BEDESMEN, BRETHREN & BURSARIES HAZEL JONES-LEE

BEDESMEN, BRETHREN & BURSARIES

THE HOSPITAL OF ST MARY THE VIRGIN

BY HAZEL JONES-LEE (84-09)

What on earth has an arcane-sounding, religious medieval institution to do with the RGS? Actually, quite a lot: a shared site for most of 300 years, interconnected administration and finances at various periods in between and significant bursary support today.

A‘Hospital’ in the Middle Ages was a charity giving ‘refuge, hospitality, maintenance and education to the needy’. In Newcastle it comprised a community of Augustinian canons, presided over by a Master and housing poor, elderly men or bedesmen, and sheltering poor and destitute travellers, whilst distributing charitable funds amongst the sick and needy in the town.

We know that the Hospital of St Mary the Virgin was in existence from at least 1183-4, built on land given around 1155 by Aselack de Killinghow ‘in his own grounds, in the West Gate, within the old town of Newcastle’. Its original site is marked by a pillar opposite the Stephenson Monument near the Central Station. With subsequent benefactions of land and property, the Hospital of St Mary the Virgin became the wealthiest ecclesiastical institution in the town, used to discharge the town authorities’ obligations to the poor and with a right to hold land confirmed by Edward III in Letters Patent of 1368.

From very early on, the affairs of town, Hospital and later School were interconnected. The town’s Guild met there in the fourteenth century, the election of the Mayor and Council took place in the Hospital Chapel House and the town treasury, or ‘hutch’ which stored the Hospital’s archives, was also located there. Finally, in the early sixteenth century, the Mayor and burgesses, rather than the canons, gained the right to appoint the Master, thus gaining indirect control of the Hospital’s substantial wealth. Whilst this association undoubtedly benefited the burgesses, it also probably contributed to saving those lands and funds from being sequestered by the King during the Reformation.

The third link in the interconnection came into focus with the will of Thomas Horsley, successful corn merchant, prominent citizen, Sheriff and five times Mayor between 1513 and 1533 and widely regarded as the founder of RGS. He made provision in his will for the income from a trust to be paid to the city for part of the stipend of a grammar school master.

A Grammar School was located originally in the grounds of St Nicholas’s The School moved to Eskdale Terrace in 1906 and later when the church and School buildings were pulled down in 1961 to make way for Newcastle College, the city could not afford to buy the Almshouse as well and so the 19th Gothic Hospital remains there, almost surrounded by the College and accommodating 18 older men, until recently known as Brethren, in small flats. More recently Thomas Horsley House was opened in 1982 in Benwell to house a further forty men in studio flats.

In 1979 and following changes in Local Government Acts in 1972, the former Hospital Charity was divided into two: the almshouses became the Hospital of St Mary the Virgin (Rye Hill and Benwell) or the ‘Almshouse Charity’. The other charity, ‘St Mary the Virgin Estate Management Charity’, known as the ‘Estate Management Charity’, has responsibility for the investments and properties.

And today? The Hospital still gives ‘maintenance and education’ to the needy through its annual income, the greater part of which is divided between the Almshouse Charity and the RGS, which for the past twenty years has used it to finance bursaries.

A Grammar School was located originally in the grounds of St Nicholas’s Church, temporarily relocated to the Hospital in the late sixteenth century and then permanently in 1607.”

Church, temporarily relocated to the Hospital in the late sixteenth century and then permanently in 1607. The Chapel [more like a hall] was used as a school house and the dormitories became housing for the Master and staff, whilst the Brethren moved first to an almshouse next to the school gateway and later to Pudding Chare. As the Master of the School was also sometimes the Master of the Hospital, the finances were further connected.

In 1834 the Master & Brethren were sanctioned to sell land to the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway Company, providing funds for the transfer of both Hospital and School to Rye Hill, where they opened on adjoining sites in 1858 along with a new church of St Mary.

Dr Hazel Jones-Lee taught English at the RGS from 1984-2009. She was Senior Mistress from 2001, overseeing the school becoming fully co-educational. She is Chair of trustees of the HSMVT Almshouse Trust (Rye Hill and Benwell).

Almshouses in Rye Hill