Skulferatu #130 - Tynemouth Priory, Tynemouth, Tyne and Wear

 

A few years ago, I was on holiday in the Netherlands and came back home on the Amsterdam to Newcastle Ferry.  In the morning, as we approached our home port, we passed the rather impressive ruins of Tynemouth Priory sitting high on the cliffs overlooking the sea.  At the time I said to myself that I’d have to come down and have a wander around them, and several years later I did just that. 

 

Tynemouth Priory, as seen from the sea

 

Tynemouth Priory, as seen from the sea

 

So, on a rain soaked and foggy morning I left Newcastle and took the Metro down to Tynemouth. A quick walk from the station and through the town took me to the craggy headland on which the ruins of the priory sit.  There, I roamed around the medieval gatehouse building, the historic ruins of the priory, through the weather worn gravestones of the graveyard and over to the Second World war gun emplacements.  Every so often the fog and mist would roll in, then I’d be lashed by rain, and then dried and scorched by the sun.  Basically, I had a day out in good old Northern weather, and yes, before anyone asks, like anyone who is from Britain I am obsessed by the weather.  But moving on …

 

The Gatehouse

 

The headland on which Tynemouth Priory sits has been inhabited on and off for a couple of thousand years.  This probably being down to the fact that it is a bit of land that was almost impregnable from attack given that it is connected to the mainland only by a narrow strip of rock, with steep cliffs on all other sides.  So, up until canon and big guns came along it was a relatively safe place to live, if not the most hospitable.  Remains of a settlement pre-dating the Roman occupation, probably from the Iron Age, have been discovered there, along with another from around the 2^nd Century.  The land, however, does not appear in the written record until the 8^th Century, when a monastic community was established there.  Their original wooden buildings were destroyed during the 9^th and 10^th Centuries, in the Viking invasions, which shows that even the safest places weren’t that safe back in the good old days. 

 

The stone ruins of Tynemouth Priory that stand there today date from the late 11^th Century and on being built were dedicated to St Oswine, with his remains kept in a shrine within the building.

 

Tynemouth Priory with Coastguard Station in background

 

Tynemouth Priory

 

View from the Priory to Gatehouse

 

Tynemouth Priory

 

Who was St Oswine you may wonder, I certainly did.  Well, in 644, on the death of King Oswald of Northumbria, the land was basically split into two with Oswine succeeding as King to an area called Deira, while a bloke called Oswiu became King of the other bit, Bernicia.  For a few years all was fine, but then Oswiu decided he wanted to rule over the whole of Northumbria so declared war on Oswine.  Oswine, being a good man who did not want any bloodshed, refused to do battle with Oswiu.  He then sought refuge with his trusted friend Humwald.  Unfortunately for Oswine, Humwald was a bit of a shit friend and betrayed him to Oswiu, who promptly had him murdered. After having Oswine killed, Oswiu was obliged by Ango Saxon tradition, being one of Oswine’s nearest relatives, to seek some sort of justice for his death.  This made things all a bit awkward, what with Oswiu being the one guilty of the murder, so, in order to even things out he splashed some cash and founded an abbey at Gilling in North Yorkshire.  There monks offered up prayers for Oswin’s soul and a cult gradually grew up around the slain king.  It was said that after his death he had carried out various miracles, and at some point he became venerated as a saint.  He is now the patron saint of those who have been betrayed, so if your girlfriend/boyfriend/non-binary other half has ever done the dirty on you, he’s the one to pray to.  Not sure what he’d do, maybe get a seagull to poo on their head or something like that.

 

 

The Priory graveyard

 

The Priory graveyard

 

Weather worn

 

A weather worn gravestone by the Priory

 

Tynemouth Priory thrived up until the Reformation in the 16^th Century, though appears not to have been the most popular posting for monks with the abbots of St Albans sending misbehaving monks there as a punishment.  One monk sent there in the 14^th Century wrote a letter complaining of the relentless noise of the sea and the seabirds, the rough sea sending many ships onto the rocks below, that the monastery was a ‘comfortless place’ and that though food was plentiful it was mainly just fish.  He did however find that the church there was of ‘wonderous beauty’.

