The plan of the village, with cottages facing inwards to the square village green, made for efficient defence. The Parish Church of St Cuthbert was placed within this perimeter: built in the 14th century, it is typically Northumbrian — squat and strong with an elaborate bellcote rather than a true tower — and it was to this church that Scottish dead were brought for burial after the Battle of Otterburn in 1388.
On the northern edge of the village, just beyond the church, stands Elsdon Tower. Built around 1400, it is one of the county's best examples of a Pele Tower — strong, stone-built tower houses with relatively small windows set in thick walls topped by battlements, built as defensible residences by local gentry during troubled centuries before the Acts of Union (many inhabited by clergy, including this one which served as the rectory until 1962).
The walk leads beyond the village to the top of a quiet farm track where there are two impressive mounds known as the Mote Hills, all that remain of Elsdon Castle (a Norman motte and bailey castle built by the d'Umfreville family shortly after the Norman Conquest).
After making the loop around fields above the village, the route returns to the bottom edge of the village green where there is an old stone cattle pen with walls 5 feet high and one narrow opening, making a useful defence against sneak thieves trying to rustle cattle quickly into the dead of night.
Leaving the village again on the road going south, the walk passes over a small, elegant double-arched stone bridge before climbing a hill to a viewpoint giving a fine perspective of the varied landscape. Elsdon stands close to where craggy sandstone topography to the north gives way to the gentler limestone belt running south, presenting hilly but tame moorland with rough grazing on tussocky grass in valley bottoms and heather-clad tops. Wild rabbits abound, and the plaintive call of the curlew (symbol of the Northumberland National Park) can sometimes be heard overhead.
From here, you follow a farm track past an old sheep wash at Shaw Cleugh, then head downhill and follow surfaced roads back into the village and your starting point.
Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.
