Part 15

St. Mary’s, Easington, has suffered much at the hands of restorers, but still remains a most interesting church. The whole of the present edifice, with the exception of the tower, which is of Norman work, dates from the thirteenth century. The nave is separated from its aisle by four pointed arches on either side resting on piers, alternately octagonal and cylindrical. The clerestory is good and has four lancet windows on each side. With the exception of the original round-headed windows in the tower, all the windows are restorations. The present entrance is at the south of the tower, the original entrance to the nave having been built up. The woodwork of the chancel is interesting. There are two fine male and female effigies of the Fitz-Marmaduke family in the chancel, but their identity is uncertain. They date from the latter part of the thirteenth century.

In the north-eastern quarter of the county there are the churches of Jarrow and Monkwearmouth already referred to, and several other edifices of ancient foundation, but so much restored and modernized as to retain few of their original features.

[Illustration: BOLDON SPIRE.]

This may be said of the church at Whitburn, which contains a peculiar seventeenth-century monumental effigy in wood. The Church of St. Nicholas at West Boldon occupies a lofty site on the side of a hill, and is visible for many miles over Jarrow and the low land round Hedworth. The oldest portions date from the beginning of the thirteenth century. In January, 1906, the nave and chancel roofs were destroyed by fire, and several of the monumental inscriptions badly scorched. The Church of St. Hilda, at South Shields, occupies a site of great antiquity, but was entirely rebuilt in 1810.

The Church of St. Mary, Gateshead, is of more general interest, but has been greatly restored. The tower was rebuilt in 1740. The roof of the nave is good, and of Perpendicular date. Several pre-Reformation grave-covers are built into the walls, two of special interest being in the porch. A number of quaint extracts from the parish books are given by Surtees:

1632. Paid for whipping black Barborie 6d.

1649. Paid at Mris Watsons, when the Justices sate to examin the witches ¾; for a grave for a witch 6d; for trying the witches £1. 5. 0.

1671. Paid for powder and match when the Keelemen mutinyed 2/-.

1684. For carrying 26 Quakers to Durham £2. 17s.

In the north-west of the county, Ryton Church (Holy Cross), dates from the thirteenth century, and is all of one period. It consists of a chancel, nave with north and south aisles, western tower with spire, and south porch. In the chancel is a square-headed piscina in the usual position, a priest’s doorway, and a low side-window, now built up. In the north wall is an ambry. The arcades of the nave are of three arches each, the easternmost pillars on each side being octagonal, the others cylindrical. The corbel-table of the tower is of interest, several of the corbels being carved in foliage designs. The wooden, lead-covered spire is contemporary with the tower. Within the altar-rails is a fine sepulchral effigy in marble of a deacon.

Returning again to the central districts, the Church of St. Mary and St. Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street is the successor of an early wooden edifice, which sheltered for the greater part of two centuries the remains of the latter saint, before the Danish invasion of 995 caused his guardians--for better security--to remove their charge to Ripon. Egelric, fourth Bishop of Durham, decided to rebuild the church of stone, but it is doubtful if any remains of his church are incorporated in the present building. The date of the erection of the latter is uncertain.

The oldest portions of the present church are the north and south walls of the chancel, and in the south wall are inserted three windows, dating from the thirteenth century, and evidently contemporary with the three eastern bays of the arcade of the nave. The remaining bays of the nave and the tower are later additions, and the graceful spire still later, dating from the Early Decorated period.

At the time of the Reformation there were two chantries in the church, one being in the south aisle, at the east end of which there is a trefoil-headed piscina and square ambry. At the west end of the north aisle, partly within and partly without the church, is an interesting two-storied erection, containing four chambers, which must have, at one time, been an anchorage. The church is chiefly remarkable for the series of fourteen monumental effigies of presumed members of the Lumley family. Eleven, however, were the work of sculptors employed by John, Lord Lumley, at the end of the sixteenth century, and two were removed by him from the graveyard of Durham Abbey, under the mistaken impression that they represented two of his ancestors.

