Newbiggin
St Bartholomew's Church, Newbiggin
Last Updated:
2 Sept 2024
Newbiggin
This is a
Church, Place of Worship
55.185483, -1.502456
Founded in
Current status is
Extant
Designer (if known):
William Searle Hicks
Listed Grade I
This is the beautiful St Bartholomew's, a headland church which dominates the surrounding landscape.
The site has origins that date before this structure, with hints throughout that there was a much older church here than what we see today. Fragments of masonry and reused stone suggest something happened to an earlier iteration. The earliest reference to a chapel here is in 1174 alongside Widdrington and Horton through documents between Tynemouth and St Albans.
Either way, the current structure has a long and illustrious heritage. The most visibly old part is the tower (minus the spire), which is 13th century and fits in with the mould of other early English church towers. It was befitting of a town developing as a decent sized port with at least a few hundred people occupying the village.
Much of the church has been rebuilt and restored over the years, which i've tried to comprehend in a little diagram. Despite this, it fell into serious ruin by the 18th century. Only the basic structure survived with no roof and crumbling masonry. It was then a thorough rebuild took place with the chancel and nave rebuilt and extended. WS Hick undertook the second restoration in 1898 and reopened Christmas that year. Hick was a well known ecclesiastical architect in Newcastle and designed a number of churches in the area - St Cuthbert's at Blyth, St James at Shilbottle, St Helen's at Carlin How and St Cuthbert's at Ormesby among some.
This church was also only the Chapel of Ease in the parish, and was subsidiary to St Mary's at Woodhorn in the mid 19th century. I'm not sure if this is still the case however.
Listing Description (if available)
Both these Ordnance Surveys highlight St Bartholomew's standing isolated on the headland.
The village had changed very little in the latter half of the 19th century. The east of Newbiggin had already developed, with Prospect Place being the only recent development given its composition against the rest of the area. An infant school was built between these maps as wider education became more usual. The west of Newbiggin is where further housing was developed given the appearance of the railway station, which shifted the focal point of the settlement.
The Ordnance Survey of 1922 really does show significant changes now. More contemporary terraces of housing encroached the old Downie's Buildings and primary school, and the old Wesleyan church was converted into Salvation Army barracks. Picture theatres, halls, hotels and banks all cropped up too making it almost a micro-resort for local families. In fact, todays boundaries aren't dissimilar.
St Bartholomew's in 2024
A very similar viewpoint from 1910, which clearly highlights the different eras through the fabric of the building. Source: Northumberland Communities
An illustration of the ruined church in the 1830s. Source: St Bartholomew’s Church, Newbiggin An Archaeological Assessment by Peter Ryder, https://d3hgrlq6yacptf.cloudfront.net/5fbc2ba5a8086/content/pages/documents/1607453998.pdf