www.EnglandsPastForEveryone.org.uk/Explore
County Durham
BISHOPWEARMOUTH’S MEDIEVAL PARISH CHURCH
In the Middle Ages Bishopwearmouth’s parish church was probably the grandest building in the
locality, a reflection of the great wealth of its rectors. It is now very difficult to work out what this
important structure looked like or how it developed over three or four centuries, because almost all the
medieval fabric has disappeared. We have to rely on antiquarian accounts and illustrations: two late
18th-century prints and the historian Hutchinson’s account give some clues.
The church must already have been large and impressive in the 12th century. The west tower was
probably Norman and its nave was flanked by four-bayed arcades with round arches. From the
illustrations it seems that about1300 the aisles were widened and given gable-topped buttresses and
cusped lancet windows. The chancel (part of which survives) was also rebuilt and was fashionably
long with traceried windows. A vestry on the north of the chancel may have added then or slightly
later. From its embattled silhouette, it appears that the church must have been considerably
modernized and enlarged in the later Middle Ages. A clerestory and a south porch were built on to the
nave and the chancel, to which a north chapel with a low pitched roof was added. It seems that the
tower was made more prominent by the addition of a belfry stage.
This medieval church survived until 1806-8, when it was completely remodelled as a preaching box
for the growing town. The medieval nave arcades were destroyed and the nave was enlarged by
absorbing the western end of the chancel and its north chapel. The side walls of the east end were
heightened and galleries carried on cast-iron columns were erected in the newly-created box. It is
recorded that the medieval chancel arch was carefully dismantled and re-erected further east, although
its stonework was so much scraped and re-tooled as to appear almost new. The tower seems to have
been rebuilt from the ground. By 1849 the Newcastle architect John Dobson had added wide galleried
transepts to house extra seating for an expanding population. Later in the century liturgical changes
were marked by the building of an organ chamber and choir vestry. They replaced the thick-walled
medieval vestry on the north of the chancel and still survive.
In 1932-5 W.D. Caröe, an architect of national repute, transformed this unsatisfactory building into
one of considerable architectural merit, large and imposing enough for what had by then become a
great industrial town. He used the Perpendicular style and seems to have thought that the medieval
church had been wholly Gothic, though as we have seen it probably incorporated much earlier work.
Sadly, his work involved sweeping away almost everything genuinely medieval that had survived. The
walls of the original aisles and north chapel vanished when outer aisles were added, and some of the
Peter Ryder and Elizabeth Williamson
Page 1
south side of the truncated medieval chancel went when the Bede chapel was built. Worst of all, an
unparalleled opportunity for archaeological recording and investigation was missed, just as it had been
at St Hilda’s, Hartlepool, when Caröe altered that ancient church.
In 1981, the architect Ian Curry changed the purpose of Caröe’s interior almost as radically as the
early 19th-century congregation had changed the medieval church. He screened off the outer aisles, no
longer necessary as fewer people lived in the locality, to form meeting rooms and a café, and removed
the chancel screen, making nave and chancel into one space for worship.
The medieval fragments

The only part of the medieval church that remains in place is the eastern two bays of the
chancel, built about 1300. The east window of five stepped lancets has been heavily restored.
The trefoiled, deeply-moulded arches of the sedilia and piscina are original, and a blocked
north doorway may be as well.

Other genuine medieval features were re-set in the 1930s. The doorway on the eastern side of
the organ chamber is recorded as having been taken from the south side of the chancel; the
blocked doorway on the north side of the south porch to the Bede Chapel, and the rear arch of
the doorway into the choir vestry from the north transept also appear to be re-set medieval
work.

The west tower is the principal survival from the 1806-1808 work. At first glance its low
round arches, now somewhat mutilated, could be taken for early medieval fabric, but
Hutchinson describes the medieval tower as having pointed arches.

Though they look Gothic the transepts were built in 1849. They have large windows in the end
walls with closed panels that indicate the positions of the former galleries. Also Gothic in style
are the late 19th-century organ chamber and choir vestry.

Despite Caröe’s sweeping changes of 1932-1935, it is still possible to see how large the
medieval church was. Chancel and tower are in their original positions and Caröe’s outer
arcades are built on the line of the medieval aisle walls.
Peter Ryder and Elizabeth Williamson
COPYRIGHT
All rights, including copyright ©, of the content of this document are owned or controlled by the
University of London. For further information refer to
http://www.englandspastforeveryone.org.uk/Info/Disclaimer
Peter Ryder and Elizabeth Williamson
Page 2