"The first effigy, evidently imaginary, represents Liulph in a coat of mail.... Above this venerable personage is a long inscription commemorating the whole family descent.

"Next to Liulph lies Uchtred, in a suit of chain armour....

"The third effigy, William, son of Uchtred, who first assumed the Lumley name, is probably genuine. He appears in a full suit of chain armour, over which is a surcoat, with the drapery hanging in easy folds below the girdle. The legs are crossed, and rest on a lion. A shield on the left arm. The head rests on a cushion.

"The second William de Lumley appears in plate of a much less genuine description....

"And the third William is like unto him, save that his legs be straight and his hair wantonly crisped.

"And Roger is like William, but sore mutilated.

"Robert de Lumley, extremely like Roger....

"Sir Marmaduke Lumley, in mail....

"Ralph, first Baron Lumley ... one of those removed from the cemetery of the Cathedral Church of Durham, a close coat of mail, the visor ribbed down the front with two transverse slits for the sight, the breast covered with the shield, the sword unsheathed and upright, the point resting against the visor, the legs straight, resting on a couchant hound.

"Sir John Lumley, almost minutely resembling the last.

"George Lord Lumley. An effigy, recumbent like his predecessors.... The dress is probably intended for the robes of the baron.

" ... Sir Thomas Lumley, Knight. The figure is in mail....

"Richard, Lord Lumley....

"The last effigy, John, Lord Lumley, in robes...."--SURTEES.

In the church is also a thirteenth-century effigy of a bishop, representing St. Cuthbert.

St. Mary the Virgin, Lanchester, is a very interesting church, and has portions of Norman date. It consists of a chancel, nave with north and south aisles, and south porch, western tower, and a vestry. The chancel dates from the thirteenth century, and there is a very fine piscina in its south wall. The chancel arch dates from the middle of the twelfth century. The vestry opens from the chancel by a very fine doorway, with a cinquefoil arch. The arcades of the nave have four bays on either side, with cylindrical pillars and pointed arches. The south aisle and porch date from the beginning, and the north aisle from the end, of the fourteenth century.

There is a brass in the chancel to the memory of John Rudd, and an effigy of a priest lies in a recess in the south aisle. During the episcopacy of Bishop Bek the church was made collegiate with a Dean and seven Prebendaries, and portions of the woodwork of their stalls are still preserved.

The church at Brancepeth (St. Brandon) has parts dating from the thirteenth century, and is an interesting edifice. The panelling and general internal fittings of the church are of a most elaborate nature. Over the chancel arch is some remarkable screen work, carved in oak and painted white. The chancel screen and stalls date from the time of John Cosin, who was rector of Brancepeth before being raised to the Bishopric in 1661, but have the appearance, in common with much of his work at Durham Castle, of belonging to a much earlier period.

There are several sepulchral effigies to members of the Neville family in the church.

St. Michael’s, Bishop Middleham, is a thirteenth-century church and all of one period. Whitworth church was entirely rebuilt in 1850, and is only interesting for the remarkable male and female sepulchral effigies in the churchyard.

At Bishop Auckland, St. Helen’s has a chancel arch and two bays of the arcades of the nave of Late Transitional work, a very short period separating them from the western bays of the nave. The chancel is of thirteenth-century date, and the aisles are prolonged to engage the greater part of it, forming chantry chapels. The clerestory has three two-light, Late Perpendicular windows on each side, and at the west end is a round-headed window of earlier date, but evidently an insertion in its present position. The east window consists of three lancets under one arch, the spandrel spaces being pierced. The south doorway is of Perpendicular date, and the porch, a later addition, has in common with St. Andrew’s, Auckland, a chamber above. There is a brass of fifteenth-century date in the church.

