Morpeth lies 15 miles north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the Wansbeck River. In the eighteenth century the town’s corporation was controlled by seven companies: the Merchant Tailors, the Tanners, the Fullers and Dyers, the Smiths, the Cordwainers, the Weavers and the Butchers. In the early 1800s Newcastle newspapers describe James Field Stanfield as the Manager of the Morpeth Theatre and while performing in the area the actor associated with the mine-owner and prolific liberal philosopher William Burdon who built nearby Hartford Hall in about 1807.