From The Abbeys of Great Britain, by H. Claiborne Dixon, London: T. Werner Laurie (undated); pp. 19-22.
(Augustine Canons)
The town of Hexham, picturesquely situated on the southern bank of the river Tyne, 19 miles north of Newcastle, was once the centre of Border warfare and at one time a Roman station. To the west of the old market-place, one of the most interesting in England, stands the ancient abbey — a type of Early English architecture. Of the original Saxon structure the crypt alone remains, under the nave of the choir, consisting of a central and an ante-chamber, with two passages to the west and south. The Roman stones of which it is built were probably brought from the ancient Roman station of Corstopitum (3½ miles distant from Hexham). Unfortunately very little remains of the 12th century church — only, in fact, the greater part of the choir (with the exception of the Early English chapel) and both transepts. Of the conventual buildings we have still the refectory, some portions of the cloisters and the precinct gate. The greater part of the old woodwork was destroyed in the so-called restoration of the present church in 1858; but an exquisitely carved rood screen, and, on the south side of the altar, the Frith stool (supposed to have been St Wilfrid’s chair), may still be seen. Among the many monuments in the present church of special interest is a peculiar slab on which is depicted a Roman horseman, discovered beneath the south entrance in 1881.
Until the time of Henry I. the Bishop of Durham exercised ecclesiastical jurisdiction over this monastery, 20 but in this reign it was included in the See of York. The church was then rebuilt and Thomas II. of York founded a priory of Augustine Canons. “It was found by inquisition taken in the four and twentieth reign of Edward I. that Thomas the Second, Archbishop of York, did found and endow this Priory — the lands by him given, and by many other Benefactors, were all found and set forth in particular.”
In the following century the nave of the church was destroyed by the Scots, and with the exception of some unsuccessful attempts at restoration, was not rebuilt until last year (1907), when the foundation stones of the new nave were laid on June 29th.
Hexham Abbey does not stand alone as a religious house owing its origin to the self-sacrifice and piety of a woman. Queen Etheldreda, the wife of Ecgfrid, King of Northumbria, gave land, which formed part of her dower (including the parishes of Hexham, Allendale, and St John Lee), to St Wilfrid. A monastery was founded in 674, and a church built, which, according to Richard, prior of Hexham, must have been one of the largest and most sumptuously equipped in England at that time. Hexham came, after nearly a century and a half, under the jurisdiction of York, and its church attained the dignity of a cathedral with right of sanctuary. The sanctuary extended for a mile in all directions — one boundary being in mid-stream. Discreditable stories are told of a certain Walter Biwell, chaplain to Bernard de Baliol, who made attacks on people and their property while crossing the river. Subsequently, and owing to these depredations, the boundary was placed on the northern bank of the stream. After the destruction of the cathedral by the Danes (about the year 821) and until after the Norman Conquest, only a shattered fragment of the building remained. Poverty was for years the lot of the canons regular of St Augustine, or Black Canons as they were called. 21 In time, however, they acquired wealth, land, and many privileges, until at the close of the 13th century, Hexham was among the most important of the monastic houses in the Borderland.
The story of the surrender of Hexham to Henry VIII. is full of dramatic and romantic happenings. An appeal from Archbishop Lee to Mr. Secretary Cromwell on the plea that the abbey served as a house of call and entertainment for north-bound travellers proved of no avail. Four commissioners were empowered to suppress the abbey, but before reaching Hexham they received tidings of the determination of the canons to garrison the abbey and to resist to the last. Two commissioners decided to remain behind while the two more venturous rode on to find the town full of people, many of them armed, the gates of the abbey shut, and the canons in warlike array standing on the steeple and on the leads of the church. From their point of vantage, the canons defied the commissioners to the death, but were advised by them to take counsel together. After consulting for some time in the abbey they once more refused to surrender, upon which the commissioners returned to Corbridge. The canons had a wily and unscrupulous adviser in John Heron, sometimes called Little John, a border robber, who persuaded them to maintain their defiant position, hoping by this means to bring about a general rising in the northern counties and to profit in the consequent plunder and robbery. His infamous scheme was attended with success, and shortly afterwards the prior of Hexham and six of the canons were hanged at Tyburn, while the site of the abbey was granted to Sir Richard Carnaby, a devoted royalist, who died without an heir in 1843.
As recently as March 1907 some interesting excavations have been made at Hexham. The Reverend E. Sidney Savage, Rector of Hexham, writes to The Times giving particulars of discoveries of 22 archæological interest made on the site chosen for a nave in the Hexham abbey church.
“Several lengths of enriched cornices have been found, with various ornaments of late Roman character, the forerunners and dictators of many of the ornamental details of a subsequent Saxon and Norman period. Two great arch stones are from a grand ornamental arch fully 20 Roman feet across, and can hardly have come from a lesser structure than the entrance gate was into the town from the main road, such as Watling Street. The upper part of a well-finished altar, a stone hypocaust pillar, and a number of smaller stones with various ornaments are amongst the architectural vestiges. A part of what was apparently a sculptured panel has a finely cut bust of a Roman Emperor, probably Severus; and a portion of a Legionary stone has the remains of two panels divided by pilasters with pediments. It is much shattered but the sculpture is of the best class. The gem of the yield is another and important portion of the well-known and Imperial Inscription, built into the covering of the north passage of the crypt.”