Beginnings

The beginnings of the church in Gateshead are not known for certain. The area was occupied in pre-Roman times, and remains of Roman settlements have been found in Whickham and central Gateshead. Christian artefacts have been found in other parts of the region (such as a silver bowl with the “Chi-Rho” symbol found at Corbridge), so it is likely there were Christians in the area in the Roman period.

The first undisputed evidence of the church in Gateshead comes in the writings of Bede, the Northumbrian monk based along the river in Jarrow. Gateshead gets mentioned in passing as he is referring to a priest called Adda:

“Adda was the brother of Utta, a renowned priest and Abbot of Gateshead.”

That is all that is said, but it indicates that at the time of which Bede was writing (he was referring to the events of 653 A.D.), there was an abbey or monastery in Gateshead. We do not know for certain where this was, and for how long it lasted. It is quite likely that it was destroyed along with others in the region, in the Viking raids of either 794 or 867 A.D.

After Bede there follows a number of centuries where we know nothing of what was taking place in Gateshead. Towards the end of the 9th century, during the reign of Guthred the last Northumbrian king, Chester-le-Street was the main ecclesiastical centre, housing the remains of Saint Cuthbert for more than a hundred years.


Norman Conquest

The next historical mention of Gateshead comes after the period of the Norman Conquest. By this time Durham had become the main centre for the church in the region, and also the final resting place for the remains of Cuthbert. Egelwin, the last Saxon Bishop of Durham had been kept in his position for a number of years, but was dismissed in 1071 after being caught fleeing to the continent with most of the church treasures.

In his place, William the Conqueror placed an elderly priest from Liege called Walcher. Walcher did not fit the pattern seen in the later Prince-Bishops of Durham, he appears to have been quite a godly man, more interested in ecclesiastical affairs than secular ones, something which played a part in his downfall. He found a Northumbrian church which was in disarray, the vibrant and vigorous Celtic Christianity of the age of Bede did not long outlast the death of the last Northumbrian king, Guthred, at the end of the 9th Century. The monasteries were ruined and closed, the clergy preaching a gospel which bore little resemblence to biblical Christianity. Rather than impose a Norman style of church on the area, Walcher took an unusual step. He read Bede’s church history and the life of Cuthbert, and decided that the pattern he saw there was appropriate to the area, and that he would reintroduce the Celtic way of doing things (Walcher could be seen as a forerunner for todays enthusiasts for Celtic Christianity). He sent monks to repair and reopen the monasteries at Jarrow and Monkwearmouth, and laid the foundations for the monastery at Durham.

Whilst Walcher was effective in the spiritual side of his ministry, he had also been placed in charge of temporal affairs in his diocese, something to which he was not suited, and mainly left in the hands of the Norman soldiers. The Normans were an unpopular occupation force, and had been extremely ruthless in keeping control of their new kingdom and in cracking down on dissent. After a prominent Saxon noble had been killed, suspicion fell on Gilbert, a relative of Walcher. Walcher recognizing that his forces were becoming ever more unpopular decided to hold a meeting at the church in Gateshead (slightly to the east of the present St. Mary’s) with the Saxon leaders to try and diffuse the situation. Against advice he took only a few soldiers, together with monks and priests. Walcher met with the Saxon leaders in the church to hear their grievances and discuss how to reduce the tension. Once their leaders had left the church however, a group of Saxons led by Waltheof attacked it and set it alight. As the Normans tried to escape the burning building they were picked off one at a time. Walcher and his clergy were also killed - an action which led to even more brutal reprisals from the Normans in the following months.

There is a legend that shortly before this took place, a man called Eadulf from Ravensworth who had died came back to life the next day. He announced that he had been shown that the bishop was going to be killed, and that God was preparing a special place of punishment in hell for Waltheof. He said that the proof that this would come to pass was that he would die again in three days, which is what then happened. Several days after this Waltheof and his men killed the bishop.


The Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, most of County Durham was owned and ruled by the Bishops of Durham. The bishop owned a quarter of the arable land in the town, and took taxes from the rest together with the watermills, fisheries and bakehouses. The church which had been destroyed was rebuilt, though the present St. Mary's Church dates from the 13th century. Gateshead first received a charter from the Bishop of Durham in 1164, the rights and privileges included liberty in the forest, freedom from toll within the Palatinate and the same privileges and rights as those held by the burgesses of Newcastle. A large proportion of Gateshead was forest, used by the Bishop for hunting. Gradually this began to be cleared, and parts used for agriculture.

Gateshead held a successful market on Tuesdays and Fridays for many years from the mid 13th Century. Coal mining commenced in 1344 in Gateshead and Whickham, and for many years for the purposes of leasing and working collieries the neighbouring manors were linked - by the 16th Century they were referred to jointly as the “Grand Lease”.

Whilst St. Mary's was the only church in Gateshead, there were other religious institutions in the town, notably two hospitals dating from the 13th century. Confusingly they were both named after St. Edmund (one was sited on the High Street, the other on what would become the Old Durham Road), though in the 17th century one of them was renamed as King James's Hospital. The Chapel of St. Edmund's Hospital on the High Street still exists as St. Edmund's Church.

Church buildings in other parts of the present Borough also date back to this period - St. Mary's, Whickham (12th cent.), Holy Cross, Ryton (c.1220), and St. Andrew's, Lamesley (1280).


The threat from across the Tyne

If Gateshead were sited somewhere else, it would undoubtedly have been a more successful town. Unfortunately it had a jealous neighbour which did not want to face competition. In the early 14th Century Tynemouth was threatened and forced to remove a quay at North Shields by Newcastle which then turned its attention across the Tyne. Although Henry II had granted the Bishop of Durham the rights to land and sell goods on the south of the Tyne, Newcastle challenged this in 1336. Three of the Bishop’s fisheries on the south of the Tyne were destroyed, and fishing boats and shipments of wool heading for Gateshead were seized and forced to land their cargo in Newcastle. Although the Bishop protested to the King, and the King again confirmed Durham’s rights to the south bank of the Tyne, no action was taken to stop Newcastle. Eventually the Bishop lost interest in fighting a losing battle and concentrated instead on developing Hartlepool and Stockton as ports. In 1367 the owners of coal mines in Gateshead were forced to ship their coal across the river to sell it, as Newcastle would not permit it to be sold from either Gateshead or Whickham. The markets in Gateshead were also threatened and greatly reduced. Newcastle also tried to gain control over the Gateshead end of the Tyne Bridge, in 1383 a fortified tower was built at the south end of the bridge to reinforce their claim, though by 1416 the Bishop of Durham had regained control of his section of the bridge and the Corporation of Newcastle were forced to hand over their tower. In the 15th century royal proclamations gave Newcastle further rights over the river, and plans were made to annex Gateshead. The main factor which stopped this taking place was the strength of the Bishop; with the reformation and dissolution of the monasteries the Bishop’s power was severely weakened.

Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham from 1530 was no friend of the reformers. As Bishop of London he had pursued a vigorous campaign against William Tyndale and his “heretical” translation (it was somewhat ironic that Tunstall's name later appeared on the title page of the 1540 edition of the Great Bible). He had taken the oath of allegience to the King, but had made many enemies among those who sought to distance the church from Catholic practices. With the death of Henry VIII, and the more explicitly Protestant regime of his son Edward VI, Tunstall became a target, and Gateshead which relied on the protection of the Bishop was put at risk.

