On Friday, Bede’s World Trust, which has run a visitor centre and museum at Jarrow on the Tyneside has been foreclosed due to lack of funding.
January 2016 Bede’s World Trust, responsible for the mangament of Bede’s World announced it had been foreclosed due to lack of funding. Bede’s World’s neighbour, the Seventh Century St Paul’s Church, whose adjacent monastic remains where excavated in a series of digs in the 1960s by Durham University’s Prof Rosemary Cramp, remains open.
Bede’s World
Bede’s World in Jarrow celebrates the life of the Venerable Bede, born in 673. He became one of Europe’s greatest scholars, although he lived his whole life at the twin monastery site at Wearmouth- Jarrow, located on the South side of the river Tyne. He is most famous for his Historia Ecclesiastica, which is one of the most important sources to the early history of Anglo-Saxon Britain.
For more than fifteen years the site of the old monastery has been home to an open-air museum celebrating the history of Bede and his life and times. At the centre is the ancient church of St. Paul, which is still a place for local worship. On the site of the former monastery is an 11-acre Anglo-Saxon farm, complete with animals and replica buildings, and a museum, which was opened by the Queen in 2000 was the latest development in the £9m Bede’s World complex.
It was only five years ago that it was part of the Government’s submission of the Wearmouth-Jarrow twin monastery as the UK’s next world heritage site. However, on Friday the Bede’s World Trust, which runs the site was wound up after a meeting and South Tyneside Council secured the site. The move came as a shock to the 27 staff at Bede’s World, who were busy planning the events for the upcoming year.
Mike Smith, chairman of the trustees, has according to the Live Chronicle confirmed that discussions are taking place with insolvency experts on what will happen next. He says: “It is absolutely terrible but we have had no choice while we look at how best to transfer the operation of Bede’s World into a different form. We are still in negotiations with insolvency practitioners”, he continues.
A South Tyneside Council spokesperson says to the same newspaper: “Despite receiving substantial support from South Tyneside Council, Bede’s World is closing: “This is because it is not currently financially viable and the charitable trust which managed the attraction has gone into liquidation. We can confirm that ownership of the land and buildings will revert to the council under the terms of the existing leases.”
World Heritage Application
It was in 2011 that then Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt put forward the Wearmouth-Jarrow twin monastery as a candidate world heritage site.
He said then: “The twin monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow had a profound influence on learning in the Middle Ages and played a huge part in the emergence of European identity. The outstanding library and teaching assembled at Wearmouth-Jarrow by founder Benedict Biscop was unlike anything else available in its day and it became the primary intellectual centre of Western Europe”.
However, the application to UNESCO was turned down due to the ephemeral (intangible) status of the site. The church was obviously not prepossessing enough and the historical value of the work of Bede was too “immaterial” to warrant the coveted status.
One issue was obviously the neglect of the surroundings of the site, which was located in the midst of a derelict industrial compound marred by intrusive power lines and an enclosure for imported autos.
The fact is, that cleaning up the landscape by changing the planning zones might have saved the application (had it been turned into a double nature/culture application). However, local authorities have obviously not been interested in furthering the cultural tourism to the site.
SUPPORT:
There is currently a crowdfunding project underway, which aims to secure money for the continuation of the site.
SOURCE:
Bede’s World visitor attraction in Jarrow closes due to cash problem.
By Tony Henderson. In the Chronicle Live 12.02.2016
READ MORE:
Bede’s World, UK: the monk who made history.
By Peter Fowler
In: The Constructed Past: Experimental Archaeology, Education and the Public. Ed. by Philippe Planel, Peter G. Stone. Routledge 1999, pp. 245 – 257
Wearmouth & Jarrow. Northumbrian monasteries in an historic landscape.
By Sam Turner, Sarah Semple and Alex Turner.
University of Hertfordshire Press 1913.
Special Issue about Wearmouth & Jarrow and the application for World Heritage Status