The Church of St. Andrew’s, Auckland, is a fitting edifice to close this brief account of the parish churches of Durham. Its site has from the earliest times of Christianity in the North been occupied by a church, and there is strong evidence that it was the home of a collegiate body formed of monks removed from Durham by Bishop William de St. Carileph. This establishment was reorganized by Bishop Bek in 1292, and great alterations were made in the fabric of the church at the same time.

The church consists of a chancel, north and south transepts, nave with north and south aisles, and western tower. It dates from the thirteenth century, and there is evidence that it succeeded a building of Norman date, which was itself either an enlargement of, or a successor to, the first building.

The church has many points of great interest, and perhaps the most striking features of the interior are the arcades of the nave. These are of five bays each, with richly moulded arches, resting on alternate octagonal and clustered piers. The north transept was almost entirely rebuilt during restoration, but the new work is a copy of the old, which, however, did not date from the original church, but was one of the alterations of Bishop Bek, before referred to. The east wall of the chancel is also his work. In 1417 a higher stage was added to the tower, and the clerestory of the nave is of still later date.

The chancel stalls are the work of Cardinal Langley and very effective. There are two monumental effigies in the church, one of a Knight in armour, the other of a lady; both apparently date from the end of the fourteenth century. There are also three brasses.

MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTIONS OF THE COUNTY OF DURHAM

BY EDWIN DODDS

The earliest-known burial-place in the county of Durham has no monumental inscriptions in it. It is a barrow opened at Copt Hill, near Houghton-le-Spring, which contained Neolithic remains, and it is interesting inasmuch as it has also vestiges of burials made again after the lapse of many years, when the Bronze Age had superseded the period in which men warred and worked with weapons of stone only. There is no memento known of the Paleolithic Age in the county, and only thirteen places of burial used by Neolithic man have been investigated. Of the Bronze Age about a dozen burial-places have been examined, many of them containing those small rudely fashioned earthenware vessels, from three to six inches high, roughly ornamented with simple lines and dots, which are known as "food-vessels" and "incense-cups."

Of the monumental inscriptions left by the Romans, two of the most interesting were found near the Roman station in South Shields. One of them is an elaborately carved slab, four feet long, which bears the figure of a woman seated, with a work-basket at her left hand and a jewel-case at her right; she seems to be occupied in needlework. Below is the Latin inscription: "To the Divine Shades of Regina, of the Catuallaunian Tribe, a freed woman, and the wife of Barates the Palmyrene. She lived thirty years." Below this is a line in Syriac: "Regina, the freed woman of Barate. Alas!" The district of Catuallauna is said to have extended from Gloucestershire to Lincolnshire. It is strange that affinity of souls should have brought together as man and wife a merchant from Syria and a slave from the centre of England. Another Roman gravestone from South Shields, found in 1885, reads: "To the Divine Shades of Victor. He was by nation a Moor: he lived twenty years: and was the freed man of Numerianus, a horseman of the first ala of Asturians, who most affectionately followed [his former servant to the grave]." This stone probably dates from about A.D. 275; it bears the half-recumbent figure of a man on a couch, with a canopy above and the inscription below. At Binchester, near Bishop Auckland--the Vinovia of the Romans--a plain slab with ansated ends was found inscribed: "Sacred to the Divine Shades. Nemesius Montanus the Decurion lived forty years. Nemesius Sanctus, his brother, and his coheirs, erected this in accordance with the provisions of his will." This slab was also probably carved and set up in the third century. In Roman epitaphs no mention of death is ever made; it is stated that the person commemorated had lived so many years, but the fact that he died and the date of his death is not recorded.

Of Anglo-Saxon memorial crosses there are a large number in the county of Durham, all of them of great interest, and some of beautiful workmanship. The most notable are those at Aycliffe, Billingham, Chester-le-Street, Coniscliffe, Darlington, Dinsdale, Durham (where, in the Dean and Chapter Library, there is a fine collection both of original stones from several places and of facsimile copies), Elwick, Escomb, Gainford, Great Stainton, Haughton-le-Skerne, Hurworth, Kelloe, Norton, Sockburn, and Winston-on-the-Tees. None of them are perfect; most of them are fragments of monuments which have at some time been broken up and used as building stones.

