HEXHAM ABBEY, dedicated to St Andrew, is one of the earliest surviving Christian foundations in Britain and for much of its history has reflected two very different Christian lifestyles: the enclosed community of men living by a monastic rule and the open community of the faithful who come together regularly to share in acts of worship. Built in 674-8 as a Benedictine monastery, a centre for the spread of the Christian faith and place of pilgrimage, by the formidable Wilfrid, bishop of York, it almost immediately became a cathedral church when the huge see of York was divided into four in 681 – much to Wilfrid’s disapproval – and Hexham became a bishopric. Wilfrid’s monastery was damaged by Viking raids in the 9th centruy, when the church was handsomely rebuilt as both a monastic and a parish church. Serving solely as a parish church after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, it was again substantially restored and rebuilt in the 19th and early 20th centuries to create the impressive and dignified building we see today.*

Built on a spur of land looking east across the Tyne valley just below the point where the North and South Tyne rivers combine, the church was one of the first to be built of stone, on a magnificent scale and possibly to a Roman-style basilica plan which was unique in Britain at the time and could well have been inspired by Wilfrid’s travels. Wilfrid’s follower and biographer Eddius Stephanus described its ‘crypts of beautifully dressed stone, the vast structure supported by columns of various styles and numerous side-aisles, the walls of remarkable height and length… we have never heard of its like this side of the Alps.’*

*From the Hexham Abbey guidebook