Stella Hall has had a long history that goes back as far as 1143 when there was a nunnery on this site. The present house was built by the Tempest family, Newcastle merchants. They occupied Stella Hall for 150 years and then in 1700 it passed into the ownership (by marriage) of Lord Widdrington, a noted Jacobite. Widdrington, on 6 October 1715, invited his friends and tenants to breakfast at the hall and, after toasting the Stuarts, they all set off to join the Earl of Derwentwater and his rebels. The uprising failed and Widdrington was sentenced to death though he was later reprieved and his estate and house restored to him.