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The Adult Tour
The bus ride from Newcastle is a little over one hour long. After a quick rip through the outskirts of the city we smack straight into the rough countryside that characterizes this stretch of farm and scrub land East of the Pennine Chain of mountains and South of the Cheviot Hills. On a beautiful Spring day we watch out the window as the coach rumbles along the backroads, startling new born lambs and calves as it brushes against budding new hedgerow growth.
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Our tour of Hexham began, as such things often do, at a monument - in this case a statue of Colonel Benson, son of a local family of landowners who was killed in the Boer War. This African uprising at the turn of the twentieth century has created many such statues around Britain since it carried a sense of far flung heroic romance and "winning one for the Empire" without all the dark and evil overtones of those conflagrations with Germany to come. The colonel's effigy stands, imposingly at the junction of Beaumont and Hencotes and we went behind it and walked on down Beaumont, past the Queen's Hall Art Centre and Theatre towards the Abbey with the splendid park and Sele on our left.
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Again, as is often the case, one arrives at the gift shop before one gets to the actual event/place.
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The matriarch goes shopping |
Built into the abbey below the song school, the gift shop is far less intrusive than many and has a variety of interesting and cheap pamphlets and brochures, as well as some of the more costly items of memorabilia often associated with such places. But, Lo and behold, the actual entrance to the Abbey is right next door and is FREE, save for a "suggested donation" of £2 which is a bargain by any standards for the delights offered by this august landmark.
The Abbey itself was a delight… my wife is a person who truly loves history for it's own sake and the treasure trove of historical artifacts and sculptures and tales, legends and stories built into every nook and cranny ensured that she could happily have spent days just wandering from each dusty cubby hole to every age old plaque. I, on the other hand, have a more cynical view of history… to my way of thinking it's over - why dwell on it? But even such a cavalier attitude was brought to it's knees by the treasures contained within the abbey. There's a tombstone there, right inside the front door, of a roman soldier called Flavinus. he was a standard bearer who died at the age of 25 after seven years of military service. He dies sometime before 79 A.D. It was a sobering thought to realize that the stone commemorating his death was the oldest man made thing that I had ever knowingly touched and it gave me pause for thought. It tends to place a singular sense of perspective into the mind of a man who has just reluctantly turned fifty one years of age, to lay his flat palm on a piece of stone that was carved less than a lifetime after the death of Christ.
I particularly enjoyed the aspect of being able to climb the night stair to the balcony and gaze out over the spreading abbey. Unlike many such historic buildings, this is an active abbey, still very much a reflection of today's life set against the background of ancient history and that sense is almost tangible as one looks out from the balcony.
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But Hexham, contrary to our previous ideas, has much more to offer than the abbey. Outside of the main door lies the open marketplace with it's rectangular rotunda which today contains some flower and vegetable stalls and which is filled with market items on Tuesdays. Behind it is the Moot Hall, a singular granite block of a building which once formed the gatehouse tower of the garrison defence against the pesky Scots on their many and frequent forays into the coveted lands to the south.
The rest of Hexham's large and irregularly shaped Market Place is peppered with remains of its medieval past. Nearby, the archbishops also built their own prison, a formidable fortified tower dating from 1330 and constructed using stones stolen from the Roman ruins at Corbridge. Now, as the Old Gaol, this accommodates the tourist office and the Border History Museum which provides information and displays concerning the border-raiding "reivers", as well as covering the building's use as a prison - a function it abandoned in 1824. Here, we knew, was all that my wife needed to spend several days lost in the cobwebs of time.
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But first, we walked down the Fore Street and right onto Cattle Market and up Battle Hill. The small streets with their variety of small shops made it an interesting walk as we popped in and out of our favourite second hand stores and small book and art shops.
At Bensons monument we crossed the street and walked back along the other side of Hencotes, past St Mary's Church, down Battle Hill, and all the way down Priestpopple as far as the bus station. Crossing the road we ducked into a small alley which wound it's way along behind the post office and eventually spilled out across from the old grammar school (which are now the District Council Offices) on Hallgate. We were pleased and surprised that this compact little town had so much to see in such a short walk. If we had made a right onto Hallgate and walked a little way down Hall Orchard Road, we would have come out almost across from the railroad station and just behind the big new superstore and leisure centre… but my wife yearned for more history… craved the dungeons and leg irons of England's storied past. We headed left, east and then north along Hallgate until we approached the museum and old gaol. Impatient to get to the instruments of torture she was delighted to find the stocks outside the museum…
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There were stocks to keep one captive while either standing or sitting. While I carried on modern day conversations with the lady in the tourist office, my wife persuaded the curator of the museum to break all his rules and let her play… she sat in the stocks exhibit, alongside a mannequin… she tried on the vest and steel helmet of a soldier… she went to the dungeon and kept the man way past his closing time as she examined parchments and scrolls and crests and leg irons. She took photographs and then had me come and take photographs of her… It took me quite some time to get her out and back into the bustling streets of this surprising town. Once the man closed down the museum we were brought back to reality with a jerk as we realized that our jeankids would be back at the bus station with our hostess… or what was left of her after an afternoon with Nancy Sue and the Weasel. We headed back along the little alleyway from Hallgate to Priestpopple and saw them waiting patiently. In a trice we were back on board the coach and headed to Newcastle. We felt a little guilty that we had so much fun without our children and assured them that we would return to Hexham and take them to the sights. they, surprisingly, had spent a wonderful afternoon sampling the joys of Tyne Park and the fresh clean spring air of the North Country. In a strange way, this afternoon was almost the perfect blend of today, yesterday and ancient history and as the hedgerows rustled by the side of the bus we were very satisfied with the entire trip.
Be warned Hexham… we will be back.
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