ILLUSTRATED TALK ON MEDIEVAL NEWCASTLE

Monday 19th March 1pm at the West End Library, Condercum Road.

David Silk from Newcastle Castle will describe the history of Newcastle’s castle from its earliest foundation.  David will also talk about the growth of the surrounding area, including the villages of Benwell, Fenham and Scotswood as well as the medieval town of Newcastle.

Free entry                Everyone welcome

ILLUSTRATED TALK ON MEDIEVAL NEWCASTLE

Monday 19th March 1pm at the West End Library, Condercum Road.

David Silk from Newcastle Castle will describe the history of Newcastle’s castle from its earliest foundation.  David will also talk about the growth of the surrounding area, including the villages of Benwell, Fenham and Scotswood as well as the medieval town of Newcastle.

Free entry                Everyone welcomeILLUSTRATED TALK ON MEDIEVAL NEWCASTLE

To find out more, click  here

The gardeners amongst us have worked hard where there is no knotweed infestation
producing a great display of flowers.
Michael Young

An annotated list of graves and memorials of soldiers who died in wars
of 20th century

Military Graves annotated.xls

We decided to let the vegetation win this year.
Michael Young

This month, we are hosting several family workshops aimed at increasing the biodiversity of the graveyard. The graveyard is already an important site for wildlife of all sorts in this urban area of Newcastle, and is the home to many different species of insects as well as bats and birds.

We start on Tuesday 14th August with our Insect Houses workshop, where we’re going to construct shelters for the ladybirds, butterflies and other insects in the graveyard to hibernate in during the winter. The houses will be made out of milk cartons crammed with twigs. They can be hung from trees and placed on the ground.

For details of the other workshops, please click on the link below:

https://stjameschurchnewcastle.wordpress.com/whatson/summer-family-activities/

On May 15th this year, the St. James’ Heritage & Environment Group hosted their annual AGM at St. James’ Church. Following a busy meeting, members of the group had the chance to tour the graveyard, led by volunteers who played various characters associated with the church’s history or buried in the graveyard.

The picture above shows a member of grave yard volunteer group, Ted Clark, dressed as a miner. The graveyard has several miners’ graves as there were pits dotted all over the West End in Elswick, Benwell and Scotswood. Charlotte Pit, the nearest to St. James’ was situated almost directly across the road from the church, just behind where the Lidl supermarket is now.

In the photo above, Ruth is explaining the story behind one of our more cryptic stones, which reads ‘Jane, killed by a car, 1906’. Ruth managed to discover a bit more about this stone by tracking down the original newspaper report and inquest records at the local studies library in Newcastle City Library. She found out that Jane was originally from the Shetland Islands and had been knocked down as she was crossing the road by a car which was travelling at 6miles per hour.

Volunteer and local author Yvonne Young is representing the Sowerby family who owned the Sowerby glassworks in Gateshead.

A huge thank you to all our volunteers who gave up their time to help bring the church’s history to life.

Last week our graveyard volunteers uncovered a new gravestone which had been hidden for years under soil and undergrowth.

The grave belongs to the Burnett family from Gateshead and reads as follow:

The family burial place of
John Burnett
of Saltwell, Gateshead
who died June 11th 1863. Aged 43 years.

Also
In memory of
John George Burnett
second son of the above
who died at
Sidney, New South Wales
August 21st 1879 aged 24 years

We are now trying to find out some more information about this family. Why were they buried in Benwell when they were from Gateshead? What was John George Burnett doing in Sydney? What happenend to the rest of the family?

If you know anything about the Burnetts please get in touch!

As part of the city wide celebrations for the 150th Anniversary of The Blaydon Races, St. James’ hosted a fantastic schools concert on Thursday July 5th. 

Children from St. Bede’s, St. Michael’s, St. John’s, Hawthorn, Bridgewater and Our Lady & St. Anne’s Primary Schools spent the weeks leading up to the concert learning famous Tyneside music hall songs and ballads from the mid Victorian period. They performed 6 songs, including Cushie Butterfield and ‘Keep Yor Feet still Geordie Hinny’  and were joined on stage by some of the famous characters immortalised in the Blaydon Races song! 

Photos of the event coming soon.