Main Content
Summary
Author: Dodd, Rev. John
Title: The history of the church of Chester-le-Street.
Publication: Newcastle upon Tyne, Robert Robinson (and Chester-le-Street, J.C,Farrow) 1856.
Price: Sold
Reference: 10005
Full Description
Large 4to. xii + 52pp, incl decorative title leaf printed in red, blue and black, tinted litho frontispiece, 1 engraved plate, 1 litho plate, 6 woodcut text ills, also initial letters in red or red and blue, and double ruled borders in red to each page. Publisher’s cloth, neatly rebacked. An old minor crease mark across plates and text leaves.
A handsomely printed history and description of the mediaeval parish church of Chester-le-Street, co.Durham, published locally in Newcastle upon Tyne with a list of subscribers including this cataloguer’s great-great-great grandfather. The church is notable for its spire and for no fewer than fourteen altar tombs of members of the Lumley family, some transferred here from Durham Cathedral in the 1590s. It is interesting to see from the interior view of the church which is the volume’s frontispiece that in 1856 it still retained its eighteenth century box pews ; the dominant local magnate was the Earl of Durham, whose family pew occupied the middle of the north aisle, and it may be conjectured that the well-known political radicalism of the Earl’s family did not extend to questions of worship. Scarce in the book trade today.