Robert Allen (poet)
Life. Allen completed his military service, and after gaining farm experience at a farm near Prendwick (11 miles west of Alnwick), Northumberland, moved in 1950 to Redesmouth Farm, Redesmouth, near Bellingham, which was owned by his father Colonel Allen of Haydon Bridge. When he retired, he and his wife Angela, moved into a new house named "The Glebe" in Bellingham. Robert had always had an interest in his local dialect, which he called "Big hoose terk", the gentle and polite dialect used when talking to the vicar, rather than the more common and normal "village talk" and  also in poetry, and his retirement allowed him the time to put the two together and write down the results. He then produced three audio tapes of his poems "The Canniest Place on Earth", "Ridin' High" and "The Lang Pack", and eventually, in 1994, he published the whole in a book "Canny Bit Verse", illustrated by local poet/illustrator and neighbouring farmer Henry Brewis. Both Robert Allen and his wife died in the early 2000s.