Hexham High Street Heritage Action Zone (HSHAZ) – Heritage Working Group
(HWG)

Aims
(HSHAZ) The aim of the Hexham HSHAZ scheme is: ‘to revitalise Hexham’s historic town centre making it a more attractive, engaging and vibrant place for people to live, work, invest and visit’. This will be achieved through the local objectives below, which all link into national programme outcomes:

1. Deliver improvements that lead to the removal of the ‘at risk’ status of the Conservation Area, including building repairs, increasing custodianship and maintenance of Hexham’s heritage assets
2. Revitalise the HSHAZ area by increasing occupancy, reducing voids & bringing floorspace back into use
3. Enhance the physical condition, distinctiveness and attraction of the town centre through improved quality of streetscape & public realm
4. Support economic recovery post Covid-19 by encouraging footfall, dwell time and spend in the town centre enhancing long-term sustainability & protecting jobs
5. Stimulate and accelerate commercial investment to create economic growth in the town centre
6. Engage the local community to shape, participate and deliver plans & activities
7. Increase knowledge, interest & appreciation of the town’s heritage & culture

(HWG) The aim is to create a working group (or groups) to draw together a wide cross section of local people who have enthusiasm, knowledge and skills that can guide the development of key heritage activities that will encourage participation and engagement in revitalising and maintaining the town centre.

They will undertake historical research about the high street to enrich our understanding of it, to foster a sense of civic pride and to create a legacy for the scheme. This will serve to meet outcomes 5 and 6 of the HSHAZ programme.

Method
There are a number of activities which the HWG could support. In particular;

Activity One – Developing a resource library (digital and physical) including documents, images, collections, artefacts and records relating to the town centre, particularly Priestpopple, Market Street and Cattle Market, key trading families (if applicable) and buildings listed under task three.

The physical resources will be made available to the public via displays, possibly in Queens Hall and/or the Abbey and in vacant shop fronts along the high street. They will create a legacy for the HSHAZ and be held in perpetuity by the library or Northumberland Archives. The digital resources will be made available to the public by becoming part of the HLHS digital records.

Activity Two – Imaginative temporary displays in empty shop windows and local facilities. Further to the displays resulting from Task One, displays on specific imaginative themes are to be created and displayed for public consumption.

The only specified theme is ‘The Changing Streetscape of the High Street’ and we are open to suggestions for other themes and would suggest ‘Transport on the high street throughout the 20th century’ as an example.

Activity Three – Enrich the List
This task serves to improve the listed entries and records held by Historic England on all listed buildings and non-designated heritage assets on the high street. The listed buildings and NDHAs are:

4a Battle Hill	Grade 2 listed building 1042603
4 Battle Hill	Grade 2 listed building
1 & 1a Battle Hill	Grade 2 listed building 1370772
3-5 Battle Hill	Grade 2 listed building
9 Battle Hill	Grade 2 listed building
24-26 Priestpopple	Grade 2 listed building
23 Priestpopple	Grade 2 listed building
31 Market Place	Grade 2 listed building
33 Market Place	Grade 2 listed building
2 Battle Hill	Grade 2 listed building
Priestpopple House	Grade 2* listed building
27 Priestpopple	Grade 2 listed building
22 Priestpopple	Grade 2 listed building
10-12 Battle Hill Excelsior Building	NDHA
1 Battle Hill	NDHA
8 Battle Hill	NDHA 1370775

Historic England are offering direct support on this task, and we will have further details shortly on how our research is best added to the details already held.

Nevertheless, Historic England’s records are in the public domain and work to enhance them can be undertaken now. However, individual researchers are requested not to create their own account and upload to the HE site until further advice is received as this may result in our consolidated HSHAZ input not being acknowledged.

Activity Four – Develop a Digital Heritage Trail
We will commission a digital media specialist to create an app and web based digital heritage trail of the high street and the wider Hexham conservation area based on the heritage knowledge of the HWG. The target for completion of this task is March 2022.

Activity Five – Working with Schools Across all Project Areas
Engaging young people in the heritage of their town will enhance the legacy of the HSHAZ. The HSHAZ Senior Programme Officer will speak to the heads of the local schools to create an engagement programme best suited to their students and curriculum.

