Wallington DCNN2052 – Is this another example of a biased downgraded assessment of rural sites? Plus – a question of selection.

55.154234 -1.944498 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Archived Temperature records from 2/6/1994

Wallington weather station lies in the grounds of the National Trust managed property of the same name. It is 16 km/ 10 miles west of Morpeth in Northumberland which is also host to the venerable Cockle Park historic weather station. Wallington is one of those sites that does not appear to be particularly poor by any means but does represent a recurring theme of the Met office frequently marking down rural sites (e.g. Class 5 Levens Hall) whilst simultaneously boosting up rather compromised urban sites such as Class 3 rated Heathrow and Chertsey. Such a low Class 4 rating for a site with an almost perfectly clear 100 metre surrounding area warranted detailed investigation which showed this site seems to be almost incognito.

There is an excellent online store of images from around the country searchable by location at https://www.geograph.org.uk/. A valuable website with some extremely good photography on show. This image below is a very recent one of the Wallington site.

This certainly confirms the “clear” nature of the site and shows the impressively large enclosure is well maintained as is generally typical of all National trust property. From this angle there does not seem to be any demerits to warrant its lowly rating. One thing for certain is that there are no urbanisation effects.

Perhaps Google streetview can offer some further guidance.

The screen and its enclosure can only just be made out indicating it is at the top of what appears to be quite a slope though the earlier geograph image does suggest the screen itself is on the flat area. Distances and elevations can be difficult to judge from such imagery so I reverted to elevation finder.

The first thing to note is that Met Office given coordinates and elevations often do not represent the screen location. The UK Grid References quoted (Easting 403628, Northing 584438) actually leads to the main “Secret Garden” at some 160 metres to the west of the screen whilst the digital coordinates lead to a point over 90 metres to the east. The quoted screen elevation of 150 metres appears to be wrong and the real elevation (confirmed by Ordnance Survey sheet) is actually 141 metres. The road from which the image was taken is 185 metres almost due south and allowing for the extra 2.5 metres to the likely camera height on its mast is at 122 metres.

It would appear from the spot height measurements that the screen sits on a small plateau at the top of the incline which then continues higher behind the screen to the north. Obviously this does not make this a pristine location but for the Met office to suggest this is less representative of the surrounding area than the North Perimeter Road of Heathrow Airport or a waterworks surrounded by solar panels (Chertsey) is really not plausible. Neither of those two latter sites warrant Class 3 whilst Wallington probably does or even better. This is very reminiscent of the ratings of Stowe (a notably very good site) which was quite bizarrely rated Class 4 and “Unsatisfactory” by the Met Office when I originally reviewed it but is now shown to be Class 2 on a 2026 CIMO ranking list.

As Wallington is a manually observed site, I checked the readings frequency and, as I expected, they are impeccable – observations here are probably the function of a site employee(s) so very regularly maintained. Curiously there were some gaps around 2000 to 2002 but these were all exactly of 1 months duration and quite possibly a problem of transcription rather than initial readings not being taken. It would seem odd for readings to be missed to the exact month but block transcriptions may not have run as sequentially as they should have been thus inducing error gaps.

Beyond this there should be little to report about Wallington which appears (perhaps more subjectively to me than it should) to be a perfectly reasonable example of a “good to better” site. I opted to check how the Met Office presented the site for its “climate averages” to be somewhat surprised. For reasons best known to the Met Office, they do not recognise Wallington as one of their own stations by its own name and refer to elsewhere!

Redefining “Wallington” to “Wallington Northumberland” drew a complete blank. Putting in the name of surrounding villages such as the tiny Kirkwhelpington produced results but none included Wallington. I then opted to try the post code of the site at Wallington Hall of NE61 4AR.

So not only are the Met office ignoring this Wallington site , operational since 1994, they are adding Class 5 junk Alblemarle which opened well after Wallington, including Tynemouth which stopped functioning in 2001 i.e. a quarter of a century ago, and the equally dodgy Class 5 Durham at 31 miles distant. However, as I started this report in location terms they are completely ignoring one of the longest running and premium class sites at Cockle Park Morpeth under 10 miles away.

How exactly is this “location specific” system supposed to work when it overlooks (and even appears to disown) the nearest location when specifically named and then ignores one of its best long term sites? Why did Messres Hollins and Perry chose to ignore venerable Morpeth and prefer low grade sites in lieu such as Albemarle sitting alongside over 72,000 square feet of concrete and tarmac with surrounding woodland?

There are only three weather stations on this map below – Wallington, Morpeth and the long defunct Longframlington to the north. so why does the Met office feel it should effectively discard for public presentation the observations of the only two operational sites especially given that they are both reliable ones?

I will be moving futher into the issue of site selection that i have discussed before with particular emphasis on the preponderance of London (especially the west quadrant) very soon but for now compare the above CEDA inter active map of weather stations north of Newcastle with this below. ———-Recording climate averages should not be a function of population intensity but it clearly is.

In summary, Wallington is a worthy enough weather station that is typically being marked down by the Met office whilst they similarly boost far less suitable ones that seem to produce the “desired” results elsewhere.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/06/11/wallington-dcnn2052-is-this-another-example-of-a-biased-downgraded-assessment-of-rural-sites-plus-a-question-of-selection/