Hunwick Hall’s origins as a single storey building could date back to 1300. Tree ring analysis of some of the timbers points to further construction in the early 1400s. The estate would have been owned by the Bishop of Durham, but in 1418 its management passed from the Earl of Westmoreland to John Hoton of Tudhoe and his wife Joanne Whitworth. Their great great grandson, also John, helped to assemble men to fight the Scots at Bamburgh Castle, also owned by the Bishopric, in 1480. He also fought on behalf of Richard the Third and died at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

The Hoton family were in residence until 1637 and their family crest, a blood-red winged head of an ostrich with a horseshoe in its mouth, was adopted by Hunwick’s former secondary school. The Hotons were succeeded as owners by the Kennets, Stephensons, Reays and Bells, some of whom also owned mansions in Northumberland. Henry Utrick Reay, who took possession in 1759, was described as a lawyer, landowner, banker and philanthropist. His influence in the village extended to building a road and flight of steps to a mineral spring, which was popular with visitors.

Matthew Bell, who became a Northumberland MP from 1826-52, married the elder of Henry Reay’s two daughters and inherited the hall in 1821. The Bells were identified as one of six families who dominated the development of the coal trade in the North and it was Matthew who opened Hunwick Colliery. The Bells also provided the land on which St Paul’s Church, the vicarage, a school and school master’s house were built. Also, during the Bells’ ownership, a chapel was added to the hall.

Thomas Edward York, a descendant of the Reay’s, became the hall’s next owner in 1887 and sold it to his tenant framer, Robert C Laws, in 1923. The farm had been tenanted at least since the Reay’s’ ownership.