[Illustration: ANGLO-SAXON STONE AT CHESTER-LE-STREET.]

The cross at Kelloe is made up of pieces now carefully joined together; it is a very fine example. Most of these crosses have the characteristic knot-work ornament, and many of them have human figures, crucifixions, monsters, warriors, animals, and birds, carved upon them, the sculpture and design being of the Anglian school. Very few of them have any lettering. One at Chester-le-Street has EADMUND in mixed Runic and Roman letters, but this may be an addition by a later hand. The hog-backed stones of this period, of which some very fine specimens were discovered at Sockburn in 1900, bear similar knot-work ornaments. In 1833 a burial-place at Hartlepool, and in 1834 one at Monkwearmouth, were discovered; they both yielded memorial stones, small in size, but of great interest. A stone from the latter place, now in the British Museum, bears the name TIDFIRTH in Runic characters. Tidfirth was the last Bishop of Hexham, and was deposed about the year 821. The stones found at Hartlepool are known as pillow-stones; they are almost square, and only from 9 to 12 inches across by about 2 inches thick. Only seven of them have been saved. They all bear a cross, sunk in some stones and raised on others, and several of them have short inscriptions in Saxon minuscules. One reads: "ORATE PRO EDILUINI ORATE PRO UERMUND ET TORTHSUID."

Those effigies, or early statues, generally recumbent, and made sometimes of wood, but more often of stone, which were placed in churches from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, are to be found in many places in the county, sometimes decently and carefully preserved in the church, sometimes left to weather and decay in the churchyard, or in the rectory garden. Among the more noticeable of them are the following:

At the west end of Staindrop Church is the "altar-tomb of alabaster," with an effigy of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmorland, in plate armour, and with figures of his two wives, one on either hand. Surtees, in his _History of Durham_, describes it as "this noble tomb, which is in the purest style of the best age of sepulchral monuments." Its date is probably about 1425. There is in the same church another tomb with effigies, in wood, of the fifth Earl of Westmorland and his two wives; it is dated 1560.

Barnard Castle Church has an effigy of a priest attired in chasuble, stole, dalmatic, alb, and amice. The inscription is in Lombardic lettering, and reads: "ORATE PRO AIA ROBERTI DE MORTHAM QNDM VICARII DE GAYNFORD." This Robert de Mortham founded a chantry at Barnard Castle in 1339.

At Bishopwearmouth there was formerly the effigy of Thomas Middleton of Chillingham, the founder of the family of Silksworth. It represented Middleton in complete armour, with his hands raised. It bore the inscription: "Hic jacet Thom’ Middylton Armiger -- -- -- MCCC." At one time this statue lay on an altar-tomb in the north aisle of the church; later it was placed upright against the wall of the aisle; later, again, it is recorded that it lay, broken into two pieces, in the porch; to-day it cannot be found.

In the Church of St. Giles, in the city of Durham, there is a wooden effigy in complete armour, which is supposed to represent the first John Heath, of Kepier, who was buried in the chancel of that church in 1590.

The Lumley monuments are a collection of fourteen effigies which lie in the north aisle of Chester-le-Street Church. They were placed there by a Lord Lumley about 1594. They represent the Lords of Lumley from Liulph, who lived in the days of William the Conqueror, down to the John, Lord Lumley, who fought at Flodden Field in 1513. Probably only three of the fourteen monuments are genuine; the others were either manufactured or, more probably, collected from other places.

The old chapel at Greatham was pulled down in 1788. In a recess in the south wall of the transept there was a wooden effigy of an ecclesiastic. During the rebuilding of the chapel a stone coffin containing his bones and a chalice of pewter was found near the foot of the wall.

