Washington Old Hall – 1,000 years of history right on our doorstep
Every Fourth of July the USA’s independence is marked at a place in this city, which played a significant role in events shaping the world’s only superpower.
Most of you will be aware that Washington Old Hall is the ancestral home of the first US President, George Washington, as well as being stunningly beautiful. But there’s so much more to the story.
Let’s look back a millennium or so.
The current building was not constructed until the 17th century. But there has been a hall on the site in some or other form for over 1,000 years. The earliest reference to it is in a charter of 973, when it was a wooden building.
It was first built in stone in 1183, during the reign of Henry II. The manor at that time had been bought by Sir William de Hertburn, a knight whose forebears had arrived from France with the Norman Conquest the previous century.
William came from Hartburn, near Stockton-on-Tees. It was customary to take the name of your home village. For some reason he changed for a while to William de Hertbourne, before losing the reference to the village altogether.
So he dropped “de Hertburn/Hertbourne” and became known as William “de Wessyngton” which was the name of his new estate.He was literally making a name for himself. After experimenting over time with Whessingtun, Wessynton and Wassington, his descendants finally settled on Washington and a dynasty was up and running.
William left a hall behind, although it is uncertain whether he built it, or if it was in situ when he acquired the land.
Over hundreds of years, various alterations were made to the dwelling. Notably a new hall was added in the middle of the 13th century. Parts of this can be seen inside today, including distinctive pointed arches between the Great Hall and the west wing.
By then the place had become a regular haunt of the great and good. In 1304, King Edward I stopped off there on his way back to London after indulging in his favourite hobby of duffing up the Scots.
Less than a century after the ‘Hammer of the Scots’ had bunked down there, most of the Whessingtuns/ Wessyntons/Wassingtons/ Washingtons had moved elsewhere. But not all of them.
At some point the hall was in the hands of Eleanor Washington, who then left it to her daughter Dionisia and Dionisia’s husband Sir William Mallory. In 1613, the Mallorys sold the property to the Bishop of Durham, William James.
The bishop’s son Francis James took charge of rebuilding the Old Hall and converted it into a five-bedroom manor.
Francis partially demolished and rebuilt on the original foundations and very little of the original layout remains.
The 17th century version of the hall is mainly what we see today, although in 1792 alterations were made to the east wing. Architecturally, not much seems to have happened after that until the 1920s when it was divided into flats again – then neglected for years.
It seems incredible now, but relatively recently, 1936 to be precise, Washington Old Hall was in such disrepair that it would have been demolished had less progressive minds had their way.But it’s always darkest before dawn and in 1937 it was purchased by a local preservation committee, led by one Frederick Hill, who set about its restoration with some US financial backing.
The committee set about removing the modern partitions of the flats and the building was made watertight.
During restoration it was discovered that some of the 13th century parts of the house had not been completely destroyed, including those pointed arches, some foundations and walls.Work was interrupted by a rather inconvenient world war and it wasn’t until 1955 that it was officially opened by the wonderfully named Winthrop W. Aldrich, the United States Ambassador to the UK.
In 1957, the National Trust took over the hall and still owns it today. With help from the Friends of Washington Old Hall, the place has been made to appear much as it did around 400 years ago.History and splendour notwithstanding, the main selling point lies with a man who never visited England, let alone Sunderland.
Washington Old Hall is, of course, the ancestral home of the first US President.
He was born in Virginia in 1732 to Captain Augustine Washington and Mary Ball. His great-grandfather was John Washington, who emigrated from Sulgrave (in Northamptonshire) to Virginia in 1656.
George was also a descendent of William de Hertburn-WhessingtunWashington ... him.
To cut a long story short, George Washington led the Patriots to victory over the British in the American Revolutionary War of 1775-83. Then he became President in 1789.
He didn’t actually sign the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.
He finally got to read out the Declaration to New Yorkers on July 9, who celebrated by whooping, drinking heavily and removing a lead statue of George III before melting it down, then turning it into bullets to fire at the British.
So while Washington Old Hall is indisputably the ancestral home of the most famous American of them all, the reality is that had George Washington ever turned up at the hall in person, we Brits would have hanged him.
The American connection was firmly cemented in 1977 when President Jimmy Carter paid a visit to Washington Old Hall with British Prime Minister James Callaghan.