‘Remove decaying Saxon Church’
THE preservation and restoration of historical monuments is very popular at the moment (even the slab of 1960s concrete that is Durham County Hall has got its fan base campaigning for it to be given listed status).
It seems unthinkable then that anyone would seriously consider tearing down Escomb Saxon Church but, in the 19th century, that was a very real possibility for the then dilapidated building writes Duncan Leatherdale.
Escomb resident and historian David Henderson told the Mercury this week of how the church was saved from its doomed fate by two feuding vicars, both of whom sparked a bitter debate about who really discovered its Saxon past.
Escomb Saxon Church “is in a state of decay and would be better removed, if it could be done” reported the Rural Dean to the Bishop of Durham.
Fortunately the church was not to be demolished and re-assembled stone by stone at Beamish, as this report from the second half of the 19th Century suggests, when the Saxon church had become derelict.
Important though the church is in historical, cultural and architectural terms, as a religious building its significance had waxed and waned and for several centuries, it merely had the status of a chapel with no resident priest. From 1863 to 1880 it ceased altogether to function as a church or chapel.
This occurred for two reasons. Firstly, it had fallen into a state of disrepair, the roof having partly fallen in and a false ceiling, which had been installed to mitigate the effects of the detective roof, having also collapsed.
Secondly, the Saxon church was too small for the much larger population of the Victorian pit village that the hamlet of Escomb had become. The church was thus both derelict and redundant and was probably more vulnerable then than at any other time during its 13 centuries of existence.
By the time the Rural Dean made his above report to Bishop Charles Baring the village once again had an incumbent vicar, the Reverend Thomas Ebenezer Lord, and a new church at the top of the hill to minister to the much greater population which had expanded since the opening of the George Pit in 1836.
But the Saxon church was not “removed”, nor was it left to deteriorate into the absolute ruin it certainly would have become by the 20th Century.
Without doubt someone had moved to save the church and it underwent a thorough restoration. How this came about is both interesting and not without a degree of acrimony.
The Reverend Lord had come to Escomb in 1868 and there is no doubt he soon knew that the little closed church was Saxon in origin. He claimed that about a decade or so after he became the vicar at Escomb he had seen his way to having the church restored and had set about gaining publicity and obtaining subscriptions for this purpose.
However, he was not the only person to claim to have had a hand in the restoration. The Reverend Dr Robert Eli Hooppell, vicar of Byers Green, seemed to have taken a serious interest in Escomb’s Saxon Church after a meeting with the Reverend Lord and other interested parties at Escomb vicarage in 1875.
As a consequence, Dr Hooppell published a paper entitled On A Perfect Anglo-Saxon Church At Escomb in which he wrote: “It would have been thought impossible in this age that there should have been still in existence a perfect Saxon church, entirely overlooked by and unknown to archaeologists until a few weeks ago.
“It was the good fortune of the writer to be the first to recognise and make public the true character of this building.”
And he was indeed acknowledged for his “discovery” in the archaeological journal Archaeologial Aeliana which stated: “To Dr Hooppell must be ascribed the credit of discovering the extreme antiquity of the pre-conquest church at Escombe”.
However, by making such a boastful and extravagant claim Dr Hooppell did himself no favours as it led to others being far more sympathetic to the contribution of the more modest Reverend Lord to the church’s restoration and much less inclined to give much credit, if any at all, to Dr Hooppell whose claim incensed many local and regional historians.
Indeed, it was reported at a meeting of the Newcastle Society of Antiquities that: “If you wished to arouse the indignation of our late member Mr Hodges, you merely needed to suggest a connection between the so-called discovery of Escomb Church and Dr Hooppell’s name.
“In denouncing Dr Hooppell’s unwarranted assertion Mr Hodges did not mince his words.”
It is worth noting that by this time Dr Hooppell was a former member of that society.
In general, the Reverend Lord does seem to get the credit he deserves for initiating the interest and process of restoring the church.
Nevertheless, without Dr Hooppell’s involvement the church would not have received the national recognition which followed the publication of his paper.
Without such publicity the raising of £500 necessary for the restoration, which was mostly the cost of a new roof, may have been much more difficult and it should be remembered that although £500 may today seem a paltry sum, in today’s values it would be more like £500,000.
The restoration was completed in 1880 and the little Saxon church was reconsecrated by Dr JB Lightfoot, Bishop of Durham, on October 4 that year, to be used as a church once again, though somewhat irregularly for summer services only.
After the Victorian church was demolished in 1971, the Saxon church, having been restored to the status of Parish Church, was used full time once more, its capacity being quite sufficient for the much smaller and perhaps less church-going population of present-day Escomb.
Today, Escomb Saxon Church is famous throughout the world. In 2008 it was visited by more than 3,000 people from 28 countries with the largest number of overseas visitors coming from USA, Australia and Germany.
There were also 45 organised guided tours for parties from Britain and overseas. Most visitors know of the church in advance and visit it because of their religious faith or interest in church architecture or Saxon and Roman history and a number of family links with Escomb.
Whatever the reason for visiting the church, small and unadorned as it is, it is almost certain that few visitors leave disappointed, at least judging by the comments in the visitors books, typified by German visitor Kristina Tanhauser who said: “This church makes your belief come back. Thank you.”