 

Talk of food leads me on to another story, in the grounds of Tynemouth Priory stands a stone known as the Monks Stone.  It originally stood in the village of Monkseaton, but was moved to the priory in 1935.  The tale behind this stone is that long, long ago a monk from Tynemouth was paying a visit to the home of one of the noble families in the area, the Delavals.  On arriving there, he found that dinner was being prepared for the master of the house who was out hunting.  One of the dishes was a roast pig, and on seeing this the monk’s mouth began to water.  Oh, what he’d give for some delicious pork, so much tastier than the boring fish dishes he was used to at the monastery.  The monk was offered some food, but told that the pig had been specially prepared for Mr Delaval, and should therefore not be touched.  The monk didn’t listen though, and when no one was around he cut off the head of the pig, which was considered to be the tastiest part of the animal in those days, stuck it in his bag and snuck off back towards the priory.  Mr Delaval, on returning home, saw that the pig’s head was missing and flew into a rage.  He demanded to know who had taken it and on being told about the monk, he ran out of the house to chase after him.  He soon caught up with him, as the monk had only gone a short distance before he’d sat down to gobble up his ill-gotten gains.  Delaval then beat the monk up so badly that he could not even walk and had to crawl his way back to the priory.  There he was nursed back to health, but then died the following year.  It was said that his beating had not been the cause of his death, but the monks at the priory, spotting a way to get some cash out of this, charged Delaval with murder.  He was then absolved of this on the condition that he gave them a hefty chunk of the land that he owned and also that he erect a stone at the spot where he had ‘murdered’ the monk.  The stone was erected and on it was inscribed – ‘O Horor to Kill a man For a Piges head’.    

 

In 1539, stooges acting for King Henry VIII forced the Prior to surrender Tynemouth Priory and all its possessions to the king.  All the valuables were seized, and the shrine of St Oswine was broken up with his bones being removed and scattered.  However, one small part of the priory survived pretty much intact, a small chapel called the Percy Chantry.  A place I found gave welcome shelter every time the rain came in.

 

Presbytery wall & entrance into Percy Chantry

 

Once there were windows

 

Interior of the Percy Chantry

 

Detail of the Chantry roof

 

Stained glass windows in the Chantry

 

Chantry door hinge

 

The headland on which Tynemouth Priory stands was, up until the 1950s, seen as having strategic importance in guarding over the mouth of the Tyne.  It was quite heavily fortified with various buildings added for its defence.  Of these all that now remain are the Gatehouse, which was built in the 14^th Century, and various gun emplacements built up from the 19^th Century through to World War II. 

 

In the 17^th Century a lighthouse was built on the headland to guide ships into the Tyne and away from nearby rocks.  By all accounts a spectacular building, it sat there until 1898, when having become obsolete due to the construction of the piers at the entrance to the Tyne, it was demolished.

 

Illustration of Tynemouth Priory from the Antiquities of England & Wales

 

Illustration showing Tynemouth Priory and the lighthouse

 

The ruins of Tynemouth Priory

 

Weather worn wall

 

Tynemouth Lighthouse

 

At the end of my soggy trip to Tynemouth, I left the Skulferatu that accompanied me in one of the pockmarked and weathered stones in the priory wall.

 

Skulferatu #130

Skulferatu #130 in a weathered & pockmarked stone

 

Skulferatu #130 in a weathered & pockmarked stone

 

Map showing location of Skulferatu #130

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are -

 

Latitude 55.017694

Longitude -1.417866

 

what3words: trials.erase.punchy

 

I used the following sources for information on Tynemouth Priory –

The Antiquities of England and Wales, Volume 4

Francis Grose

1783

 

History of Tynemouth, its Priory & Castle, and Strangers Guide by railway or turnpike to places of interest in the vicinity of this justly celebrated bathing place

1869

 

Tynemouth Priory and Castle

Grace McCombie

2008

Skulferatu #129 - Brompton Cemetery, Old Brompton Road, London

It was a quick stop off in London and the sun was out.  With time to kill I wondered where I should go.  Maybe I should do something touristy like take a boat down the Thames, wander down Oxford Street, or pay a small fortune to visit the Tower of London, but hey, when in the sprawling metropolis why not visit a sprawling necropolis?  So, that is what I did and headed off to Brompton Cemetery.  A cemetery so crowded that in places the gravestones are almost touching each other.

 

View down Central Avenue to the Chapel

 

View down Central Avenue to the Chapel

 

Tomb and gravestones and cannonballs

 

Cannonballs and gravestones

 

A skeletal tree dancing in the sun

 

Brompton Cemetery opened its gates to its first resident in 1840.  It is one of the seven garden cemeteries in London that were created between 1833 and 1841 to alleviate the overcrowding in the city’s graveyards.  When it opened it was outside of London, and sat amongst the fields in the countryside by the sleepy hamlet of Brompton.  Now it is about a twenty minute Underground ride from the city centre. 

