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.