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Thursday 19th December 2019The Blanchland Murder

Belmount Farm is a building I have painted three times now. Two paintings feature a window and one the entire farm, see below. This gently crumbling building was the site of a mysterious and extremely bloody murder, exactly 120 years ago to New Year's day 2020. 
 

 
On New Year's Day 1880, the 'Blanchland Murder’ took place.  Robert Snowball, the master of the house, was hit in the head from behind, so brutally that his teeth were knocked out and the hammer was half embedded in his skull. This is his gravestone.

 

 

No one was ever convicted of the murder, though his elderly father, housekeeper Jane Barron and her beau were all questioned. Jane was accused and acquitted, there was very little evidence, and she left Belmount Farm to take a job in the Northumbrian borders.
 
This shocking murder has left, for me, no residue of trauma in the building – and I was blissfully ignorant of all this at the time that I visited the farmhouse. All three paintings are available as prints and two as originals.

Posted on December 19th 2019 on 10:03am
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Thursday 09th February 2017Original Watercolours

This is an extract from my latest newsletter. Just email me on alison190656@hotmail.co.uk if you would like to receive the newsletters direct, or just browse the originals on this website.
 
To view the whole newsletter, copy and paste this link - http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=6d36b88598cab0e03c2eca659&id=fef17f96ad
 
Paul Stangroom Watercolours
 
 
I have a small range of original paintings for sale in the gallery. I've been very busy working on a range of different commissions since autumn of last year and so have fewer originals for sale than I used to. Looking at the originals on the walls of the gallery, I realise that many of the subjects I choose feature the scarred or the damaged - such as the ravaged landscape of 'The End of the Line' (above, now more peaceful and healed) or the crumbling 'Wall Fell Farm.'
 


'Ruffside Farm,'is a derelict farm building (near the historic village of Blanchland and the Derwent Reservoir) that has long fascinated me.  It is currently being reroofed and renovated, I noticed the last time I was in the area. I like to see new life being breathed back into these forlorn and fragile places.
 


 
I used the painting of Grove Rake Mine for my small sign at the front of the gallery, because it reflects the history of Northumberland, as well as my own personal history, and is a painting that means a lot to me.

'Wall Fell Farm' caught my eye from the Military Road and I went to investigate it several times in different seasons before finally painting it as it looked one wet, stormy day when the light lit up the buildings in a way that seemed magical. I tried to capture that magic in this painting.

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