Hexham Abbey
The Abbey isn’t just a tourist attraction, without it Hexham would’ve never existed.
Only scattered farms were present in 672 when Northumbria Queen, Etheldreda gave the lands to Wilfrid to found a monastery. He built an edifice inspired by St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, after visiting the Italian capital, and it was praised as the finest church this side of the Alps.
But, by the turn of the first millennium Wilfrid’s Benedictine Monastery was in a poor and ruinous state after neglect and attacks, including raids by a Danish Viking army.
Salvation came in the form of the Archbishop of York, Thomas II, who re-founded the church as a priory of Augustine Canons in 1113. A complete redevelopment began and from 1202 the building of the existing Abbey commenced.
The new Gothic Nave was a later addition, built in 1908. Based on the same layout as the 13th Century Nave, it included earlier foundations, rediscovered stonework and a new entrance to the Crypt. This long forgotten part of Wilfrid’s 7th Century church was rediscovered in 1725 whilst digging foundations on the side where the twice-ruined Nave had stood. It is well worth a visit.
Other treasures worth seeing include the Frith Stool in the choir. This was the Bishop’s Throne or Cathedra (the Abbey was once a Cathedral) and it is the most intact survivor of Wilfrid’s Anglo Saxon church. This is one of only two Frith Stools of this date in England today. The throne stands in the same position as in the original church, in fact the foundations to the Anglo Saxon Apse still lies under a trapdoor in front of the Frith Stool.
In the choir the Misericords are where the canons sat during the long sermons. They flip up like cinema seats and are adorned with strange carvings of fantastical beasts and mythical characters, like the Green Man. More carvings, in stone, to the left of the high altar, include a harpist and a bagpiper. Set into the opposite wall is a small chalice that was found inside a coffin dug up in 1860. (Readers of Dan Brown shouldn’t get excited, it ‘probably’ isn’t The Grail.)
Hexham Abbey has had a bloody history but has always survived. Scots were the bane of many a border church or Priory and Hexham was no exception. They arrived at Hexham in 1296, burning it along with its books and smashing shrines and relics. Only the main walls survived. Signs of this inferno still remain today, particularly on the Night Stair.
Just as the Abbey was beginning to get back on its feet William Wallace himself, the ‘hero’ of Braveheart, lead an attack on Hexham Priory, destroying almost everything that had survived the previous raid.
Henry VIII tried to close Hexham Abbey as part of his Reformation, but his commissioners were met at the gatehouse by armed men and forced to retreat. It has been this lust for survival and fight for prominence that has kept the Abbey alive and still the focal point of Hexham today.
