Baeda

Across from the Roker Hotel there is a walkway above the beach.  Going north there is an open grassy area and on the street side is a memorial to Baeda with a tall cross carved with images and Latin text set on a base with the inscription:

            To the glory of God and in memory of his servant Baeda the Venerable

            Who was born between Wear and Tyne DCLXXXIII

            And died at Jarrow DCCXXXV

It was to me a bit of a mystery that someone born over a thousand years ago would have his writings carved in stone and set in a prominent place.  I knew nothing of Bede, but I set about first from Wikipedia and then ordering his most famous book ‘The Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ from Amazon, which I am reading now.

Bede wrote the history of the English people from a vantage point of life at the tail end of the Anglo Saxon invasion when much of what was known was fresh in the minds of living people.  He  wrote in Latin and he wrote before the Viking attacks and before even than Beowulf who I have usually thought of as emerging from the darkness of English pre-history.  

Bede writes clearly of these times and of the conversion of England to Christianity.  Some of the stories of Christianity are uncannily like the stories of Paul’s journeys in the New Testament with prayer, and fasting, of conversions and miracles.  The book begins with the arrival of people to England.  I realized that for Bede people had spread throughout the world from Eden and would have of course had to cross in ships to settle England.  He could not have been aware that the North Sea had been dry land for several thousand years after the ice age and people who arrived did so by walking.  He follows with the Britons, the Picts and the Irish living on the island when the Romans arrive, he tells the history of Roman legions in Britain and then after their departure the arrival of the Anglo Saxons.  The heart of the book is the story of the introduction and spread of Christianity throughout the island.

Saint Peter’s Church

St. Peter’s church in Sunderland sits above the banks of the river Wear.  We were introduced to it by the MacKnights who are active parishioners of the church.  They brought us there after services on Sunday, gave us a tour and told us its history.

In the 7^th century AD, a wealthy noble named Benedict Biscop after traveling in Europe and visiting Rome, decided to give his life to Christianity and build a monastery and a church.  The story of monasteries in Europe in the Middle Ages is a fascinating one and poorly understand by the average person, including myself.  Biscop sent to Gaul for masons and glazers to come and build the church in the manner popular on the mainland.  The year was 674 and the church has stood on this site since then although once or twice destroyed by Viking raiders, added onto, remodeled, burned, and rebuilt, some of the original stonework is still there. 

The Venerable Bede or Baeda who is called the father of English history was from the Monkwearmouth area and was a member of this monastic community.  I will have more to say on him later.

For our purposes, Baron Hilton direct ancestor of the Hilton family line of which my wife is one lies in a sarcophagus in the back of the church, a life size stone figure of a knight, strangely missing its legs lies over his remains.  The Hiltons, at least from the Norman Conquest were the chief family in the area. 

Sunderland England and the MacKnights

We were introduced to Sunderland by Doris and Keith MacKnight.  My brother in law had contacted Keith while researching Hylton Castle.  The castle was scheduled to be opening after its transformation into a visitor’s center around the time of our trip to England, but it was not ready.  The MacKnights met us at the castle and gave us a pre-opening tour.  They had grown up in the shadow of the castle and were instrumental in securing the funding for its restoration.  Doris served on the city council and also served a term as mayor of the city.  As such, we had a tour of not only the castle and its grounds but on three occasions they took us on tours of the city of Sunderland and its environs including Raby Castle, a bar and restaurant at the base of the limestone cliffs called The Grotto, the city shopping mall called the Bridges, and the ancestral Washington Home in nearby Washington town.

Sunderland itself is a former industrial giant located at the mouth of the River Wear in Durham county.  Millions of tons of coal were shipped through here, and it was one of the foremost shipbuilding cities in the world for over 100 years.  It had a glass industry that is now gone but the National Glass Museum and a knowledge base of glass technology remain at the University of Sunderland.  Coal production has been shut down due to environmental regulations and the move to cleaner fuels, the shipbuilding and glass manufacturing moved to Asian countries where labor was cheaper and infrastructure newer.  It is a lot like the cities that I know around Boston that have had to reinvent themselves replacing heavy industry with service and high technology.

Tyneside General Hospital

When we were in England, my wife needed unexpectedly to see a doctor.  I asked at the desk of the Roker Hotel how we should go about getting to see a doctor.  The woman at the desk told us to dial 999, which we did.  We were connected to a woman who asked us a series of questions about our problem, determined that we need to see a doctor right away, and made an appointment for us at Tyne side General Hospital.  She said to be there before 11am.  It was about 8:30am.  We called a cab and were there in about 25 minutes.  Going in, the desk was already aware of our appointment.  It was not much different from an emergency room in the US., but less crowded, smaller, and more plain than we have here.  Within 20 minutes we were seen by a nurse who took vital signs, scheduled tests, and took our information. We were very worried that we would not be able to use our insurance.  We had gone to Mass General in Boston once for a similar incident and had been charged over $10,000. for an overnight with supervision,  Our insurance had temporarily lapsed.  At Tyneside they told us there would be no charge unless we had to be admitted.  We had blood tests done, saw a doctor, were given a diagnosis.  The issue was not as serious as we thought.  And there was no charge.
   
It was clear they had no system set up for taking money or insurance information.  That there was no charge was remarkable to us, but what was most remarkable was the efficiency and speed that we were moved through the system.  It was an emergency room with no waiting.  In America, if you cannot see your doctor right away, you go to an emergency room without an appointment and wait, usually for hours, and then are slowly moved through the system.  It is usually an all day or all night process.  We were out of Tyneside General in time to catch up with the rest of our party at the Sunderland Glass Museum in the early afternoon.

I have heard warnings about the British system; that one had to wait months for an operation or for a hearing aid.  There must be some disaffection with the system, although we were not aware of what it was during our visit.  We did see posters around the hospital admonishing patients not to abuse the doctors and nurses.  I am not sure what that was about; but it implies that doctors do not have the same unassailable social status they have in the US, and, the one we saw, seemed equally as competent and professional.  From my own limited first hand experience, I think I would choose their system over ours.

Dawn

My first experience as a carpenter was in the fall, my first impressions of this work were under the heady blue sky of an October morning. This time of year up until then was a the beginning of school and therefore the absolute worst time of year. The change of seasons and the weather has always been the source of greatest pleasure for me, but it is especially October that does me in.