The new Museum was inaugurated in 1993 as “Bede’s World”, and was managed by Bede’s World Charitable Trust. It included an exhibition showcasing the connections of Jarrow Hall with coaling and shipbuilding. The farm was named Gyrwe, which corresponds to one of the medieval versions of Jarrow’s name. In April 1994, a group of Volunteers from the local community, academics, and staff members of the Museum inaugurated the experimental (re)construction of early medieval buildings in the Museum’s farm.
The narrative of the Museum was focused on the importance that the North-East and its resources had in the time of Bede, when the area was included in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria.
This was happening when, despite the richness of Jarrow’s tangible and intangible resources, its community was facing enormous difficulties due to choices that were generally not depending on local authorities and institutions.
The time of Bede is just one portion of the meaningful and complex history of Jarrow and its inhabitants. Today, it is important to remember the extent to which the Museum is interwoven to the industrial and post-industrial history of Jarrow as much as to its early medieval and medieval past. Our Volunteers Team, Temple’s Hall, the findings from St Paul’s monastery, Bede’s literary heritage, or Gyrwe‘s experimental farm in an area moulded by industrial activities, are all fragments of the extraordinary history of this landscape, its resources, and the people who inhabited it.
Virtual Museum | Jarrow and its Museum | The excavations at St Pauls and the new local Museum | The monastery and the medieval landscape | Jarrow and the Industrial Revolution | Modern Jarrow | Jarrow in the first half of the 20th century | Jarrow across the 20th century | Jarrow in the late 20th century | The new local Museum and Gyrwe’s farm
