HILL HOUSE FARM is a farm which has its house on top of a hill. It is a perfect name, but over recent years, the farmhouse has looked down from its hilltop on a growing spread of motorway interchange service buildings at Junction 59 of the A1(M).

Most recently, its hillside has been terraced in preparation for the encroachment of Durham County Council’s vast Forrest Park industrial estate, which is hoped will soon create 3,000 jobs.

The estate, which is between Coatham Mundeville and Aycliffe Village, is bounded on the west by the original trackbed of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, so there is plenty of scope for imaginative interpretations and pathways.

The Northern Echo: The Forrest Park industrial estate, with the Stockton & Darlington Railway on the left and Hill House Farm just above the service station.The Forrest Park industrial estate, with the Stockton & Darlington Railway on the left and Hill House Farm just above the service station.

But the only real casualty of the development is going to be Hill House Farm itself.

On his permitted daily perambulation, John Morris took a stroll up their recently to find it boarded up in preparation for being knocked down.

“A quick look at the Ancestry website reveals that in the 1861 census, John Robinson of Yorkshire, aged 30, lived there with his wife Annie Jane, 24, who came originally from Hartburn,” says John. “According to the 1881 census, they’d moved with their family to Yew Tree Farm, Thornton le Beans.”

The Robinson family – John was one of 11 children - farmed at Hill House for much of the 19th Century. Many of his siblings and their families stayed in the Aycliffe area, but John and Annie Jane – who had two sets of twins – were obviously both wandering types, and much further afield than Thornton le Beans, near Northallerton.

They both died around 1900 in Brandon, in Manitoba in Canada. Brandon, which now has a population of about 50,000, didn’t really exist until the Canadian Pacific Railway was built through it in the early 1880s. The new township sprang into life – by 1891, it had a population of 3,771, among which were probably counted John and Annie Jane from Hill House and several of their seven children.

As well as being a railway town, Brandon was noted for its role in the fur trade, and it was nicknamed “The Wheat City”. Perhaps it was on the agricultural side of the economy that the Aycliffe family Robinson fitted in.

Any bits of info about Hill House or the Robinson family would, of course, be most welcome…