View of Belsay Village. Photo by Harry Rowland.

The village of Belsay was built in the 1830s by the owners of Belsay Hall. It contains a number of listed buildings. Landowners sometimes built new villages in the 18th and 19th century. Sometimes this was because they had moved an earlier village as it was inconvenient to them for some reason. In other cases they rebuilt a village so its residents would be provided with better houses and other services.