It is anticipated that setting activities following on from a talk/lecture from someone with local history knowledge will give the best results.

Current intention is to ask primary age students to design the high street of 2122 and to ask secondary age learners to write a 500-word story based in Hexham in 1922.

Love them or loathe them we all have a stand out memory of school meals whether it is your favourite or least favourite dish, the dinner ladies in the hall or the seating arrangements that separated you from your friends as they were on packed lunch. My foremost memory is from first school (aged maybe 7-8) and getting into trouble for trying to eat my pudding first…for those that know me that will hardly be a surprise!!

For those attending a residential school, the experience of school meals would undoubtedly be different; you couldn’t push your food around the plate as you didn’t like it, hoping that your mam had made your favourite for tea! Run by Northumberland Local Education Authority, Brown Rigg Camp School was a secondary school based near Bellingham. During World War Two the buildings were used to house and educate evacuees from Newcastle upon Tyne. Brown Rigg opened its doors in 1945 as a Residential School, closing in 1985. The school provided “a one-year course from September each year for any boy or girl in the 13-15 age group in the Authority’s schools” [NRO 02847/F/101]. “The aim of the School [was] to provide the benefits of a Boarding School Education, particularly to boys and girls in their last year at School, in which they rapidly develop a sense of responsibility and self-reliance which are valuable assets for the future” [NRO 02847/F/102].

The school prospectus gives us an insight in to what the children could expect; breakfast at 8.30am, dinner at 1.00pm, tea at 4.30pm and supper at 7.30pm. The food provided was described as ‘consistently good’; the typical menu shows different meals everyday although bread and butter with tea was available each breakfast and teatime (tea being replaced with cocoa at suppertime). Breakfasts included cornflakes, porridge, bacon, sausages, kippers. Dinners were two-courses typically a meat, potato and vegetable main course such as Irish stew with potatoes, although fish pie was served on Fridays. Puddings included tapioca, trifle or apple tart. Tea was more like a snack, a boiled egg or a herring to go with the bread and butter. Supper was a little more substantial, bubble and squeak, soup or a pudding.

Maybe you attended Brown Rigg and can recall the meals provided – were they ‘consistently good’ as promised? For those who didn’t attend Brown Rigg what is your stand out memory of school dinners? Did you have a favourite or one that you still loathe to this day? A quick office poll concluded that pink custard was remembered by a few of us. We would love you to share your food related memories in the comments section.

The women of Newbiggin-by-the-Sea are certainly no strangers to the peril that the North Sea can bring; whether that was waiting for the catch to come ashore or mourning those who never did make their return.  The involvement of the town’s women with the lifeboat institution resulted in a much-needed life-saving service being provided. 

A pamphlet entitled “Royal National Lifeboat Institution Newbiggin 1851-1951″ (NRO 7847/11) provides more details… 

“The good ladies of Newbiggin have always played an important part in the work of the local Lifeboat station, in fact, it is doubtful whether they could have been done without”. 

“When the launchings were necessarily hand-operated, it was the women who took the lion’s share of the work that was handed out.  It was usually the cry of “of every man to the boat and every woman to the rope” and they certainly more than pulled their weight”.  The women would wade out in to the water, often up to their necks, undoubtedly weighed down by layers of clothing, heaving a rope and putting themselves in a position of great danger ensuring that the Lifeboat was successfully put to sea.  Then repeating the whole exercise when the Lifeboat returned to shore. 

In February 1940 the women towed the lifeboat a mile overland when it was launched away from its usual station.  For their actions the women received the RNLIs ‘thanks on vellum’; “It took more than rock and sand to stop the “weaker sex” on that occasion when the call for assistance was made”. 

By the time the pamphlet was published in the early 1950s it was their fundraising through the Women’s Lifeboat Guild that was instrumental to the continued success of the Lifeboats in the town; “Although the days are gone when every woman, no matter how young or old they were, used to play their part in launching the boat and wearily dragging it back to the boat station, they still do a useful job”. 

Elsewhere in Northumberland, Margaret Armstrong from Cresswell became known as the ‘second Grace Darling’ for her involvement in rescuing those aboard a struggling steamer.  Originally published in February 2018, here is Margaret’s story…. 

https://www.facebook.com/northumberlandarchives/posts/1576552522413950