ACOUSTIC TRIANGLE 2005 TOUR
STOCKTON-ON-TEES - The Parish Church, High Street.
A Stockton Riverside Festival event.
"The Parish Church, dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, is situated in
High Street, and is a large unattractive-looking structure of brick,
with stone windows and doorways, in a style approaching the Italian. It
is 150 feet in length by 67 in breadth, with a tower at the west end,
containing a clock and a peal of six bells. The entrance is under the
tower. On the south side of the site occupied by the present church,
there formerly stood a chapel-of-ease, under the parish church of
Norton; it was dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, and contained a
free chantry, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and was endowed with four
oxgangs of land and four borough houses, which, in 1588, when the
chantry was dissolved, were of the annual value of £5, 3s. 6d. The
ruinous state of the chapel, and the increased population of the town,
at length rendered the erection of a new church necessary; and an Act of
Parliament was obtained in 1711, for separating Stockton from the parish
of Norton, and for making the present church parochial; the first stone
of which was laid on the 5th June 1710, and the edifice was consecrated
by Bishop Crewe, on the 21st August 1712, being then completed at a cost
of about £1600. The living is a vicarage." [From History,
Topography and Directory of Durham, Whellan, London, 1894]
Special thanks to Rev. Andrew Featherstone and to Paul Burns.
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