History Boy Recommends: Cragside

This month MSL’s ride location scout, History Boy Alfred Earnest, looks north and discovers a great place to ride to in Nothumberland

- Alfred Earnest

The other Saturday night my mum and dad went out to a fancy party, and stayed in a hotel. My older brother, Gerald, was in loco parentis and duly abandoned the stricture of my 9pm bed time. At 11.30pm I was hyperalert and awaiting a horror film called ‘The Blood Beast Terror’, with Peter Cushing as a steely-eyed detective who encounters a mad (and misunderstood) scientist. It was only made 50 years ago, in 1968, so we were surprised it was already on the BBC2. It was pretty scary, but I jumped the most when the film got to the giant house where the scientist lived. Clear as day it was a building called ‘Grimsdyke Manor’, which is about a mile from our home, in HarrowWeald. I recognised it immediately! It’s a restaurant now. My dad takes us up there as a treat, but I had never seen somewhere that I knew so well on the TV. Gerald and I both screamed, and so began the story behind this month’s ‘History Boy’.

I had always loved Grimsdyke Manor. Only a child, I still think it the perfect building. Massive beams, two storeyed leaded bay windows and giant gable ends. It seemed to be the most solid structure in the world, and my dad said that it was typical of that architect’s work, but he couldn’t remember who it was. My dad is very supportive of my love of history so we went up there last weekend, and found a blue plaque thingy. It stated that the building was designed by someone called Richard Norman Shaw. So now I had a name.