MATTHEW AND SUSANNA LIDDELL

 

The Liddell family prospered during the halcyon years of the 19^th century, when Newcastle upon Tyne was an early “Dallas”.  As transport became easier, members of the family, like many contemporaries, migrated to more congenial climes in the South of England.  For most Catholic families it seems impossible to trace records to the beginning of the 18^th century, since so few registers survive or were begun until the Catholic Relief Act made it safe to keep them.  Tradition says that the Liddell family were related to the Ravensworth Liddells, who became Protestants at the time of the Reformation.  The first certain date is 1789, when Cuthbert Liddell was apprenticed to John Young, Tanner, of Newcastle upon Tyne.  His father Matthew Liddell is mentioned on a list of recusants sent to the House of Lords in 1767, in which it is said that he had lived in Jarrow in the parish of Heworth for forty years. This list was instituted after the 1715 rebellion, in which many North Country families joined the Old Pretender.  Matthew Liddell (the first) was born in 1715 in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, and in 1754 he married Mary Moor. He was a gentleman farmer and rented his farm – Boghouse in the Chapelry of Heworth – from John Baker.  He also rented a Public House from the Dean and Chapter of Durham.. They had eleven children, of which only four reached maturity. Their son Cuthbert Liddell was born in 1774.  Matthew died in 1782 and left £200 each to his children, Matthew and Isabella, and £420 in trust for Dorothy and Cuthbert to provide for their education and clothing until they were twenty one, when they would receive the capital sum.  He directed that Cuthbert’s legacy could be used for an apprenticeship, and this was done in 1789 for a fee of £103.10s.  Matthew’s other surviving son, Matthew, became a partner in the Tyne Bank in Newcastle and, when he died in 1802 at the age of 44, he left the residue of his estate to his brother, Cuthbert.  Cuthbert married in 1807 Abigail Bulman in St. John’s Church (C of E) Newcastle. It has to be remembered that prior to 1838 Catholic marriages, and, in fact, all marriages, even those of Dissenters, to be legally valid, had to take place in the Church of England. Cuthbert in 1826 is described in a Newcastle Directory as a Tanner. Cuthbert and Abigail had five children, of which the second child and first son, Matthew, was born on 2^nd November 1809 in Benwell Hall. This is our Matthew who would eventually become a wealthy industrialist, building Prudhoe Hall and founding of the Catholic Mission in Prudhoe. 

This Matthew Liddell was admitted a Freeman of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1830.  It is known that in 1849 he was living at Benton Grange and subsequently lived at Hedgefield House in County Durham.  In a history of Gosforth, he is mentioned as being a viewer of Gosforth colliery.  It also mentions that he had a clock repaired by a colliery lampman who had been a companion of George Stephenson. Matthew married Susanna Cuddon from Shadingfield in Suffolk. The font in our Lady and St. Cuthbert’s church is a copy of the ancient font in the parish church of Shadingfield, where the Cuddon family had lived since the 14^th century.

The extremely elegant octagonal medieval font stands on three steps in the form of a Maltese cross.  The third step has quatrefoil decoration and the sides of the bowl have designs of shields and Tudor roses.  There is no authoritative date for the font in Shadingfield, although the Tudor roses suggest after 1485.

A brass plaque on the right hand side wall of the Nave of St John the Baptist church in Shadingfield confirms the importance of the Cuddon family in Shadingfield.  “Here under lyeth buryed the body of Mary Cuddon, the first wife of William Cuddon of Shadingfilde in the countye of Suffgent; and one of the daughters and hieres of George Harvye of Olton in the sayd countye Esquier, who died the XXII day of November A. DNI 1586”.  

Interestingly, the most treasured possession of the church is the Shadingfield linen altar cloth edged with hand made lace in its original oak box, which has the following inscription on the paper lining:-

 

This was at the time when Archbishop Laud was trying to reintroduce sacramental practices back into the Church of England, including the re-establishment of altars in chancels.  The move fell to the fury of the puritans; Laud was executed, the altars were removed, and the pulpit became the main focus of Anglican worship for the next 200 years.  Since summer 2002, the Beccles & District Museum have displayed the altar cloth and box.

Presumably Susanna Liddell was proud of her family’s connection to the medieval church in Shadingfield, where clearly they had been benefactors and now inspired her in her own generosity to the Catholic people of Prudhoe.