 

The cemetery was originally a privately run business, and in order to attract customers was designed to be an attractive place where one’s corpse could spend eternity.  I mean, who wants to rot away in unpleasant surroundings?  In order to achieve the pretty environment that those in the Victorian era would want to have their final rest in, the cemetery was given a formal layout, the buildings within it were designed in a classical style and it was landscaped with various types of trees. 

 

Under the Metropolitan Internment Act of 1850, Brompton Cemetery was bought by the government and nationalised, the only private cemetery to be purchased this way under the act.  It is Britain’s only Crown cemetery and is now in the care of the Royal Parks Agency.  Brompton Cemetery is still a working cemetery, and you can get buried there if you fancy it.

 

Poppies and gravestones

 

The dead crowd around

 

A mausoleum

 

Angel and crosses

 

Gravestones and catacombs

 

There are various movers and shakers and celebrities buried at Brompton Cemetery, such as the leader of the Suffragette movement, Emmeline Pankhurst, the founder of the Cunard Line, Samuel Cunard, the journalist, Bernard Levin, and the actor Brian Glover.  However, as I wandered around I wasn’t celebrity spotting, but rather looking for some interesting stories, something there is always plenty of in a big graveyard. 

 

The first one I found was through a rather intriguing gravestone dating from the First World War, it was that of Reginald Warneford, which as well as depicting the man buried underneath, also included a scene of a plane flying away from an exploding airship.  It turns out that Warneford was a bit of a war hero.  During the First World War the German Zeppelins were a complete menace, as my late Grandaddy recalled.  As a small boy he witnessed one dropping bombs over his home city of Leicester.  These attacks struck terror in the civilian population and the military authorities were unsure of how the airships could be stopped.  One day, Warneford, a young airman who had only been qualified as a pilot for three months was out on patrol in his plane somewhere between Ghent and Bruges when he spotted a Zeppelin.  Flying above it, he dropped six bombs at close range, with the last hitting the Zeppelin and setting it on fire.  The explosion from his bomb flipped his plane upside down and caused his engine to cut out.  He, however, managed to regain control of the plane and land it.  Slight problem though, he was deep within enemy territory.  Frantically he tried to restart his plane, and after fifteen minutes the engine came back into life.  He hastily took off and returned back to base.  There he received a hero’s welcome being the first man to destroy single-handily one of the dreaded airships.  For this he was awarded a Victoria Cross.  Sadly, this was awarded to him posthumously, as ten days after taking out the Zeppelin he was killed while he carried out a test flight on a new plane which broke apart in midair.   His body was repatriated to England where over fifty thousand people attended his burial at Brompton Cemetery.

 

Grave of Reginald Warneford

 

Detail of Reginald Warneford’s gravestone

 

As I wandered around the cemetery I began to notice a similarity between the wording on lots of the gravestones, the gravestones of many of the women.  Unlike those of the men, these said very little about them.  No acknowledgements of achievements or of the lives lived, but rather everything said about them related to the men in their lives, their husbands, fathers, or sons.  One of the gravestones I came across was for Lisette, who is remembered as being the daughter of John Scott, the niece of Colonel Scott of Gala and the wife of Professor William Gregory.  For a stone in her memory, it says nothing about her.  So, I thought I’d delve into some records and see if I could find out who Lisette was.  Lisette Scott was born in 1805 in Germany and was the second of three sisters.  She was well connected to various members of the British aristocracy, as on her father’s side she was related to the Lairds of Gala, at Galashiels in the Scottish Borders, while her mother, ‘Miss Munro’ was related to Sir Donald MacDonald, Laird of the Isles, and her maternal grandmother had been Lady in Waiting to the Princess of Wales, mother to King George III. Lisette took on the name Makdougall after the death of her cousin when her family inherited the estate of Makerstoun in Roxburghshire, and thus became Lisette Makdougall Scott.  Lisette was brought up in Scotland by her aunt and recalled her childhood as being a happy one.  She was an accomplished musician and was popular in fashionable society for her ‘wit and repartee’.  However, she was more interested in, and at home, in the world of science.  In 1839 she married William Gregory, Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh University, taking his name to become Lisette Makdougal Gregory.  While in Edinburgh Lisette and William both developed a common interest in Spiritualism, with William writing work on that, as well as Mesmerism and Animal Magnetism, all really trendy ideas at that time.

