Warkworth Bridge
The Story
Warkworth is a special place for me, and its history is important to England. This little place has a castle a hermitage and this little bridge. It has stood providing safe passage across the Coquet for over five hundred years. It is one of only two medieval bridges still standing in England and it is weighed down with history.
The river Coquet was an important waterway which gave the site easy access to the sea and also facilitated movement deep into Northumberland. The village is built in a loop of the river, its water and steep banks giving strong natural defences. For these reasons there has probably been a settlement there since Neolithic times, and may have been fortified by the iron age. Earliest records of a settlement at Warkworth dates from AD 737 when Ceolwulf of Northumbria granted it to Lindisfarne Priory.
At this time the village was known as Werceword, which meant home of Werce". It was seized back from the priory by Osbert King of Northumbria in the nineteenth century and later became a property of the Earls of Northumberland. Work on the earliest form of the castle may have started at that time. Warkworth Castle has stood at the heart of British power struggles up till the sixteen hundreds, when it fell into decay. I will save the incredibly interesting history of the castle for a painting of the castle itself, that I will undoubtedly do in the future.
The bridge itself was built because a John Cook of Newcastle, who died in 1378 -9, he left twenty marks toward the building of Warkworth Bridge (to provide quick and easy access to and from from Newcastle to Lindisfarne) on the condition that it was built within two years. It seems it was and it still stands to day and is open to foot traffic but motorised vehicles have been banned since the 1960s.
The painting looks from the north side of the river back into town and to the castle built on the natural height of a steep bank of the river. Today this is a tourist destination in itself, as well as being part of a walk to Lindisfarne. The bridge was built to provide easy passage from Newcastle to Lindisfarne and so it is natural that it is part of many pilgrim walks.
Painting this was a pleasure, it was a very well behaved little painting, doing as I asked it from the beginning. I wanted it to be simple, uncomplicated but to give a feel of the age of the stone. I hope it leads to moments of reflection, who has walked over those stones? What battles has it seen? I hope it celebrates its service. It is not a big statement painting, but that makes it no less valuable as a record of our time set in the history of our place.