The Antiquarian Magazine & Bibliographer; Vol. 4, July-Dec 1884Various
History
The Antiquarian Magazine & Bibliographer; Vol. 4, July-Dec 1884
Various
Archaeology -- Periodicals; Great Britain -- Antiquities -- Periodicals
worked into the upper part of the tower walls, which he thought might be
as late as the Norman Conquest or a little after, though their leading
features were distinctly Saxon. Mr. Johnson, a local architect under
whom the recent restoration of the church has been effected, added a few
remarks on other portions of the sacred fabric. It was proposed by Mr.
Micklethwait that the stones should be protected by a lean-to building
of wood placed round the lower portion of the tower, and this proposal
seemed to gain general acceptance. Mr. Micklethwait also pointed out
that, in all probability, adjoining the west front of the tower there
was once a baptistery, of which he showed some traces still remaining.
From Monkwearmouth the members of the congress made their way by special
train to Jarrow, a place which has even still richer memories of the
Venerable Bede, for here that historian spent the greater part of his
life, in the monastery built by Benedict Biscop in A.D. 680--a few years
after Monkwearmouth. The small hill on which the church of Jarrow stands
was not surrounded then as it is now by tall smoky chimneys and by
odoriferous chemical “works,” but was then, as we are told, green and
lonely. It was, and is still, placed on a peninsula formed by a
tributary of the Wear, and from the fact of Roman vessels and monuments
being found here in plenty, it probably occupies the site of a Roman
station. On the death of Benedict, Bede left Monkwearmouth and settled
at Jarrow, where he became a monk, and here he passed the rest of his
life in study and devotion. He wrote many other books, the “Life of St.
Cuthbert,” for instance, but his _opus magnum_ was that Ecclesiastical
History which he undertook at the suggestion and request of Ceolwolph,
King of Northumbria, a monarch who also ended his days as a monk in the
Abbey of Jarrow. Bede died here in May, A.D. 735, and was buried in the
church that he loved so well. The inscription on his tomb is recorded by
William of Malmesbury. The church itself is very like that of
Monkwearmouth in its general features, though its tower is central, and
not placed at the western extremity, as is the case there. The chancel
here is the oldest portion of the fabric, and the three tiny windows in
the south wall, one of them circular are curious from their extreme
simplicity and the depth of their “splay.” In the vestry here, as at
Monkwearmouth, are very many incised slabs of early Saxon date, if not
more primitive still. Inside the communion rails, on the southern side,
stands an old oaken chair with a tall straight back, of very rude
manufacture. This passes current in the neighbourhood as St. Bede’s
Chair; but the tradition was shown to be baseless by the reverend
lecturer, Mr. Boyle. The remains of the abbey on the south side of the
church were next inspected; these, being of Norman design, were clearly
not the buildings once tenanted by Bede, though they stand on the same
site.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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