Norman Dunn's 'Hebburn and our Neighbours Forum'

Norman Dunn's 'Hebburn and our Neighbours Forum'
[ Norman Dunn's 'Hebburn and our Neighbours Forum' ]

Rules! No Bad language or derogatory remarks Please or we will delete. Anyone sharing our content on Face Book must credit 'Hebburn and our Neighbours'.

St. Aloysius church

Posted by peter cook on 21/6/2026, 7:15 am

An old undated postcard photo showing St. Aloysius church. Isn't that street light amazing. Photo dates from circa 1910.

Re: St. Aloysius church

Posted by Stan Wears on 21/6/2026, 8:55 am, in reply to "St. Aloysius church"

Built 1888 by Thomas Lumsden of Jarrow. Grade II listed, designed by 26 yrs old Charles Walker of Newcastle. Cost £5000 to build and had a bell tower which was never added due to cost. Built on land once owned by the Ellison family. I did lot of research on this church and found a huge gap in the parish records including a high mortality rate in that period. I also found that there was some history done on a previous occasion by someone who guessed it and drank the money! That was verified by a previous priest I rewrote the history to correct that ensuring the previous "lies" were scrapped for good. Interesting history !....

Re: St. Aloysius church

Posted by Norman on 21/6/2026, 9:47 am, in reply to "St. Aloysius church"

Stan if you look directly below the bulb on the lamp there is a speciall place where a bell would normally be fitted.
I wonder why they didn't fit the bell there?
The bell & wooden tower they finally used was second hand as it was originally used by either the Tennants Chemical Works (or was it Tharsis Sulpher & Copper Works) to ring and let their workers know .
I have that photo recorded as 1910. Then not many years later post WW1 the 'Lady Chapel' was built to commemorate the 88 Parish men who died in WW1.

Re: St. Aloysius church

Posted by Stan Wears on 21/6/2026, 11:30 am, in reply to "Re: St. Aloysius church"

I understand the bell tower was supposed to be where the rear door is now and would have towered just above the roof. If you go to the other gable end outside, you will see courses of bricks from a few suppliers and what's unreal, is they are not even straight until nearly head height! The original sketch was lost according to the Records Diocese office, but I found it in the vestry as it was hung there for over 100 years! And that showed the proposed bell tower...

« Back to index