A place by the sea

A community by the sea

One monastery in two places – Wearmouth-Jarrow was certainly one community, but the two sites are seven miles apart as the crow flies; the modern Bede's Way walking route, which links the two sites via local features, is 12 miles long. A car would make the journey in twenty minutes or so. To Bede and his brethren, though, it would take hours on foot – and still longer if there were goods to carry on an ox-cart. Overland, a traveller could cover fifteen miles in a day. A rowing boat could cover 40 miles – a sailing ship, 80. Long journeys that needed speed meant one thing: a sea voyage. Up and down the North Sea Coast, there was a network of Northumbrian monasteries at places such as Coldingham, Lindisfarne, Tynemouth, Hartlepool and Whitby; Bede communicated with the monks of these monasteries and the North Sea Coast was an important travel route.

A port for provisions…

While most communities could get by on what they produced, they still needed goods from outside – quite apart from what was needed to create and equip the great monastic buildings. So ships sailing into the mouths of the Rivers Tyne and Wear would bring wine, oil and fabrics, among other things that the monks could not make or grow themselves. Amongst Bede's deathbed treasures were pepper and incense, brought in from abroad, and finds from the monastery, such as rare green porphyry, imported pottery, glass vessels and a small ivory container, must have been brought from far afield.

And cultural exchange

At the same time, the monks and their community produced things for which there was a demand in Europe. By the mid-eighth century, Wearmouth-Jarrow was overwhelmed by demand for Bede's works from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and Europe – so much so that the scriptorium struggled to keep up, and had to adopt a quicker, more space-saving script to speed up the copying process.