Fast Search

You are Here: Home / Newcastle, Bailiffgate (Baylygate)

Tyne and Wear HER(6637): Newcastle, Bailiffgate (Baylygate) - Details

Back to Search Results


6637


Newcastle


Newcastle, Bailiffgate (Baylygate)


Newcastle


NZ26SW


Transport


Road Transport Site


Road


Medieval


C14


Documentary Evidence


Bourne records that on the west side of the castle there was a street called Bailiff Gate. The street ran from Tuthill Street (now Clavering Place) to the castle. It got its name apparently from the felons of Northumberland being brought along the street by the County Bailiffs. They were led into the town through the White Friar Gate, down Bailiff Gate and into the Castle via the postern gate. Bourne goes on to recall that in the year 1649 there was a survey of Bailiff Gate (but this was annulled by a document of 25th April 1650). The southern side of Bailiff Gate was destroyed to make way for the railway - see Holmes' drawing of 1882. Baylygate (1354), le Baillyegate (1373), le Baille gatte (1392), Baillygatte (1392), Baylygate (1465) and Bayly Highgate (1498). Short land plots that respect the medieval street of Baylygate can be seen on Oliver's map of 1830. These may reflect medieval units of land tenure. Harbottle and Clack suggest that Baylygate represented an attempt at a formal layout contemporary with the Castle, which never developed. They compared it with Alnwick, where lodgings for retainers and tenants of the barony were located on the Bailiffgate, which led westwards from the principal gate to Alnwick Castle. Newcastle's Baylygate may similarly have been a settlement closely related to the military and administrative functions of the Castle. Bailiffgate may have ended where Cunstable-galgarthe began. This was the piece of land granted to the Friars of the Sack in 1266 by Henry III. Brand suggested that this might be Stable Garth. Graves and Heslop suggest that the houses of the barons who owed castle-guard might have been located on Baylygate rather than in the Castle.


2491


6387


NZ24916387



H. Bourne, 1736, The History of Newcastle upon Tyne; B. Harbottle and P. Clack, 1976, Newcastle Upon Tyne - Archaeology and Development in D.W. Harding (ed), 1976, Archaeology in the North; B Harbottle, 1974, Excavation and survey in Newcastle upon Tyne 1972-1973, Archaeologia Aeliana, Sries 5, Vol 2, p 59; J Brand, 1789, The History and Antiquities of the Town and County of Newcastle upon Tyne, Vol 1, pp 58-9 and 160; MRG Conzen, 1960, Alnwick, Northumberland: A Study in Town-plan Analysis, Inst Brit Geogr, Pub 27, pp 21-3; B Harbottle, 1968, Excavations at the Carmelite friary, Newcastle upon Tyne 1965-1967, Archaeologia Aeliana, Series 4, Vol 46, p 167; W Grey, 1649, Chorographia, pp 11-12; CP Graves and DH Heslop, 2013, Newcastle upon Tyne - the Eye of the North, An Archaeological Assessment, pp 110-111

Back to Search Results