In a part of post-war Ernesettle where all the street names commemorate RAF Airfields of the Second World War, we find Acklington Place. Acklington itself is a place with a long history dating back possibly to the Bronze Age and almost certainly to the Iron Age.
There were a number of small settlements in the area in Medieval times and there were ironworks established there in the twelfth century.The railway arrived in the 1840s and a hundred years later (1940) the RAF base there played an important role in the Battle of Britain. Indeed a decoy base was established nearby at Boulmer in an attempt to better protect it from the Lufftwaffe. An anti-aircraft position, built to protect the base, still survives, but most of the local architecture of this Northumberland parish is nineteenth century, the railway station is now a private house and the RAF have long since gone.
The name Acklington itself, incidentally, is thought to have a simple enough derivation, it is suggested that it is the “tun” –farmstead –of Eadlac’s people, Eadlac being a name of Saxon origin.
