Gateshead, Oakwellgate, King John's Palace

HER Number:
5589

District:
Gateshead

Site Name:
Gateshead, Oakwellgate, King John's Palace

Place:
Gateshead

Map Sheet:
NZ26SE

Class:
Domestic

Site Type: Broad:
Dwelling

Site Type: Specific:
House

General Period:
Post Medieval

Specific Period:
C16

Form of Evidence:
Documentary Evidence

Description:
Shown on Thompson's plan of 1746. Large building at the south end of Oakwellgate, known as Palace Place when sold in 1586. Lumley (1932) says the house stood at the southern extremity of Oakwellgate until quite recently. "A dismal old stone house, black with smoke and age and having a crudely carved head projecting from one of the gable ends" [now in the Public Library]. "This miserable looking place was known as King John's Palace, owing to the traditional belief that this monarch slept here while visiting Newcastle". Boyle dismissed this tradition, and said that the house may have been on the site of an old manor-house of the Bishop, as it adjoined the episcopal domains and probably owed its name to the fact that it was once called "Palace Green". In the seventeenth century it was part of the residence of the Gateshead Coles.

Easting:
2564

Northing:
6346

Grid Reference:
NZ25646346

Lats/Lons:

Sources:
<< HER 5589 >> Isaac Thompson, 1746, Plan of Gateshead; D. Lumley, 1932, The Story of Gateshead Town, p 54