 

Grave of Lisette Makdougal Gregory

 

On her husband’s death, in 1858, Lisette moved down to London with her son.  There she became a bit of a name in the Spiritualist movement (a religious movement which believed that an individual's awareness persists after death, and that the dead can be contacted by the living through a medium).  Her house became a gathering place for Spiritualists with many séances being held there by various mediums.  During these séances furniture would move around the room and apparitions of the dead would appear.  Lisette herself was a ‘writing medium’, meaning that the spirits of the dead would take control of her hand and cause her to write what they wanted to say.  The Spiritualist movement is now seen by most as complete bunkum and was rife with charlatans and conmen, however Lisette seems to have been a true believer who wrote a couple of pamphlets on the subject and made contributions to the Spiritualist newspaper.  Outliving her husband, son and grandson, Lisette spent much of her later life communing with them in the spirit world at the many séances held at her home.  Lisette suffered much from ill health in her old age and died, or as her Spiritualist friends liked to say – entered into her new life with the birth of her spirit, on 24^th May 1885.

 

Moving on around the cemetery I came to a large mausoleum that dominates the area it stands in, and is supposedly a time machine or a teleportation machine, a stone TARDIS in which you can travel through time and space.  Unlike many of the other large monuments this one is not for some male grandee, but rather for a rather lowly born woman who inherited a large fortune from her ‘husband’.  Hannah Courtoy, who is interred here along with two of her daughters, was born Hannah Peters in around 1784.  She left home in 1799 to escape from her drunken and abusive father, taking on work in various unskilled and menial jobs.  Then, in around 1800, she was introduced by a mutual friend, Francis Grosso, to John Courtoy and was employed by him as his housekeeper.  At this time John Courtoy was in his seventies and in poor health, but was a very rich man.  He had come to Britain from France in around 1750 and made a lot of money as a wigmaker, wigs being all the rage at that time.  He then used the money he had made from wig making to become a money lender, and through this he became very wealthy. 

 

View over graveyard to the tomb of Hannah Courtoy

 

Tomb of Hannah Courtoy

 

360 View of graveyard around Hannah Courtoy’s Tomb

 

 Within six years of working for Courtoy, Hannah had given birth to three daughters; Mary, Elisabeth, and Susannah.  All were baptised with the Courtoy name and Hannah claimed that John was the father of all three.  However, rumours abounded that the father of the children was in fact Francis Grosso.  Hannah then took on John Courtoy’s surname, despite the two having never married.  From all accounts she had a considerable influence over the decisions he made, something probably made easier in that he appeared to be suffering from dementia during the last two decades of his life.  In 1814 Courtoy changed his will leaving the majority of his money to Hannah and her daughters, this superseded a will he had made in 1810 in which he had left the bulk of his fortune to his previous partner Mary Woolley and their five children.  In 1818 John Courtoy died.  There was then an almighty fight over the contents of his last will with Woolley and her children, along with Courtoy’s French relatives, all disputing the contents.  They claimed that the 1814 will had been made under Hannah’s influence when Courtoy was in the throes of dementia.  The legal arguments over the will dragged on for years until 1827 when Hannah and her daughters ended up with most of the money.

 

In 1849 Hannah died and a lavish mausoleum was designed by her friend, Joseph Bonomi, to house her mortal remains.  Hannah and Bonomi had both been deeply interested in Egyptian hieroglyphics and mythology, believing that through the teachings of the ancient Egyptians they could discover some of the secrets of the universe.  They had regularly spent hours together discussing the wisdom and beliefs of these ancient people.  So, when Bonomi designed her tomb he incorporated her interests into it by having it feature some Egyptian characters along with a roof resembling a pyramid like structure.  Then, many years later, as in almost one hundred and fifty years later, rumours began to surface that the mausoleum was more than it appeared to be.  An amateur historian looking into the history of the tomb stated that his research had led him to conclude that it was a time machine and had in fact been designed by a maverick Victorian genius, Samuel Warner.  He, along with Bonomi, had built this marvellous contraption with funding from Hannah.  The idea being that the best place to build this machine would be a cemetery, as it was unlikely to be disturbed for hundreds of years, meaning they could travel into the future and return discreetly.   Once out there, the rumours grew, and it is now speculated that the tomb is also a teleportation device.  To add to the air of mystery and intrigue, the keys to the mausoleum have been lost and it supposedly has not been opened for over 120 years.  Relatives of Hannah have suggested that they may try to have a new key made so that the tomb can be opened, and so it could be that the secrets it holds, or doesn’t, will be revealed sometime in the future.

 

Tomb of Hannah Courtoy

 

Doorway to the mausoleum – or portal to another dimension

Keyhole

 

Detail of designs on the mausoleum door

 

If you are ever wandering through Brompton Cemetery and you see a man in a top hat with sideburns, or a woman in an out of place vintage dress suddenly appear, it may well be because the rumours about the time machine are true.  Either that or you have stumbled across someone, probably me, on their way to, or back from, a fancy dress party.

