Holy Jesus Hospital, Newcastle (NZ251642)

© Copyright Andrew Curtis and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Now cruelly hemmed in by motorway madness and the seventies creation that is the Pilgrim Street Roundabout, the building known universally as the Holy Jesus Hospital sits cheek-by-jowl with all that is bad with the modern-day city.

This curious structure is difficult to find. Like the centre of a maze, you know it exists – and may even be able to see it – but actually reaching it across/under/over the myriad of pathways and underpasses is no mean feat. When you finally get there you may wonder how it escaped demolition at all.

Though most of the present-day building was thrown up in the 1680s, masonry survives from the old Augustinian Friary which occupied the site from the thirteenth century. In time, the old structure found royal favour – though the Dissolution of the Monastaries eventually put an end to that friendly arrangement. It still retained a certain air of importance – including acting as a back-up venue for the Council of the North in the mid- to late-sixteenth century – but eventually fell into disrepair.

Passing out of private ownership and into that of the town corporation, the present ‘hospital’ structure was built during 1681-83 to house retired freemen and their kin. It was (is) built of brick – a fairly new-fangled material at the time of its construction. Amazingly it remained in use as an almshouse until 1937.

The famous ‘Soup Kitchen’ was added in 1880, and served the ‘deserving poor’ for a decade or so. Though the hospital carried on, the various other buildings on the site were used by a variety of private enterprises during the early twentieth century. By 1960, though, the place was a mess.

Whilst all around the hospital was demolished and roads driven hither and thither, the old building somehow escaped the bulldozers and even enjoyed a revamp – re-opening as the John George Joicey Museum in 1970, focussing on the history of the city. Its hopeless situate, however, meant it was little visited and it eventually closed in 1993.

A further renovation saw the building re-open yet again in 2004 – this time as the local HQ of the National Trust’s Inner City Project. It seems, though, that this latest phase in the history of the Holy Jesus Hospital building is set to end soon – and the future remains uncertain.

Seaton Delaval Hall’s Extra Bits (c.NZ325765)

Seaton Delaval Hall, recently saved for the nation by a high profile campaign by the National Trust and a tenacious gang of enthusiastic locals, lies in a landscape full of interest to the amateur historian. However, rather than the old hall itself (whose history is interesting enough), it is to the pile’s lesser known outlying landmarks that I shall be turning to in this short article.

Perhaps the most conspicuous of the estate’s secondary constructions is the 18m-high stone obelisk 900m south-by-south-west of the hall. This was erected to the memory of Admiral George Delaval, the man who was responsible (with a little help from architect Sir John Vanbrugh) for the construction of the mighty edifice itself. The Admiral had bought the estate in 1718 from his debt-ridden kinsman, and was in the process of building the hall when he was tragically killed in spectacular fashion in 1723. When out riding in the fields he was unseated, caught his foot in a stirrup, and was dragged several hundred yards across the countryside before coming to a lifeless rest where the monument now stands. A second, now ruinous, obelisk lies just off the north side of the A190 a little to the west of the hall, marking the spot where the Admiral was originally unseated.

He wasn’t the last of his family to die an unusual death. Half a century later, a certain John Delaval, the then heir to the estate, died in 1775, aged 20, “as a result of having been kicked in a vital organ by a laundry maid to whom he was paying his addresses.” His father was so distraught, that he built a grand mausoleum in his honour half a mile east of the hall. The building is now ruinous.

© Copyright Michael Batey and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.