For three centuries the stretch of Northumberland closest to the Scottish border was a lawless and violent place to live.
Gangs of English and Scottish families, called the Border Reivers, marauded and pillaged in order to survive. They launched daring raids on each others territory, stealing livestock, committing murder and causing chaos in their wake.
Their legacy can still be seen in the Northumberland landscape today. The county's countryside is peppered with Pele towers and fortified houses that were designed to keep raiders at bay.
By Elizabethan times, when the Reivers were at the peak of their powers, the borders had become England's own Wild West where the laws of the land did not apply.
Add to this the continuing political instability - Northumberland was the site of several epic battles between the English and the Scots - and North Northumberland was not a place where you would feel safe.
The area became notorious, even within the safe walls of Newcastle it was forbidden to employ Border families because of the trouble they might bring with them.
It was only when James VI came to the English throne in the early 17th century that law and order began to assert itself in the region.
But some did not see the Reivers as blood-thirsty gangsters. Sir Walter Scott romanticised them in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border and they added a lasting mystique and danger to the Borderlands.
Family names of Reiver clans like Robson, Charlton, Dodd and Armstrong are still found in Northumberland today. If you share a similar surname it may be worth heading to Woodhorn Museum to track your ancestory.
Thanks to David Simpson for supplying source material for this section.
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