kcooper

Published at 01:00, Friday, 30 March 2007

AT SOUTH Lodge, Minsteracres, near Slaley, don’t be surprised if you hear the faint chanting of monkish voices, or sniff a whiff of incense. The Lodge lies on a hotbed of religious fervency, stoked for many generations.

South Lodge dates from the 1850s but Healey, the parish it stands in, was known in the Middle Ages as Temple Healey and was the property of that most legendary group of religious fundamentalists, the Knights Templar.

This 12th century order of warrior monks, whose fame was recently given fresh gloss by Da Vinci Code novelist Dan Brown, were supposed to be chaste and poor – as well as guarding the secret of the Holy Grail.

But far from being poverty-stricken, the Knights Templar were actually canny businessmen who owned land worth millions. As well as the south Northumberland parish known as Temple Healey, Temple Houses at Haydon Bridge was probably in the Knights Templar portfolio too.

But those mighty knights, like most other church landlords, lost out in Henry VIII’s 16th century Reformation, and Minsteracres seems to have lain fallow for a while.

Then the estate found new owners just as motivated by religion as were the Knights Templar – the Silvertops, who were to become one of the North’s greatest Catholic dynasties.

Henry VIII’s little disagreement with Catholicism didn’t have quite the same impact in the North of England as in the South. At a safe distance from the centre of government, many powerful Northern families felt quite secure to carry on with their bells and smells, importing family priests from the Continent and building impressive private chapels.

The Radcliffes of Dilston near Corbridge had made a big noise on behalf of the Old Faith in both Jacobite rebellions, sacrificing two family heads for Catholic pretenders old and young.

The Swinburnes of Capheaton and the Erringtons of Beaufront were also active Papists.

The Silvertops were making an impact by the late 1700s, when their modest mining interests began to hit the mother lode. Like the Knights Templar, the Silvertops knew how to make money, and they used their growing income to help pay for chapels, establish missions and retreats, and train young priests.

And early in King George III’s era, Albert Silvertop bought Minsteracres.

The estate originally consisted of a handful of cottages and a few fields, but by the time Albert’s heir George died in 1789, he could be described as a gentleman who “accumulated an ample fortune, honourably got”.

George built a Catholic mission at Barleyhill, which must have been on or near the site of the later South Lodge.

It was George’s son John who built Minsteracres mansion, lavishly equipping it with the best quality Regency furnishings and must-have innovations like bathrooms and those new-fangled water closets.

It took more than 20 servants – a small army of tweenies and under-butlers, footmen, gardeners and grooms – to run the Silvertop home, and the estate had expanded to more than 2,000 acres.

John’s son, another George, was famous for visiting Bonaparte at Elba, and for bringing back some prize plants to beautify the Minsteracres gardens.

George had no children, so the Silvertop line should have ended when he died in 1849. Luckily George’s heir Henry Charles Englefield was happy to change his name to Silvertop to keep the dynasty going.

Henry Charles Silvertop built the South Lodge around 1850, and not far away he placed Minsteracres’ lovely church of St Elizabeth, two years later.

His wife, Elizabeth Silvertop, chose to dedicate the £11,000 family chapel to her namesake – a particularly fervent 13th century saint, St Elizabeth of Hungary.

St Elizabeth was apparently the sort of turbulent teenager whose parents one pities. She married at 14, refused to wear decent clothes or eat properly, and her preferred chums were people suffering from gruesome diseases – the more suppurating sores the better.

It was probably anorexia which snatched St Liz away, aged just 24, and she had only one dirty smock to be buried in. But even this most saintly of patrons could not, it seems, protect the Silvertop family from ill fortune.

Just a few years after the chapel was completed, Elizabeth died in childbirth. Her son and heir Henry Thomas died aged just 40, from botulism after eating a bad tin of salmon he’d bought in Newcastle, and her younger son Arthur was killed at the Battle of Jutland in World War One. Henry Thomas’s sons Francis and William both died on the fields of Flanders.

The Second World War was no less cruel to the Silvertops. Arthur Silvertop’s only son David was killed in Holland while commanding the 3rd Battalion the Royal Tank Regiment. The city of Antwerp honoured this dashing Silvertop by naming a street after him.

The last male heir of the dynasty was Charles Arthur Silvertop, just three months old when his father Francis was killed.

Charles Arthur decided in 1949 to sell Minsteracres, but Catholic piety still guided the Silvertops. The great house, the church, the stables and 60 acres of land went to the Order of Passionist Monks for £20,000. It is still a retreat and a base for several charities.

The remainder of the estate, including 15 farms with associated cottages, and 5,000 acres of land, was sold to the industrialist Charles Cookson. The South Lodge was no longer in Silvertop hands.

l South Lodge is for sale through Foster Maddison of Priestpopple, Hexham.