The first St. Mary’s Church was built by St. Wilfred over twelve hundred years ago. In the 13th Century a new church took its place. This new St. Mary’s fell into disuse when the Abbey became the accepted church of Hexham.
The people of Hexham had long been used to walking through the church on their way to and from the Market Place and St. Mary’s Chare. When shops and houses were built on the site of the church ruins, this traditional walkway was kept and is still called Old Church.*
*information from a signboard near to the church remains
6 Comments CherryPie on Nov 1st 2021
Oh I have been to Wrexham!
I wonder if these two places are somehow related.
Don’t often see place names end with -xham.
You would have to do a bit of research to find out. I am only familiar with my local place names and what they derived from.
Oh and I just did that!
-xham is not a suffix.
It’s actually -ham so it’s like Birmingham, Buckingham, Durham, etc.
It means “farm”.
Interesting, thank you
Now I (we) need to research the extra bits to those town names
twelve hundred years ago wow
if even ruins last that long is enough to surprise me
thank you for the intriguing sharing dear Cheri
We are lucky to have lots of old buildings and partial remains in the UK