Before going to Seaton Delaval, we went to Cherryburn, the house where Thomas Bewick was born, grew up, explored the local fields, and returned to every weekend from Newcastle when he was an apprentice, walking twenty miles up the Tyne valley to visit his parents. 

It’s pretty well preserved, including the cottage where he was born:-

And the larger stone farmhouse constructed by his youngest brother, William Bewick, who was a farmer and managed a local mine:-

It was established by the Thomas Bewick Birthplace Trust in 1987, involving Frank Atkinson, the founder of Beamish, and handed over to the National Trust in 1990:-

Bewick died in November 1828, so his bicentenary is coming up.