 In 1860 Matthew exchanged his land at Sturton Grange, Warkworth with the Duke of Northumberland for land at Duke’s Hag.  In 1868-70 he built Prudhoe Hall at a cost of £35,000. The architects were Dunn, Hansom & Fenwick. The estate comprised some 300 acres of land. A stable block and a walled garden were also built and Burn House Cottage was used for the priest’s house.  Pesvner describes the Hall as “rather formless but redeemed by much excellent naturalistic stone-carved detail” with a “good interior, especially the hall with a Jacobean staircase and elaborate wrong iron lamp standards.  A bathroom and WC are also decoratively Victorian” (Pevsner & Richmond 1992). The stained glass window in the main Hall was designed and executed by Daniel Cottier, an important member of the ‘Aesthetic movement’ in Scotland and the North East, and an early associate of William Morris.

 

The home of Matthew and Susanna stood in splendid isolation on the edge of the village and in marked contrast to the rest of the housing stock. The Newcastle Weekly Chronicle of 9^th November 1872 describes Prudhoe:   “a hamlet nestles in the valley, glistening with the sheen of white-wash (….) about a hundred of these cottages (….) The colliery workings are to the west of the cottage rows, but only 200-300 yards.  Here there is only one drift – a level one.  Coal was touched within a few yards of the bore in the hillside and now the main tunnel has been carried forward a mile (…) It has been a very profitable venture, as indeed have all three pits (Prudhoe, West Wylam, and Mickley), to the present owners.  Half a century ago, some fortunes were sunk in speculation, but when the Cooksons took the “abandoned claim”, they stumbled upon the prize, and with their partners Cuthberts & Liddells they have warmed themselves into exceeding comfort and jollity by means of the nice heap of coal they have been able to disinter.”

Coalmines in Proudehowe (also Proudhow) are first mentioned in 1475 and called the coal mine at Slenhop.  In 1738 among the collieries on the Tyne were Prudhoe Moor, four and a half miles from the river, and the Hagg, 5 miles from the river. The last-named pit was not the same as the later Hagg pit, which was worked in connection with the Wylam colliery.  At the beginning of the nineteenth century, mining in Prudhoe seems to have ceased, but about 1860 the collieries in the neighbourhood were developed by Matthew Liddell, the viewer and manager of the Mickley Coal Company.  The Company bought a large estate in Prudhoe in 1862 for £27,000, and obtained in 1874 a lease for the mining rights from the Duke of Northumberland.  The Prudhoe colliery would in fact be worked until 1938.   The West Wylam Colliery would be worked for nearly 100 years, and was only closed in May 1961.

There had been a certain amount of criticism of the Coal Company because of the poor state of the housing for the miners and their families.  In 1902 the Company, having been approached by Hexham Rural District Council, gave an undertaking to build 100-150 new houses at West Wylam to mitigate the overcrowding.  This followed a diphtheria epidemic. Surviving childhood was not taken for granted. In 1911 the enfant mortality rate was 132 per 1000 births.

The Industrial Revolution was also about new ways of transport, lighting, heating and sanitation. Coal and the Age of Steam Trains provided rapid transport for people and freight.  The railway, with a station at Prudhoe, had been built between Blaydon and Hexham in 1835 and continued to Carlisle in 1838.   Prudhoe Gas Works was installed in 1872, and a drainage system was laid down in 1879-82.

It is beyond question that both Matthew and Susanna were very committed Catholics, and in 1870 they established a Mission here (the term then used for a Parish) by opening a chapel in Prudhoe Hall, to cater for the growing population of Prudhoe and the surrounding area, which consisted of a large number of Irish migrants who had settled here after finding work in the mines.  The Mission at that time included the villages of Wylam, Greenside and Crawcrook, which did not get their own separate parish until 1892.  Before this initiative, the nearest place where Prudhoe Catholics could attend Mass was at Ss. Mary and Thomas Aquinas in Stella near Blaydon, which had been built in 1831. 

The first chapel for the Prudhoe Mission, which was not much bigger than a large room at the Hall, was opened on October 19^th 1870.  Records show that there was a week’s mission in the chapel in May 1875, given by a Dominican, Father F.Sadoe Silvester OP, at the conclusion of which Bishop James Chadwick confirmed 34 males and 31 females.  This was the first Confirmation held in the chapel.  It took place after the 10.30 am Mass. During this Mass 11 children and 1 adult received their first Communion from the Bishop.  At that Mass a total of exactly 100 persons received Communion. We are told that the Bishop also preached in the afternoon and gave Benediction. The Peter’s Pence collection at Prudhoe Hall in 1875 came to £2.14s.2d.  3^rd June 1877 saw a collection taken for Pope Pius IX on the occasion of his Holiness’ Episcopal Jubilee and this came to £13, of which £10 was from Mrs Susanna Liddell.

