At Bede's World

Archaeology and the National Park Idea: Challenges for Management and Interpretation Peter Fowler Miriam Harte The Genius of the Place: Managing a ÒMini-National ParkÓ at BedeÕs World ede’s World could well become part of a World Heritage Site early in the twenty-first century, but it is not a national park, nor does it aspire to be one. It nevertheless shares much of the basic philosophy Bof national parks regarding purpose, objectives, and management, and finds inspiration in their existence and their doings. Bede’s World is both a place and a where he spent the whole of his life project, not unambiguous as a project after early childhood became one of though a very small place compared sanctity and pilgrimage. with national parks: about 80 acres The small area of land encapsu- (32 ha) all together. It is founded on lated by the name “Bede’s World” the life and works of one man, the may look far removed from the char- Venerable Bede, the genius of this acteristics of a national park, but it is place in what is now a markedly post- nevertheless precious to many— industrial landscape in northeast scholars, local communities, and England. His was the name above all distant pilgrims, for example. The associated with the fame of Jarrow in vision for its development and man- the decades either side of AD 700. agement as a public place of educa- Then the monastery which he tion and recreation is infused by served, founded by a royal grant of thinking similar to that of those in- land in the Anglian Kingdom of volved in National Parks. We also Northumbria, lay at the heart of the believe that a few green acres tucked remarkable intellectual and artistic into a visually scarred and socially flowering conveniently known as deprived post-industrial landscape in “the Golden Age of Northumbria” the middle of tens of thousands of (Blair 1970, 1976; Bonner et al. people’s homes may in its own way 1989; Hawkes 1996; Higham 1993). be as important a social asset as the Subsequently, Bede’s reputation as protected, rural spaces in rural back- scholar, saint, and commentator on pack country, by definition distant the Scriptures grew, and the place from the urban milieu. Volume 16 • Number 4 1999 91 Archaeology and the National Park Idea: Challenges for Management and Interpretation We appreciate, of course, that we active places of worship rather than cannot re-create the spiritual or in- mere ancient monuments. Another tellectual worlds known to Bede, but one of them is the church of St. Pe- believe we can justifiably attempt to ter, just 16 km (10 miles) to the effect, however impressionistically, south. Thirteen hundred years ago, aspects of a more tangible Bede’s then overlooking the estuary of the world: his physical environment and River Wear, it was the focal point of some of its workings (Chippindale the original monastic foundation of a 1994, 7; Fowler 1999). That belief is two-part monastery. The second part in a way as much a matter of faith as was built a few years later at Jarrow, was the Abbot’s, Benedict Biscop, Gywre, on a low-lying site overlook- when he founded a monastery at Jar- ing extensive mud-flats where the row in AD 681. River Don met the Tyne. A new Benedictine monastery was The Site built at Jarrow in the twelfth century, Bede’s World encompasses a and it is the ruins of that, overlying complex of buildings, land uses, ten- the outlines of the archaeologically ures, and expectations. At its core, excavated Early Christian one physically and conceptually, is the (Cramp 1969), that are the obviously church of St. Paul where, marvel- “old” part of Bede’s World. The ru- lously, the long tradition of Christian ins lie beside St. Paul’s, a church to worship on this site continues. which they were physically and func- The nave is largely nineteenth tionally joined until the mid-sixteenth century, but it stands above the century, when the monastery was monastery’s original basilican church dissolved. (Taylor and Taylor 1965, 338-49). In addition to history and religi- Here the famous Jarrow lectures oc- osity, a strong “green” element runs cur each May, continuing Bede’s tra- through the Bede’s World concept dition of scholarship (Sherley-Price and its implementation. The River 1955). The north aisle contains an Don itself has been cleaned up and exhibition of sculpture from the landscaped. Along it, we are trying to Early Christian monastery. The recreate some of the former mud-flat chancel was originally a free-standing habitat attractive to wader birds. The chapel or small monastic church, extensive tidal mud-flats which Bede dated AD 681 by its extant original would have looked out on are now foundation stone. Plausibly, it is the filled in. Our efforts may be environ- actual building in which Bede wor- mental gesturism, but they have shipped. Few late-seventh-century