The churchyard was our playground.
Jim
The Minster, as it is now known, and rightly so because it’s a beautiful building, became the Minster obviously when the town became a city. We always called it the church, although its proper name was Saint Michael and all the Angels, and that was our playground. And we used to go round there. It’s in the middle of the town, it was a fantastic place.
The churchyard was our playground and there was a little area inside the church called Children’s Corner. And it was a little library with little chairs and desks. And we used to go in there and read the books. Church doors were always open and we were always allowed to go in, it was never a problem. And they used to have church trips, day trips. It was for the parishioners really, but living right close to the church, we always managed to sneak a day trip, although I was a Catholic, didn’t go to the services. But the vicar always used to say, “Well, are you going to start coming to my church?” And we used to say, “Yes, yes, we’re going to start coming.” It was a day out, we used to go into fields and play games and have a picnic. Christmas was a lovely time around Bishopwearmouth Church or The Church as we knew it. Church was always nicely decorated and they used to bring a Christmas tree from Norway. It was always a gift from Norway. And they used to put it up, it was a massive tree, and they used to put it up opposite the Empire Theatre on the grass, the grounds of the church. And on the 1st of December, the vicar used to come round and lots of us from the streets around and the congregations of the church, we would have a small service and then the lighting up of the tree and that was really good. It was really nice, nice start to Christmas. Anybody was welcome.
And then there was the choir night and the choir boys used to be there Tuesday and Thursday night and they used to do their rehearsals. And of course, we were always in climbing up the church windows, looking through, peering in, watching them. A fabulous building, it’s the Minster now and it’s had several names as I say. But, it wouldn’t be right if it didn’t have a ghost. Now then, the church had ghosts and sometimes the bells used to ring in the middle of the night. I never heard them, but I heard people in Carter Street talking about it, “Did you hear the bells last night?” About midnight, the bells sometimes would ring. “Did you hear them ringing last night?”
“Yes, we did.”
There’s a story that the old bell ringer of the church, on the date of Queen Victoria’s funeral, he was asked to go up into the church tower to muffle the bells. And he was drunk and he fell to his death. He fell to his death, and the bells used to ring at midnight.
This memory is part of the Bishopwearmouth Heritage Scheme collection