Haydon Old Church

I'm a sucker for a small church and this is undoubtedly a perfect pocket sized place of worship indeed. Hidden away on a hillside overlooking the Tyne Valley, this cherished little church sits amidst 17th century graves and the golden glow of daffodils.

This is Haydon Old Church and is one of the plethora of places said to have been host to the bones of St Cuthbert.

It is feasible that there was a place of worship here when the Danes raided Lindisfarne in the 9th century and carried Cuthbert's body across the back of beyond. It is said they rested in Haydon Bridge.

Imagine the nimble knees of church folk clambering over this old stone style hurrying to the Sunday service and scurrying through this aisle of ancient yews.

It's an impressive entrance to this compact chapel. Yew is said to symbolise immortality and purify the soil, so were seen to protect the dead. A more practical reason for their positioning is perhaps they are poisonous to livestock and would deter the nibbles of sheep, cows and deer and thus damage to the grounds of the graveyard.

The church is recorded in 1256 where there is a complaint by the tenants of Nicholas de Boltby, Lord of Langley for closing a right of way, which was used to reach the church. Astounding to know that people were campaigning back in the 1200s about their access rights! Nowt's new eh! In those days it was used as a chapel of ease for those who couldn't make the overland journey to St Michael and All Angels in Warden. It's quite a trek.

Built with the ready supply of repurposed Roman stones being so close to Hadrian's Wall, the chapel stood solidly for many centuries on the old medieval site of the original village of Haydon. Over the centuries, people migrated down the hill towards the river and set up homes in a less exposed position with access to more strategic crossing points on the Tyne.

The little old church here at Haydon was partially demolished in 1796 when the stone was used to build the newer church down the hill at Haydon Bridge.

The building was briefly used as a mortuary chapel to house the bodies of the deceased, until roll on 1882 when Hexham Abbey archaeologist Charles Clement Hodges (remember him? He designed the Bede Memorial Cross in Roker The Armstrong Cross and Lord Armstrong's Grave in Rothbury.

Hodges fell in love with the simplicity of the pint sized place of worship and the restoration was a labour of love.

Look at this unchurchy church door. It looks like Little Red Riding Hood's Grandma might have lived behind it. The interior lintel is fashioned from a 14th century grave slab, something we see recycled a lot in this place.

Stepping in through the door to the body of the church, I looked out of the very ordinary window but noticed the strange sill. A little digging taught me that the window sill was made from the 18th century grave slab of five young children from the same family who died over a decade between 1742 to 1752.

Tuberculosis perhaps? Dysentery, Typhoid? Imagine the whole juvenile strand of a family, gone and commemorated on one grave. The youngest only 18 weeks. Tragic.

Inside, the church was bijoux to say the least. You'd get a personal sermon here for sure. The pews would have sat thirty tops! It was simple and paired down but with enough to connect it to the people of the past.

The windows for example in the south chapel are a memorial to Jane Routledge who bequeathed £20 every year to the spinsters and widows of Haydon Chapelry. It is stated in her will that the money is to “pay and apply the said interest dividends and annual produce of the said sum...unto and amongst such respectable and deserving females being spinsters or widows of the age of forty five or upwards who shall have resided for twelve calendar months in the said County of Northumberland previous to the time of nomination...".

Stepping in through the aisle arches, they looked crisp and clean cut and not so ancient, but they're relatively young as the church goes, being part of CC Hodges restoration less than 150 years ago. But what is ancient and interesting is the font fashioned from a Roman altar, one of the few Roman examples in the UK.

There are more repurposed grave slabs in the blocked door on the North wall. I wasn't sure if this was an old priest's door or an entrance to another part of the previous church building. I'm not sure how the families of those buried would feel about the DIY doorway, but it held some interesting stonework some of which looked very old.

Beside this was a marble memorial tablet to John Bacon of Staward on the opposite side of the river. He was High Sheriff of Northumberland and invested in the lead mines of Alston. Subsequently, he gets a swanky marble memorial with an unusual metal manger underneath, the purpose of which, I wasn't sure!

The second oval tablet is dedicated to John Aynsley of Threepwood, again across the river just below Langley Castle. He was a magistrate and helped to establish a regiment of soldiers to combat Bonnie Prince Charlie in the 1745 Jacobite rebellion.

Look at those slivers of windows in the chancel. The two outer windows look as though they could be Norman with their rounded tops. Look at the stonework or string course which is quite unusual, and the four pillars rising out and set between the windows. They have a tightly coiled leaf motif with two of them being ancient and two being more modern copies. Can you tell which is which?

There is an old organ paired down and plain, a Packard from Fort Wayne, Indiana. How did that get here, over the oceans and up the hill? I think this would have been a new fangled addition under the watch of C.C Hodges as Packard made these ornate little organs from 1872 to 1914.

Again, the floor is a mish-mash of grave slabs, making do and mending to the highest degree. The chancel floor holds a slab so old it takes your breath away and dates back to 1636! It reads “Here Lieth Hugh Brawne, The son of Captain Edmund Brawne Esquire, who deceased on the 25th March Ano Domini 1636”.

Charles I was on the throne at this time!

The south chapel holds a stone with a sword carved on its surface, indicating the resting place of a male child.

Then looking out of the door and over the undulating land of the Tyne Valley, you get a real sense of place in these stones. This church has housed the bones of saints and the souls of people of the South Tyne for over a thousand years. The artist John Martin was born just south of the church as the crow flies and was baptised in the Roman font. He became one of Britain's most famous landscape painters.

Growing up with views afforded to the eyes like this, it's easy to see how these far and rolling vistas could have influenced Martin's work.

Outside, the church is neat and compact in its proportions. The roof is of specific interest with its weighty graduated stone tiles. Look at the top. This is known as a Wrestler Roof and there are very few examples of this technique of interlocking stones which are specific to late 16th and early 17th century Newcastle and Northumberland.

The Vicar's Pele in Corbridge once had a wrestler roof as tiles were found during excavation and the Bastle House in Beltingham still retains an authentic wrestler roof. Here, during its restoration, Hodges painstakingly removed each stone tile and replaced it to maintain its authenticity.

It certainly stands out, but you couldn't say the same for this little place of worship. Swallowed up by trees and subsidence over the centuries, you'd be hard pushed to locate it unless you knew it was there. And that's really the beauty of it, that centuries of people will have worshipped here and that it still stands thanks to the caring hands of Hodges.

This really is the most perfect of places to catch your breath, take in the view and feel at one with the history and heritage of this little pocket of Northumberland.