This building serves to remind us of a progressive landowner’s efforts in a remote and beautiful place. It stands on the bank of the River Esk, on a high unfenced platform once at the end of a stone weir, in front of which coops or traps were set to catch salmon. The weir was just one of many improvements made to his estate by Dr Robert Graham of Netherby in the 1760s and ’70s. Another was to build this summerhouse as an ornament in the landscape around Netherby Hall and as a place to enjoy the river.

Coop House was to prove the more lasting. The river broke up the weir and only blocks of masonry are left, strewn on the river bed. It had in any case annoyed the Scots upstream who, deprived of their salmon catch, marched on Netherby in force a scene described by Sir Walter Scott in Redgauntlet.

Having been for some time an estate cottage, Coop House was given up in 1936 as too remote. By the 1980s it had partly fallen down. The Grahams, who still own Netherby, gave us a lease, and we have laid a long and many-gated track and rebuilt its polygonal main room. With its three windows, this room is designed for watching the Esk as it flows past, sometimes gentle, sometimes in spate. Your nearest neighbours, a little way upstream on the opposite bank, are a pele tower and a graceful Georgian church. Behind are watermeadows, with the imposing pile of Netherby Hall in the distance.

View our history sheet for this Landmark.

Sleeps: 3