St. Paul's Church, Jarrow

It is probably the most historically famous English church.

In order to honour the union of the Celtic Druid Church and the Roman Church, in the year 674, King Ecgfrid (Alchfrid), son of King Osuiu (Oswin) had given a gift to this new Brotherhood of seventy “hides or families” of land (60-120 acres) at the mouth of the River Wear on which to build the monastery.

This is when the Anglo-Saxon brotherhood had established the first monastery of the blessed St. Peter, the chief of the apostles to be built after he was declared rock of the Catholic Church in 666.

Shortly thereafter in 681, a sister monastery would be added and dedicated to the blessed St. Paul.

St. Bede tells us “that mutual peace and concord, mutual and perpetual affection and kindness, should be continued between the two places; so that, (for the sake of illustration,) just as the body may not be severed from the head by which it breathes, nor may the head forget the body, without which it has no life,—in like manner no one should attempt in any way to disturb the union between these two monasteries.” And St. Ceolfrid had said this of the occasion, “St. Benedict Biscop completed and ruled the monastery of St. Paul’s seven years and afterwards ably governed…….the single monastery of St. Peter and Paul in its two separate localities.”

In order to properly build churches that would last the test of time and also to lavishly decorate these buildings, Biscop had travelled to Gaul (modern day France) in order to hire stone masons and window glaziers. These craftsman were said to be Merovingian.

They were known for their opus gallicum (Latin for “Gallic work”). This was a technique where precise holes were created in stone masonry for the insertion of wooden infrastructure. These building techniques were used  extensively in church architecture. Both Bede and Biscop were actually the Irish and English kin of these Merovingians from France.