a similarly named Garrett Hott nearby, on the west side of the Tyne near Redesmouth
NY8581, interestingly the site of another Roman-period enclosure. The first element of the place-name has been more difficult to decipher and Jonathan West (2017) suggests that it might be as simple as being the Anglo-Saxon personal name, Godwif, recorded from elsewhere in the country, but 'with no reason to consider unique'.