Hexham Riot Plaque

You never know what's under your feet or the stories the streets have to tell.

I'm usually looking up for chimneys, windows and fancy pants architecture, but here, paddling beneath the pavements of Hexham's Old Market Square, there's a story of slain bodies and proper bashings which I went in search of. On March 9th 1761, right here, was Bloody Monday, otherwise known as the Hexham Riot, and this plaque in the pavement marks the memory!

The surly, sinister standoff was led by Sir Lancelot Allgood, Sheriff of Northumberland and all-round fat cat plutocrat, who didn't like the hoi polloi!

He was adamant that the proletarian toilers from Prudhoe to Tynedale, Harlow Hill to Haydon Bridge, would embrace the Militia Act. This was an act of 1757 which proposed a brutal system of conscription, forcing men from rural communities to sign up to create a domestic defence force, removing them from their families and livelihoods to serve the ruling gentry and enabling the British military to fight overseas in the Seven Years' War.

Come on...no one's going to take this sitting down!

Allgood can be seen in this portrait by George Knapton pointing to a plan of Nunwick Hall near Simonburn where he lived a landed life with his wife Jane. Nunwick Hall is pictured to the right in the image from Northumberland County Council Archive.

It was a fight between the squirearchy and the poor, many of whom harboured an entrenched disdain for the Allgoods...Clearly seen as the All-Bads! They were yellowbellied in the regional Jacobite rebellion, and few had respect for Sir Lancelot.

By 9:00am, many men, many poor, gathered in the Market Square. This print by J. Sands, published in 1835, shows what the square would have looked like before the crowds assembled. It shows the Moot Hall and the Shambles.

On the day, men walked for miles to show their resistance, most of them farm labourers, pitmen, craftsmen, and farmers.

Allgood was concerned about unrest, so he had enlisted the services of the North Yorkshire Militia. As he and his magistrates tried to enforce the Militia Act, the crowd, now swelled to 5,000, surged forward with clubs and staves and started to revolt. 200 soldiers were deployed to regain order, but they were outnumbered and fumbled against the furious, feisty men.

Ringleaders led the calls to drop the demands as they met with magistrates inside the Moot Hall. And after four hours of discussions, tensions were at a high. Refusing to disperse or obey commands to comply with the act, the men grew fractious, and the magistrates read them the Riot Act at 2:50pm. This gave an hour's grace for the crowds to disperse, but with tempers raging, the angry crowds broke loose and surged.

Ensign Joseph Hart, an officer with the militia, and Private David Greenock were overthrown by members of the crowd. They were struck by their own firearms, which had been seized, with Greenock dying immediately and Hart the next day.

The militia, later dubbed the Hexham Butchers, opened fire on the crowds and forced them to retreat. In ten minutes, the bullets and blood spilt were immense, leaving many men, women and children with amputations or dead and dying on the cold cobbles.

This image held by Hexham Local History Society gives a flavour of the chaos and unrest.

Many of the crowds fled, but were hotfooted by the militia, who made multiple arrests and threw the rioters into Hexham gaol, the earliest recorded purpose-built prison in England.

This early sketch from Hexham Local History Society by S. H. Grimm, 1788, gives an indication of how the prison looked, and how it looked later in 1900.

In the weeks and months that ensued, the attorney general forcibly and aggressively hunted down those who'd been a part of the siege. Arresting men from as far as Morpeth, Throckley and Newburn, to Blanchland and Haydon Bridge, many of those on the front lines faced severe treason charges, with men like 74-year-old Morpeth man Peter Patterson, who'd marched from Shilvington, facing the gallows.

He was hanged, drawn and quartered on Monday 5th October 1761 at Morpeth; the only man to have been put to death for his role in the Hexham Riot.

Allegedly, upon the first attempt, as the cart was wheeled away, the rope snapped, and Patterson fell to the floor, apparently alighting to his feet, declaring to the assembled crowd -

He was hanged on the second attempt, but died a martyr, as local records imply he wasn't even present at the Hexham Riot and had instead been at a splinter faction in Morpeth.

On a hot and sunny day in Hexham, I was hard pushed to find the plaque and hunted around the Moot Hall and Gaol in search of where the event had taken place. I asked for help from a fishmonger packing up his scales and wares for the day.

“Yer looking for where the Riot Act was read pet? The spot of Bloody Monday?

Reet beneath me feet”.

And sure enough, lying unfussedly in the stone street slabs, the simple words recorded the event.

I could see now, under where he stood.

Where would you have stood?

An Allgood or a fighting farmer with bairns to feed?

The memory has also been immortalised in some decent neck oil, to feed the souls of Tynedale and beyond, should the same situation ever arise again.