'At the time of the Dissolution in the mid-16th century the Hospital of St. Edmund Bishop and Confessor was acquired by William Lawson of Newcastle, whose daughter and heir, Anne, married William Riddell, sheriff and 3 times mayor of Newcastle. He built the mansion, to be called Gateshead House, behind and east of the hospital. The Riddells continued to live there until 1711 when it passed to the Claverings. As Royalists during the Civil War, the Riddells' property was damaged by the Scots who "…spoiled many Acres of his ground by making their Trenches in it", and because the Claverings were Roman Catholics, with a chapel in their mansion, the house was burnt by a mob in 1746 when Cumberland came north to deal with Bonnie Prince Charlie. It was never reoccupied and the only fragment to survive is an Elizabethan gateway, not on its original site, south-west of Holy Trinity church.'

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