Jarrow
Despite its modern industrial appearance Jarrow, located on the south bank of the River Tyne and to the east of Gateshead, is one of the most historic towns in the North East of England.
Jarrow's early history is centred round a humble Anglo-Saxon church dedicated to St Paul. The church was founded in the 7 th century AD by a Northumbrian noble called Benedict Biscop, as a twin monastery for that at St Peters, Monkwearmouth (Sunderland). The dedication stone for the church is the oldest in the country, dating the building to the 23 rd April, AD681. There are only two older churches in the N. East of England - at Monkwearmouth and at Escomb (County Durham). Benedict Biscop's Saxon monastery at Jarrow became a great centre of English learning and is renowned the world over as the historic home of the Venerable Bede (AD 673-735). Bede came to Jarrow at the age of twelve, and in his later years was author of over 400 scholarly works, including the famed ‘Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum' completed in AD 731.
The Venerable Bede Historia Ecclesiastica
This title translates as ‘The History of the English Church and People', and remains a major source for the greater part of our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England. Bede was without doubt the first historian of England and is widely regarded as the ‘shining beacon' during that period of history familiarly referred to as the ‘Dark Ages'. The great man's tomb can be viewed in Durham Cathedral.
In AD794, fifty-nine years after Bede's death, Jarrow suffered one of the earliest Viking raids on mainland Britain. Biscop's monastery was severely burnt during the raid, but in the confusion the Viking leader was captured by the local Anglo-Saxons, and put to death. Worse still for the now leaderless invaders, they panicked in their flight from the monastery and sailed off directly into the teeth of a violent storm. Most of the fleet was cast back onto shore and wrecked, and those Vikings who survived this were slain without mercy by the monks of Jarrow.
The settlement was not so fortunate in repelling later Viking raids - in AD875 the monastery was completely ransacked, and thereafter remained in a ruinous state until the period of the Norman Conquest in the early 11 th century. Unlike other parts of Britain where the Vikings invaded and then settled to live, at Jarrow they seem only to have set shore as raiders. Curious then to consider the reason why two statues of Viking warriors should command pride of place in Jarrow's modern town centre, commemorating a warrior cast who plundered, violated and stole from Jarrow and contributed nothing but misery!
Although Jarrow is historically more closely associated with the Anglo-Saxon period, it does retain a number of interesting connections with Hadrian's Roman Wall. Roman stones were used in the construction of the Anglo-Saxon monastery of St Paul's at Jarrow and in 1886, this was confirmed when two inscribed Roman stones were discovered during repairs to its nave.
The Venerable Bede, during his time at Jarrow, was very aware of the significant Roman remains in the vicinity and indeed was the first Anglo-Saxon to record the existence of Hadrian's Wall. In fact, it was Bede who gave the name vallum to the defensive Roman earthwork that runs a little to the south of, and parallel to, the Wall.