In March 1553, whilst the Bishop of Durham languished in prison on a charge of conspiracy against John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland, Cumberland, Newcastle and Berwick, a bill went through parliament to unite and annexe the manor of Gateshead to the town of Newcastle upon Tyne. The act made various accusations against the people of Gateshead failing to look after their town and their end of the bridge. The annexation did not last long. Edward VI died and his sister Mary took the throne; John Dudley was beheaded and the Bishop was released from the Tower and restored to his see. In April 1554 Gateshead was once again restored to the bishopric of Durham. Part of the price which the Bishop paid to overcome the opposition from Newcastle to this was to lease 34 acres of Saltmeadows to Newcastle for 450 years. In the 19th Century this was one of the main industrial centres of Gateshead (and had mysteriously grown to 95 acres), but all the revenue went across the Tyne.

The Bishop was a strong supporter of Mary, but was not as thorough as others when it came to cracking down on dissent in his diocese. Whilst there were many Protestants martyred for heresy around England in the reign of Mary, not one of them was put to death in the bishopric of Durham. It was somewhat inevitable that when Mary died and Elizabeth came to the throne that Tunstall would refuse to take the oath of supremacy, and so he was removed from his post and replaced by the protestant James Pilkington.

The coal mines of Gateshead and Whickham were becoming increasingly successful and productive, and the leaders of Newcastle felt threatened by this, so they made further attempts to annex the town. In 1574 they claimed that Gateshead was badly run and suspect in religion (implying that the people were suspected of being pro-catholic), though the bill was suppressed by the Bishop’s representatives. In 1576 after Bishop Pilkington died and while the see was vacant they tried again, this time with more organized opposition from the people of Gateshead which managed to sway parliament. One of the arguments made by the people of Gateshead was that they were “religious, godly and good protestants ... the town of Newcastle are all papists”.

Newcastle having given up trying to annex Gateshead, looked for other ways to wield power. In 1579 Thomas Sutton, Master of the Ordnance at Berwick and a friend of the Earl of Leicester, persuaded the Queen to grant him the lease on the Grand Lease coal mines of Gateshead and Whickham, to run for 79 years. The Bishop was to be paid a nominal rent. Sutton then assigned his lease to the leaders of the Newcastle merchants (he was paid £12,000 to do this deal - it took 2 horses to carry all the money). In 1582 the lease was replaced by one to run for 99 years.

During the years in which Newcastle was in charge of the Gateshead and Whickham coalfields, the mines were the most productive in the world. Production rose tenfold, and the population doubled, but the profits made crossed the Tyne to build fine houses for the Newcastle merchants. When the Bishop regained control of Gateshead in 1679, the coal was almost worked out, leading to great poverty amongst the miners.

While no protestants were executed in the diocese of Durham during the reign of Mary, numerous Catholics were martyred throughout the region during the reign of Elizabeth. One of these, John Ingram from Herefordshire, was executed on the gallows in the High Street in Gateshead on July 26th 1594, being hung, drawn and quartered. In his last letter written from prison, he wrote:

“Although in my native land, I have taken great pains in God's vineyard, yet I doubt not that God will strengthen me through yours' and my patron's prayers, so that I may purchase more favour for our Babylonic soil by my death. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

The 17th Century

This century saw major outbreaks of plague, together with the Civil War and Scottish occupation. 515 people died in Gateshead from the plague in 1636 (a seventh of the population), further plagues are recorded in 1642, 1646 and 1665, together with a number of outbreaks in Whickham between 1610 and 1647. Plague victims were quarantined in wood and turf huts in Bensham. After the defeat of English forces at Newburn in 1640, Newcastle and Gateshead were under Scottish occupation for over a year. The Scots returned in 1644 in support of Parliament against the King, pounding the walls of Newcastle from the Windmill Hills. They remained for three years until King Charles I (who they had imprisoned for a time in Newcastle) was handed over to the parliamentary forces. The House of Commons dissolved the see of Durham in 1646 (the Bishop had been accused of high treason).

It was a time of great superstition and fear, shown by the number of witch trials which took place across the region. The Gateshead parish books records for 1649:

“Paid at Mrs. Watson's when the justices sate to examine the witches, 3s 4d.; paid for a grave for a witch, 6d.; paid for trying the witches, £1 5s.”