 

It is worth noting here that the Anglican Church, St Mary Magdalene, was not opened until 1880. It cost £2160, exclusive of the site which had been given by the Duke of Northumberland.  The Vicarage was completed in 1884 for a cost of £1625. Before that Anglicans would have been served from the Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin at Ovingham.  With regard to the Methodists, it should be remembered that John Wesley first visited Prudhoe in 1757 on the occasion of laying the foundation stone for the first Methodist chapel off South Road, and he had further visits in 1761, 1769, and 1782.  But it was not until 1901 that the first Wesleyan minister came to live in Prudhoe.

Our Catholic Parish in the first few years was characterised by large turnover of priests, who each served for quite brief periods.  The reason for this is unclear. The Prudhoe Mission was first served by the Very Rev. John William Canon Bewick for a few months, until Fr. Joseph Stourton was appointed at the end of 1870.  Fr. Stourton belonged to a great family in the Midlands.  He lived at Prudhoe Hall, before the presbytery was built in the grounds.  He stayed for 8 months.

Then, the post was left vacant for a few months, and several Dominican priests came from Newcastle to celebrate Mass and administer the Sacraments. The second parish priest was Fr. Robert Sharples, who was in charge for only a period of six months in 1872, because he had to give up due to ill health.

 He was followed by Fr. Nicholas Darnell.  We have it from a letter of Anthony Cornwell to Father Laidler in July 1987, honorary Obituarist for the Oratory Society, that Nicholas was a son of the Vicar of the Parish Church in Stockton.  His father, after a spell as a Canon at Durham Cathedral, enjoyed a lucrative living at Stanhope.  Fr Darnell had been a Fellow of New College, Oxford, during Newman’s final years there.  When he became a Catholic in 1847, it was Faber, not Newman that he joined.  When Faber and his Wilfridians threw in their lot with Newman, and they agreed to split into the two Oratories in Birmingham and London, the members were shared out between the two foundations.  In 1859 Fr. Darnell was appointed as the first Headmaster of Newman’s Oratory school in Birmingham, but two years later he resigned from the school and from the Congregation. It has been suggested by Anthony Cornwell that he had a love/hate relationship with Newman, and that he may have been happier, if he had joined the London Oratory.  In any event, it was tragedy for both institutions, as well as a personal tragedy for himself and for Newman.  From then on, he was a bird of passage.  Anthony Cornwell states in his letter, “I have always thought it an error that Darnell went to Birmingham instead of London. I think he would have been happier there and his breach with the Oratory may not have occurred”. As things turned out, Fr. Darnell did not stay long in Prudhoe either, leaving in October 1873, to take up an appointment at the new Mission of Hayden Bridge, where he stayed for 12 years. It has been said that he lived there in great poverty.

At the beginning of 1874 Prudhoe Mission got its fourth parish priest in Fr Edmund Dunphy, D.D., who stayed until April of that year.  The post once again remained vacant for 6 months, presumably because the Bishop had no secular priest to appoint.  So, in October 1874, it was transferred for three years to the Dominicans.  In fact, it remained in their charge till the first months of 1888.  Father Wilfrid Lescher, O.P. came to Prudhoe on Oct. 24^th 1874.  He had been ordained priest on March 8^th 1873, and he would remain in Prudhoe till the end of 1880.  On December 23^rd 1874, the Stations of the Cross were erected in the Chapel. Not surprisingly, the mission had been suffering through the frequent changes of priests, besides the fact that two at least of them had been in such a poor state of health,  that they had not been able to look after their flock in a satisfactory way.  On the other hand, the Catholic population was increasing rapidly.  Fr Lescher was a priest equal to the task and made a great pastoral contribution during his stay as parish priest.

