Percy the Cat & Friend, Pockerley Manor

Percy the cat and friend enjoying the autumn sun at Pockerley Manor, Beamish Open Air Museum. Pockerley (the name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon words 'pock' or 'pokor', meaning 'pimple' or 'bag-like', and 'ley', meaning a woodland clearing) has stood on its hilltop site for several centuries, the earliest record of a settlement dating from a rental survey for the Bishop of Durham in 1183, though its defensive attributes suggest that there could have been an Iron Age hill fort here. The main farmhouse here dates to the late 1700s.