helped recall the monastery’s riverine buildings stand in Western Europe. connection from its harbour to the There are even fewer which are still sea, and the estuarine setting in 92 The George Wright FORUM Archaeology and the National Park Idea: Challenges for Management and Interpretation which Bede worshipped and worked ranean and to Late Classical antiquity (Figure 1). in the architecture of the new mu- The secular focal point lies 400 seum building knowingly renew this yards slightly uphill at Jarrow Hall, a link (Figure 3). late-eighteenth-century family house Landscape (Figure 1). This held the museum All such relative sophistication in until 1998, essentially to present re- Bede’s world would have been real- sults from the monastic excavations. ised against the backcloth of the Significantly, its achievement came mundane daily life of an agrarian es- about through co-operation—from tate; and so is it still, for at Gywre in the Church, local community, aca- the twenty-first century as in the sev- demia, outside funding, and financial enth we are trying to run an “Anglo- and other support from the Local Saxon farm,” not as a static stage-set Authority. Essentially, those compo- but as a working “model” of what nents remain in place for the twenty- might once have been (Figure 4). It is first century. on heavily polluted land formerly Beside the Hall (Figure 2) a multi- serving various industrial functions, million-pound new museum building occupied into the 1980s by huge pet- by architects Evans and Shalev rol storage tanks. Vast amounts of (Singmaster 1995, 30) opens in May soil were removed and replaced. The 2000, four years after Phase 1 (Figure specifically agrarian landscape was 3) was opened in May 1995. This conceived in 1991, mechanically indoor part of the “Museum of Early shaped in 1992 and 1993, and Medieval Northumbria” presents not planted up in 1993 with mainly de- just the monastic excavations prop- ciduous hardwoods (attested as ex- erly for the first time but also acts as a isting before AD 700 in northern display case for an important phase of England). By ca. 2025 the landscape English history which at the moment with its trees and artificial stream does not benefit from a major pres- should look as if it is a farmed valley entation in a professional museum in where the fields have been cleared the region. New to many will be out of woodland. Already the setting Northumbria in its European con- looks old and the stream entirely text, focusing on the journeys of natural as its babbles its way through Benedict and Wilfred between Eng- modern but historically authentic land and Rome. This was their es- (planted) meadow flora into its “An- sential prelude to the foundation of glo-Saxon” pond, now with unin- Jarrow–Monkwearmouth monastery vited but very welcome wildlife (Fig- as a modern establishment up-to-date ure 4). in its architecture, facilities, and lit- The concept was based on a urgy. The references to the Mediter- familiar archaeological landscape Volume 16 • Number 4 1999 93 Archaeology and the National Park Idea: Challenges for Management and Interpretation Figure 1. Plan of Gywre, the “Anglo-Saxon farm,” showing Jarrow Hall and Phase 1 of the new museum building with, to their north, “pre-medieval” fields on an axial lay-out, standing oaks (cog-wheel symbol), a stream and pond, the sites of the four experimental buildings (a = Thirlings A, b = New Bewick grubenhaüs, c = Hartlepool monastic “cell,” d = Yeavering hall), and a “Bronze Age” burial mound, all high above the mud-flats of the tidal River Don flowing northwards to the Tyne. 94 The George Wright FORUM Archaeology and the National Park Idea: Challenges for Management and Interpretation Figure 2. Careful design and landscaping has brought about a visually interesting juxtaposition between, centre, the “old,” Jarrow Hall, now (May 1999) a restaurant, offices, archive, and library, and, left, the pergola fronting the neo- classical entrance to the new museum building. model in corporating ideas of demonstrably existing as relics in a palimpsest, succession, survival, Northumbrian landscape of ca. AD rupture, and continuity. Its design 700 (Figure 1; Fowler and Mills, in also had to bear in mind that this new press). There are no problems of and contrived landscape has to archaeological reference points for “work” in the late twentieth century such landscape detail. Documentary and beyond as an Anglo-Saxon farm, evidence is brought into play too. an educational resource, and a tourist attraction. The constructed Anglo- The pond and its adjacent ford, Saxon landscape therefore had for example, lead to discussion of the features built into it from prehistoric topographical detail in Anglo-Saxon and Roman times of the sort land charters.

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