In the Pespoole seats in the south aisle of Easington Church there is an elegant recumbent figure of a woman, carved in Stanhope marble. On it are carved the three popinjays which were carried on the coat of arms of the ancient owners of Horden. At Heighington Church there are two female effigies, one of which has been very fine, but they are both much weathered and decayed; they are probably of fourteenth-century date. In the same church there is a medieval pulpit, the only one remaining in the county. It is of oak, and on it there is inscribed in black letter: "<f>orate p’ aiabz Alexandri flessehar et agnetis uxoris sue</f>." To commemorate oneself by giving a pulpit to the church seems a practical and useful form of memorial. As this is the only medieval pulpit the county has left, it seems likely that its preservation is due to the inscription it bears.

When Neasham Abbey, in the north of Yorkshire, fell into ruin, two of its effigies were moved over the Tees to the church at Hurworth. One of them was a remarkably fine figure of a knight in armour, his head covered with a coat of mail, his body clad in a shirt of mail, over which there is a surcoat. His shield has "barry of eight, three chaplets of roses." The armour is of the style in use in the early part of the fourteenth century, and the effigy probably represents the Robert FitzWilliam who was Warden of the Marches in the time of the just King Edward I., and who died in 1316.

In Lanchester Church, under an arch in the wall of the south aisle, lies a recumbent effigy of a canon secular, his raised hands clasping a chalice. This is believed to represent Stephen Austell, Dean of Lanchester, who died in 1464. In Monkwearmouth Church, under a canopy which bears the shields of the Hiltons and Viponds, there is a very interesting effigy of a knight in plate armour of the early part of the fifteenth century. This is probably the Baron William Hilton, who built Hilton Castle on the Wear, with its wonderful armorial front. He died in 1435. At Norton, near Stockton, there is a magnificent effigy of a knight in chain armour; over the head there is a rich canopy of tabernacle-work; the hands are raised and the legs are crossed, the feet resting on a lion. It is sometimes assumed that this representation of a knight with his legs crossed one over the other indicates that the person portrayed was a Crusader, but there are many cases where the attitude is used in which it is known that the effigy was that of one who could not have taken any part in those Holy Wars. This monument is further noticeable as it is one of the very few which give us even a slight hint as to the personality of the sculptor; it bears what is believed to be his mark in the shape of a small squiggle, which looks like a short length of chain, in front of which is the letter "I," and it is supposed that this punning rebus means that the effigy is the handiwork of one John Cheyne. It would be very interesting to know who commissioned Cheyne to carve this monument, for another curious feature in it is that the shield of the knight bears six coats of arms--Blakeston, Surtees, Bowes, Dalden, Conyers, and Conyers--which mean that the knight was a Blakeston of Blakeston. But the Blakestons bore these arms in the sixteenth century, probably not later than the year 1587, whereas the armour of the effigy is of the time of Edward I., 1272-1307. Boyle suggests that probably the monument is to one of the De Parks, and that a Blakeston took it, scraped off the De Park arms, and put on his own coat. Whatever its vicissitudes may have been, it remains a noble piece of work.

In Redmarshall Church, in the Claxton Porch, there are effigies of Thomas Langton de Wynyard and of Sibil Langton, his wife. They are admirably carved in a rather soft alabaster, and the delicacy and clearness of detail in the costumes is very remarkable. The lady’s hair is dressed in the extraordinary horns which were fashionable in the days of Henry V. She wears a long, loose kirtle, with a surcoat and mantle; round her neck is a string of pearls, and round her waist is a jewelled belt. The knight wears a suit of plate armour, probably of Italian make, the fashion of which suggests that the effigy was carved several years after the death of Thomas de Langton in 1440.

Effigies of men who had devoted themselves to a religious life, but who died before attaining the order of priesthood, are very rare. There is one of a deacon within the altar-rails of Ryton Church, carved in green marble from Stanhope.