With the execution of the King and the dissolution of the Durham bishopric, in 1649 Parliament was free to impose a more puritan minister on Gateshead, which had been previously ministered to by the supposedly “delinquent” and anti-puritan preacher Elizason Gilbert. Thomas Weld, who had been dismissed from one of his previous parishes for his non-conformist views, quickly fell out with the “four and twenty”, the ruling council of the Gateshead parish. He refused to admit the sacrament to most of his parishioners, and refused to permit any other preacher to officiate in the parish. It was claimed that he had:

“interpretatively excommunicated and actually excluded above a thousand soules from the benefit of the sacraments, without any legall proceeding, hearing or sentence denounced against them in any civill or ecclesiastical judicature, and have so kept them under the same penall suspention above eight year together, against the rules of law, religion and conscience; nor will indulge the favour of administering the sacraments to any of his parish, but to eight women and two men, weak and unstable persons, that are sublimed his converts.”

Weld, who often seems to have been away from his parish, put great effort into presenting his views in print, and attacking what he saw as error, particularly the Quakers and the Baptists. Eventually in 1658 after the four and twenty had petitioned the church commissioners regarding Weld, they were all dismissed and replaced by a decree from the Council of State (though most of them returned to office in 1660).

During the time of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, many new Christian groupings began spreading across the country. One such was the Quakers who had tremendous success in parts of the North of England. A stream of books challenging Quaker ideas came from Stephen Bulkley's publishing presses in Gateshead (many co-authored by Thomas Weld). A Newcastle alderman Thomas Ledgerd had mocked the Quakers claiming they would not dare to come into the towns, but lived in the fells like butterflies. George Fox took up the challenge in 1657 and came to Newcastle to speak with Ledgerd but was rebuffed. Fox crossed the river, and writes in his journal:

“As we could not have a publick meeting among them, we got a little meeting among Friends and friendly people at the Gateside where a meeting is continued to this day in the name of Jesus.”

Another leading Quaker, George Whitehead came to the area in the same year. He wrote:

“Great Endeavours were used for us to have had some Meetings in Newcastle upon Tine, while I was in those Parts: but the Mayor of the Town (influenced by the Priests) would not suffer us to keep any Meeting within the Liberty of the Town; though in Gateside, (being out of the Mayor's Liberty) our Friends had settled a Meeting at our beloved Friend Richard Ubank's House .... in Gateside we could enjoy our Meetings peaceably, which we were thankful to God for.”

The Quakers were helped by Gateshead's independence from Newcastle, and Thomas Weld's frequent absences and impotence in controlling his parishioners. The local Quaker literature usually referred to the location as Goatshead, while George Fox and George Whitehead came to Gateside or Gatesyde - the spelling of Gateshead was not firmly established until into the 18th century, and in 17th century writings it is common to find references to Gateshed, Gateshede, Gaitshed, Gateside, Gatesyde, Goatshead, Goateshead, Gotshead and Gotsheade, as well as Gateshead.

In 1660 the monarchy was restored, together with the Durham diocese. Thomas Weld had prudently left Gateshead for London in 1659 (though he doesn't seem to have actually resigned), making way for his successor John Ladler. The new stability was bad news for the Quakers who began to be persecuted strongly around the country as non-conformity was now prohibited by law. In 1681 six Quakers were fined for meeting for worship and the next year one of their preachers was imprisoned for three weeks. In 1684 some of the Gateshead Quakers were sent to Durham Gaol for refusing to swear the oath of allegiance, and the same year there is an account of John Hedley, a servant of the grocer Christopher Bickers being whipped naked through the streets at the command of the local Justices, after trying to stop the constables seizing property to pay a fine imposed on his master for being a Quaker. Gateshead remained the main Quaker centre in the area until a meeting was finally established in Newcastle in 1697, the Gateshead meeting being discontinued the following year.

.... to be continued

Andy Williamson