Jarrow Hall and its occupants

Jarrow Hall is an elegant grade-II listed Georgian building overlooking land which was once the monastic estate known to Bede, later the landscape of industrial growth. The first museum displaying finds from the excavations of St Paul's monastery, the Bede Monastery Museum, was housed in Jarrow Hall. The ground floor is now a popular café, and the first floor includes the stylish Oval Room which can be hired for meetings. "The Life and Times of Jarrow Hall" exhibition, about the Hall's past inhabitants, is on display.

Simon Temple, a local entrepreneur, built the hall in 1785. He opened shipyards in Jarrow and South Shields and, in 1803, the Alfred Pit, bringing large-scale coalmining to Jarrow. His extravagance - refurbishing Hylton Castle - was balanced by concern for local welfare. He built white miner's cottages by St Paul's Church and planned an educational institution and hospital.

In 1812, Simon Temple went bankrupt. He sold Jarrow Hall and his business interests to brothers Thomas and Robert Brown, from London. Thomas lived with his family in Jarrow Hall. Thomas and Robert were not regarded as popular employers - the mine was dangerous, and several explosions caused many deaths. Their refusal to pay for additional ventilation shafts to increase safety contributed to strike action by the miners in the 1830s.

Thomas's son and daughter-in-law, Thomas Drewett Brown and Isabella Chaytor, inherited the Hall in 1841. In 1851, Thomas abandoned the colliery which had flooded, and leased the shipyard to Charles Palmer, whose success contributed to the growth of Jarrow from a small village into an industrial town.

Thomas and Isabella's son, Drewett Ormonde Drewett, inherited the Hall in 1873 but moved away to avoid fumes from a nearby chemical works. He leased the Hall to his land agent Thomas Brady, who moved in with his family. Thomas Brady's wife, Jane Nicholson, died in Jarrow Hall shortly after the birth of their fifth child. Three years later he married Sarah Jane Wright, who lived in Jarrow Hall until her death in 1900. Thomas married again in 1905; his new wife, Kate Rident Oddy, was a friend of his eldest daughter. They left Jarrow Hall the following year, moving to nearby Cleadon.

Drewett Ormonde Drewett died childless in 1910, leaving the Hall to his uncle's grandson, Alfred Chaytor. Alfred never lived in Jarrow, but donated part of the Hall's estate to Jarrow Town Council as a public park in memory of Drewett Ormonde Drewett - this is Drewett's Park, which lies between Jarrow Hall and St Paul's Church. He also allowed the Hall to be used as a fever hospital.

In 1920, Alfred Chaytor sold Jarrow Hall to the Mercantile Dry Dock Company who leased it to the Shell Mex Company. From 1935, the Council used the Hall. It housed a Nursery School; later, during the war, it was an ammunition store, and people who lived in Jarrow at the time remember collecting their gas masks from the Hall. It then became a store for the gardener of Drewett's Park. By the 1970s Jarrow Hall had fallen into disrepair and was given to the St Paul's Development Trust who restored it and, in 1974, opened the Bede Monastery Museum, which displayed the finds from the then ongoing excavations of nearby St Paul's monastic site.

In 1999, Jarrow Hall was completely refurbished. It was part of the new £4 million museum development officially opened by Her Majesty the Queen in December 2000.