Northumberland Yesterday and To-dayTerry, Jean F. (Jean Finlay)
History
Northumberland Yesterday and To-day
Terry, Jean F. (Jean Finlay)
Northumberland (England) -- Guidebooks; Northumberland (England) -- History
In the church is buried Sir Adam de Athol, Lord of Jesmond, and
Mary, his wife. It is supposed that this Sir Adam gave the Town
Moor to the people of Newcastle, though this has been disputed. A
fine picture of the “Last Supper,” by Giordano, presented by Major
Anderson in 1804, hangs in the church.
St. John’s Church ranks next to St. Andrew’s in point of age; there
are fragments of Norman work in the building, and it is known to
have been standing in 1297. To-day the venerable pile, with its age
worn stones, stands out in sharper contrast to its environment than
does any other building in the town, surrounded as it is by modern
shops and offices. The memories it evokes, and the past for which
it stands, are such as the citizens of Newcastle will not willingly
let die; and when, a few years ago, a proposal was made for its
removal, the proposition aroused such a storm of popular feeling
against it that it was incontinently abandoned.
All Saints’ Church was built in 1789, on the site of an older
building which was in existence in 1296, and which became very
unsafe. Here is kept one of the most interesting monuments in the
city—the monumental brass which once covered the tomb of Roger
Thornton, a wealthy merchant of Newcastle, and a great benefactor
to all the churches. He died in 1429. He gave to St. Nicholas’
Church its great east window; but, on its needing repair in 1860,
it was removed entirely, and the present one, in memory of Dr.
Ions, inserted; and the only fragment left of Thornton’s window is
a small circular piece inset in a plain glass window in the
Cathedral. He gave much money to Hexham Abbey also.
Besides the famous men already mentioned in connection with the
town, Newcastle possesses other well-known names not a few. In the
Middle Ages, Duns Scotus, the man whose skill in argument earned
for him the title of “Doctor Subtilis,” owned Northumberland as his
home, and received his education in the monastery of the Grey
Friars, which stood near the head of the present Grey Street. He
returned to this monastery after some years of study at Oxford; in
1304 he was teaching divinity in Paris.
Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London in the reign of Edward VI., whose
Northumbrian birthplace at Willimoteswick has already been noted,
received his early education at the Grammar School in Newcastle,
and on going to Cambridge was a student at Pembroke. We are told he
was the ablest man among the Reformers for piety, learning and
judgment. As is well known, he died at the stake in 1555.
William and Elizabeth Elstob, who lived in Newcastle at the end of
the seventeenth century, were learned Saxon scholars, but were so
greatly in advance of the education of their times that they met
with little encouragement or sympathy in their labours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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