Through the generosity of Matthew Liddell plans were made to have a school built for Catholic children on South Road, with a Teacher’s House. On September 23^rd 1875, the foundation-stone was laid by Bishop Chadwick. The Bishop was assisted at the private ceremony by the parish priest Father Lescher O.P., with Mrs Susanna Liddell in attendance.  Matthew Liddell owing to his state of health was unable to attend.  A scroll was placed inside the foundation stone, together with a shilling and a copy of the Newcastle Chronicle.  The translation of the Latin wording on the scroll was as follows:

“In the 30^th year of the Pontificate of His Holiness Pius IX, Pope by Divine Providence and in the 10^th year of the Episcopate of Right Reverend James Chadwick, Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, the Reverend Wilfrid Lescher O.P. being Pastor of the Mission of Prudhoe, was laid by Mr Matthew Liddell and his very beloved wife Susanna, the foundation stone of this school, erected to the honour and glory of God, of the most Holy Mary Mother of God, of SS. Cuthbert and Matthew and of all the Saints. Sept. 23^rd, 1875”. 

The architect was E. Hansom, Esq. of the firm of Dunn and Hansom, of Newcastle upon Tyne.  It is worth noting here that the architect, Joseph Hansom built several churches in the North, three of those are the beautiful churches of St. Michael’s, Newcastle, and St. Joseph’s, West Hartlepool, and the small but very fine church of St. Elizabeth at Minsteracres. The school building was finished in August 1876 for the accommodation of 160 children, and opened by the Bishop on Monday August 7^th.  The Very Rev. Dr. Bewick, the Vicar General and Fr Pius Cavanagh, O.P had travelled to Prudhoe Station with the Bishop and had been met by Fr Lescher.  Matthew Liddell because of serious illness was unable to attend the official opening.  The Catholic Weekly, “The Tablet” on August 19^th described the event:

“The Bishop exhorted the children to punctuality, attention, and obedience, reminding them that in a very true sense they came to school to make their fortune, to prepare themselves for after life, and to develop habits of diligence and perseverance that would affect their whole future.  Finally, the Bishop announced that the school would be called St. Matthew’s School in memory of the founder.  The children then sang some hymns and the building was blessed by the Bishop according to the Ritual of the Church”.  

The first teacher was Miss Bayley from Manchester who came for six months on a salary of £42 per annum. Between 1876 and 1928 there was a total of thirteen head teachers, the two longest serving being Miss C. Reynolds from November 1897 to August 1910 and Mr Thomas O'Hare from 1913 to 1928, though he joined the Army and made good service in France and Belgium in the Great War, returning to the school in 1918. The school received very good inspection reports, both secular and religious, and it enjoyed the confidence of non-Catholics. Often the number of non-Catholics equaled  the number of Catholic children. In 1879, 84 children were on the registers and in 1889 there were 208. In September 1893 a special department was created for infants, and the children were transferred from St Matthew's Hall. Fr Lenders remarks in his booklet "the History of the Parish of Prudhoe on Tyne (Written in 1928)", 'If it is true to say that the real good in a parish does not consist mainly in the building of a church or the arrival of a priest in a place where the Catholic Religion has been hitherto nearly unknown, but consists rather in a constant, persevering work performed during many years, which is noticed only by those who compare in their mind that actual state of a place with what it was some years before, the same is truly said about the good work done by a school: it is the work of months and years, arduous, constant, which is to be inspired by a sincere charity, a strong purpose to promote the glory of God"

The school served the community for 106 years, and closed on February 18^th 1983, at which time the school moved to a new building on a new site on Highfield Lane, a short distance from the church.  The contract for the new school had been signed with builders Stephen Easten on 28^th April 1982, who had won the tender on 15^th March with a price of £211,572.  They got possession of the site on 12^th May and were expected to complete the building in 40 weeks.  The school remained unchanged until 2004, when the Parish Priest and Chair of Governors, Father Paul Zielinski, won the funding from DFES to have a new extension built to provide a state of the art Nursery and an IT suite housing ten computers. The architect for the Nursery was Mr Peter Brown of Darbyshire Architects Newcastle. The cost was £350,000 and the parents responded generously to raise the necessary 10% of the capital cost by various fundraising initiatives over the next two years.  As this booklet goes to press, the next expected stage of development for the school should occur with the re-organisation of education throughout Northumberland, when St. Matthew’s will become a Primary School.  This will entail the building of two new classrooms, a library, a new kitchen and administration offices.  It is hoped that for the first time in its history, the parish will be able to offer our children a complete educational route from Nursery right through to Sixth Form within the Catholic sector, with St. Thomas More Comprehensive School in Blaydon as the next stage.