Josephine Butler (NT929344 & NT913302)

In net miles she may not have travelled very far – from her birthplace near Milfield to her grave in Kirknewton – but Josephine Butler (née Grey) was a North-Easterner whose influence stretched into the hearts and minds of millions of folk worldwide as both a pioneering feminist and social reformer par excellence.

Josephine Elizabeth Grey was born in 1828 at Milfield Hill House, a mansion which once stood a little to the north of Milfield, Northumberland. A cousin of the famous Earl Grey (Reform Act, Abolition of Slavery and, yes, tea), she was the seventh child of John Grey, from whom she inherited a belief in social justice and reform. In 1852 she married like-minded George Butler, an Oxford lecturer, and so began a husband-and-wife campaign against the wrongs of the world – slavery, social injustice and the rights of women.

Moving first to Cheltenham and then Liverpool, the Butlers championed their cause at every opportunity, often to the detriment of George’s career! After her husband’s death in 1890, Josephine moved to London – and even campaigned abroad for much of the time. Feeding off her own periodic bouts of depression and grief, she constantly sought out causes more desperate than her own. She was a staunch believer in education for women and campaigned ceaselessly for the rights of the female sex in this area – helping found Cambridge University’s first college for women, Newnham. Moreover, her campaigns on the taboo subjects of prostitution and sexual morality led to law changes in women’s favour across Europe – all from a devout Christian who didn’t baulk at upsetting anyone.

In her latter years the grand old woman returned to her North-East roots, settling near her son in Wooler. She died in 1906, aged 78, and was buried in Kirknewton Churchyard, three miles SW of her birthplace.

Newminster Abbey, Morpeth (NZ189857)

A little beyond the southern extremities of our region can be found a landscape riddled with the remains of abbeys and monasteries. As one creeps ever northwards they thin out noticeably, and anything north of the Tyne is a very rare specimen indeed (we can thank the Scots and their periodic raids for that). The largest such establishment in Northumberland is thought to have been that on the south bank of the Wansbeck near Morpeth, and was called Newminster Abbey.

This nigh-on forgotten religious house has now been almost completely wiped from the landscape, but it was quite a significant institution in its time. It was, in fact, one of the first daughter houses to be founded by the famous Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire – quite possibly the very first, some say. This all happened around 1137 when the Cistercians were invited north by local noble, Ranulph de Merlay, and his wife, Juliana. ‘Robert of Newminster’ from Fountains was appointed the new abbey’s first abbot, ruling the roost with considerable vigour from 1138 to 1159. A year after its founding the Scots came down and set the place abaze – and as part of the resultant peace treaty with the English pretty much everything north of the Tyne was ruled by the Scots during 1139-57. The monastery slowly recovered under Robert’s enthusiastic leadership, being properly rebuilt by 1180.

Morpeth’s wealthy residents occasionally granted land and possessions to the young institution, and it came to exercise control over much of the land from the Wansbeck to the Scottish border. No one seems to know quite how extensive its influence was, but in time it spawned daughter monasteries of its own at Pipewell (Northamptonshire) and Roche and Sawley (both in Yorkshire). By the late thirteenth century, Newminster Abbey also had two hospitals dependent upon it, at Mitford and Allerburn. This all mattered little come the Dissolution, though, when it was officially sacked in Henry VIII’s first round of plundering in 1537. The Greys came into possession and thereafter began the systematic robbing of its masonry over successive generations. In turn, the Brandlings and then the Ords assumed ownership.

Newminster Abbey was last used in 1937 for the 400^th anniversary of its closure. Most of what remains today is hidden underground or under trees. However, a nice collection of photographs from the 1960s can be found here.