Tynemouth Should Celebrate St Oswin’s Day
12th March 2025
Every year the summer holidays are kicked off in July with the Mouth of the Tyne Festival, which has become a real success, with Front Street being closed off and an influx of visitors from near and far.
But what about a party to cap off the end of the summer with the observance of Oswin’s feast day which lands on 20th August?
It would be a family fun day but also something the bars and retailers could get on board with and the Priory could swing open its doors to host a pageant.
Feast days can be a big deal, St Patrick’s being the biggest of all. Celebrating the ancient founding of a place provides a boost to the community and a bonus to the economy. Why shouldn’t the Village capitalise on something novel like this that puts Tynemouth on the map and puts a smile on people’s faces?
Who Was Saint Oswin?
Oswin was a Northumbrian king who was betrayed and slain in 651 at the behest of his cousin Oswy, after his one remaining ally, Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne, had died. Oswin was buried in the first church on Penbal Crag in 721, but after the turmoil that followed the Viking invasions, his bones were considered lost, until rediscovered in 1065 after the refounding of the Priory. Throughout medieval times pilgrims came to Tynemouth from all over, even from the continent, to worship at his shrine.
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No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