 

I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on a ledge of the tomb, in the hope that it may be whisked back in time to ancient Egypt or forward into some Utopian future.

 

Skulferatu #129

 

Skulferatu #129 on a ledge of Hannah’s tomb

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #129

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are -

 

Latitude 51.486134,

Longitude -0.191203

 

what3words: congratulations.ladder.season

 

I used the following sources for information on Brompton Cemetery –

 

Brompton Cemetery, The Top 100

The Royal Parks

2021

 

Ashbourne News Telegraph - Friday 18 June 1915

 

Torbay Express and South Devon Echo - Friday 06 January 1967

 

The Spiritualist – January 16th, 1880

 

Light: A Journal of Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research, No 231 - Vol V, Saturday June 6, 1885

 

Records of the Family of Gregory

P. S. Gregory

1886

 

Birmingham Daily Post - Saturday 24 October 1998

 

Courtoy’s Complaint

David Godson

2014

 

The Independent – Sunday 13 December 2015

 

Skulferatu #128 - Phantassie Doocot, Phantassie, East Linton

‘Come to see victory

In a land called fantasy

Loving life, a new degree

Bring your mind to everlasting liberty…’

 

So sang Earth Wind and Fire in their disco banger, Fantasy, and it was off to a land called Phantassie that I headed today.  Well, when I say land, I mean a couple of fields and a farm.  I also wasn’t seeking the impossible goal of victory and liberty, but rather was looking to find a luxurious dwelling house for pigeons.

 

Wandering through and out of the town of East Linton I came to a rather fabulous and bent looking old building, Preston Mill.  This stone building with a red tiled roof looking a bit like some witch’s cap is an old watermill that was in the past used for grinding down, milling, grain.  The present building probably dates from around the 18^th century, though it is believed that a mill has stood on the site from sometime before 1599.

 

Preston Mill

 

Preston Mill by the River Tyne

 

Strolling past and over the River Tyne, I made my way down through Phantassie on a gentle path that led me through some fields to the Doocot.  Around me birds sang, and a gentle wind made the wires on the telegraph poles hum in a low meditative way.

 

Path down to Phantassie Doocot

 

So, you may wonder, how did Phantassie get its name?  Some say it comes from the Gaelic for a gentle and damp slope, but as Gaelic was not really spoken around here that seems unlikely.  Others say that it is a made up name coming from the French ‘fantaisie’ (fantasy) and point out that in 1654 the area was recorded as Trapren. By 1800 it did however have the name Phantassie, which was sometimes spelt with a ‘ph’ and at others with an ‘f’.

 

Arriving at Phantassie Doocot I found it to be quite a strange looking little building, with one side having the appearance of a series of concrete collapsed hats designed by some brutalist architect, and the other, with its sloping tiled roof and entry holes looking more like a little fortress.

 

Phantassie Doocot

 

View of Phantassie Doocot

 

Phantassie Doocot

 

Sloping roof of the doocot

 

Entrance holes for the pigeons

 

The Doocot was built sometime in the Sixteenth Century and is a Beehive Doocot with five hundred nesting places inside.  It is unusual in its design in that it has a horseshoe parapet with a sloping south facing roof that would protect the birds from the wind.  This is a design that was popular in the south of France, so it may be that the designer or builder had some connection there. 

 

Doocots or Dovecotes were introduced to Britain by the Normans in the Eleventh Century and were basically buildings designed for pigeons to nest in.  These nesting houses were not built for altruistic reasons, but rather that during the winter months pigeons were seen as a good source of fresh meat.  By building a place for hundreds of them to gather and nest it made it easy to gather them, and their eggs, up to eat.

 

There was, of course, one big problem with the pigeons in the Doocots, and that was the amount of grain they could eat.  Something that didn’t bother the landowner who owned the Doocot, as he got the plump juicy birds to eat, but his tenant farmers would often have to watch in despair as the pigeons munched away at their crops.

 

While watched by some nesting pigeons, and a couple of inquisitive crows, I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me in a gap in the stonework of the Doocot.

 

Skulferatu #128

 

Skulferatu #128 in a gap in the stonework of the doocot

 

Skulferatu #128 in a gap in the stonework of the doocot

 

Map showing location of Skulferatu #128

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are -

 

Latitude 55.987858

Longitude -2.647786

 

what3words: hunk.collapsed.blush

 

I used the following sources for information on Phantassie Doocot –

 

East Lothian

by Thomas Scott Muir

1915

 

Preston Mill and Phantassie Doocot

National Trust for Scotland

by Clare White and Gillian Simison

2012