TEN years in the making, the Faith museum opens in Bishop Auckland today. It tells how, over the last 6,000 years, humans have tried to make sense of their place in the universe.
With 250 objects lent by 50 institutions, it tells a national, even international story, but it always has at least one eye on how local people fitted into that bigger picture.
So here are five items from the North East that you really must not miss when you visit Faith…
1. Gainford stone
THE Faith gallery opens with one of the great archaeological unknowns: a stone found in Gainford that about 6,000 years ago was decorated with cup and ring marks.
Deep concave depressions have been pecked out by someone with a stone. Concentric rings were etched around them, often with long lines, known as gutters, running between them.
Cup and ring stones have been found on every continent except Antartica, but most are in Europe, with the north of England and Scotland being especially rich.
“But we don’t know what they mean,” says Rosalyn Goulding, Project Curator of Faith. “It seems to have been some sort of practical carving, like a map of the heavens, and it seems to have been placed over a burial but whether that was its first usage is hard to know.
“These stones are often found in high places where you can look out over the horizon – perhaps they are a link to a world beyond.”
There are, literally, hundreds of theories about the stones.
Are they to do with burials – the Gainford stone, which is dated to between 4,000 and 2,500BC – was found in 1932 in the garden of a house on High Green when a drainage ditch was dug, and it appeared to be over a coffin?
Or are they to do with religious or magical ceremonies – some people suggest the round cups are the breasts of a mother goddess, or others that the cups were for a blood sacrifice by druids?
Are they an astronomical calendar, mapping the stars or predicting an eclipse – in Northumberland they can still be found on the top of hills perhaps chronicling the changing places of the stars?
Or are they messages, or musical notation, or a strange game or even are they connected to crop circles (whatever happened to crop circles that 30 years ago were everywhere with round shapes in cornfields purportedly bringing messages from outer space)?
Or were they simply a stonemason’s doodle?
2. The Corbridge Jupiter
Jupiter was the main Roman god, who oversaw all aspects of life and protected the Roman state. Military commanders would pay homage to him after winning a battle.
This handsome fellow, who dates from 200AD and was found in the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall at Corbridge, is holding a lightning bolt in his right hand.
“He was probably sitting in a niche in a temple where he would have been worshipped as the king of the gods,” says Rosalyn, “by Roman soldiers and local people – as long as you honoured their deities, the Romans were pretty tolerant of other people’s beliefs.”
3. Binchester ring
“This is a massive deal to us,” says Rosalyn. “It was found on the last day of a dig by a Durham university student.”
It comes from about 200AD and was found only a mile or so from Auckland Castle at the Binchester Roman settlement in 2014. It is on display for the first time, and is one of the earliest Christian artefacts ever to be found in Britain.
It is silver with a carnelian stone – a semi-precious stone – set in it. The stone has an anchor carved on it with a fish on either side. These were secret symbols of Christianity which, until Constantine was crowned emperor at York in 306AD, was an illegal faith. When Constantine, the first Christian emperor, allowed the faith into the open, the crucifix became its main symbol – although the anchor could be a crucifix in disguise.
“Evidence for Roman Christianity is rare in northern England, and evidence for pre-Constantinian Christianity is even rarer,” says archaeologist David Pott. “This is a rather splendid find!”
4. God Bottle
“IT’S what dads did in their shed on a Sunday afternoon,” says Faith senior curator Amina Wright. “It’s like a ship in a bottle but instead of the ship you have the instruments of the passion: the cross, the titulus, and a ladder to take the body down.”
Putting God in a bottle used to be quite an artform for working-class Catholics, particularly in the Durham coalfield, and this God Bottle is from Beamish museum’s large collection. The bottles are associated with the Irish labourers in the coalfield and also the Italian ice cream makers who set up cafes in the opening decades of the 20th Century – Dominic Panicca, who had a café in Bishop Auckland Market Place, is known to have had one.
“I suspect there was an article in a Catholic magazine showing people how to make them and it became a prayerful activity, perhaps in Lent,” says Amina.
The wooden items from the crucifixion – often including the hammer that knocked the nails into Jesus’s hands and the pincers that pulled them out, and the “holy lance” that was used to pierce his side – were skilfully squeezed into the bottle so they regained their form inside.
Perhaps they are displayed in “holy water”.
5. ARP Warden’s helmet
ON May 1, 1942, Alison and Esther Latham were Air Raid Precautions wardens on watch in St Giles’ Church in Durham. One of them was wearing the ARP tin helmet in the exhibition.
From the church, they watched as enemy aircraft came over the city – and, miraculously, the cathedral disappeared from sight.
Councillor Fred Foster, on duty at the Durham County ARP headquarters, wrote: “The night was clear with a full moon and it was almost daylight. The warning of enemy bombers approaching was received at 2.33am on May 1.
“When the enemy aircraft were quite close to the coast, there suddenly came over the city a dense mist.
“It was said by someone that a smokescreen had been drawn over the cathedral and castle. It was a ground mist because the moon could still be seen clearly in the sky.
“Telephone inquiries elicited that the fog was not widespread. For instance, Langley Moor on one side, Chester-le-Street to the north and Belmont to the east, had no sign of fog. It was confined to a radius of two-and-a-half miles of the city centre.
“The all clear was sounded at 4.02am when, strangely enough, the fog immediately dispersed.”
This miracle was attributed to St Cuthbert who often used the weather to save people’s lives, and it is known as “St Cuthbert’s curtain”.
However, in May 1945, George Greenwell, chief ARP warden in Durham, wrote to the Echo’s sister paper, the Durham Advertiser, saying the mist was a regular occurrence.
“Sir,” he wrote, “the wardens had watched that mist scores of times. It seemed to come off the river purposely to add its damp misery to our shivering vigils as we were outside keeping our weary watch at draughty street corners.”
He said: “On the night of this story, it could be clearly seen from Neville’s Cross that he (St Cuthbert) had carelessly left the upper half of the Lantern Tower sticking out of the top of his mist!”
The new Faith Museum in Bishop Auckland. Image: SARAH CALDECOTT
The Faith museum (above on the right) straddles the old and the new: part of it is in a new building which, in its simple form, is meant to echo the wooden Anglo-Saxon churches of the 6th or 7th centuries, and the first part is in the 13th Century Scotland Wing of Auckland Castle.
This wing was built around 1388 by Bishop Walter Skirlaw, but no one really understands where it got its name from: was it that Scottish prisoners were kept in its dungeons, or was it because, like Scotland, it was cold and remote from the rest of the palace?
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