From virtual ruin to a historic visitor site
IT’S perhaps hard to believe that this one-time crumbling wreck of a building is now a popular Tyneside visitor attraction.
In 1970 the dilapidated house was a far cry from its original guise as a grand home for one of Tyneside’s leading 18th century industrialists.
Today grade II-listed Jarrow Hall is part of a wider site that also encompasses a replica Anglo-Saxon farm and village and Bede Museum.
The hall was built as a private residence by the wealthy Simon Temple in 1785 on a substantial estate of Jarrow land he acquired which included the nearby ancient St Paul’s church.
Temple was a prominent shipbuilder and coal mine owner, who did much for charitable causes in the town and built rows of white-walled cottages for his workers. These remained habitable until the 1930s.
Years after Temple died in ruin after going bankrupt, Jarrow Hall was used for a host of purposes, being let to Shell Mex in the 1920s, before being taken over by the old Jarrow Council in 1935.
The council used it for storage, and by the time our photograph was taken around 1970, the run-down building was under threat of demolition.
In 1974, the hall opened as the original Bede Monastery Museum, becoming part of the ambitious new Bede’s World site in 2000.
The complex re-branded itself in 2016 as Jarrow Hall - Anglo-Saxon Farm, Village and Bede Museum.
(It’s well worth a visit and Jarrow Hall does a great cup of coffee which you can enjoy al fresco in its sun-dappled garden - weather permitting!)
This whole corner of Jarrow, in fact, has a long, sometimes turbulent history.
Two minutes walk from the hall is Jarrow Monastery. The town’s very own saint and eminent scholar, the Venerable Bede, completed his seminal academic work ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ here in 731 AD.
Not that it was all peace and quiet in this monastic quarter. Vikings appeared on the River Tyne and raided Jarrow Monastery in 794 AD, and set fire to it - but the Viking leader was captured and killed by the locals. You don’t mess with ‘Jarra’ lads! ■■Our 1970 picture is used courtesy of Paul Perry. His latest book A-Z of Jarrow: Places, People, History is on sale in bookshops now. Amberley Publishing. £14.99. You can contact Paul by telephone 0191 4221131, or email paulperry64@hotmail.com