New Neighbours and Old: Harriet Martineau & Charlotte Bronte

The Martineau Guesthouse on Front Street, Tynemouth - Harriet Martineau stayed here from 1840 to 1845, her extensive travels interrupted by the incapacitating pain of an ovarian cyst. From her rooms at the back of the building she shared my new view across the river, watching through her telescope 'lovers and friends taking their breezy walks', or the Northern Lights flickering between the stars.

'The Hour and the Man', the story of Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint L'Ouverture, was written here. Along with Martineau's other writings on slavery the novel is credited with swaying popular opinion in Britain in favour of abolitionism.

In 1845 she experimented with mesmerism, a controversial 'alternative therapy' similar to hypnotism.  A nine year reprieve from the pain of her illness resulted, along with a permanent rift with her brother-in-law, the famous Newcastle doctor, Thomas Michael Greenhow. Martineau moved to Ambleside in the Lake District and continued her travels in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, developing the observational methodology which was to become an essential part of modern sociology. During this period she also published 'Household Education', parts of which Charlotte Bronte, still writing to Martineau using her pseudonym 'Currer Bell', said were 'like meeting her own fetch'. (It was rumoured that Martineau was 'the real Currer Bell' during the speculation following the publication of Jane Eyre.)

First Look Inside Tynemouth Priory and Castle

In the sunny early autumn we ignored the ruins high above the bay, though every day at 4 the shadow of the castle walls began to creep over the beach, sending us home too early. This week the weather turned, wet and blustery, and we went up to see what we could see.

The first known written description of the priory is in a monk's letter, written, in Latin, in the mid 14th century:

'Our house is confined to the top of a high rock and is surrounded by sea on every side but one. Here is the approach to the monastery through a gate cut out of the rock so narrow that a cart can hardly pass through. Day and night the waves break and roar and undermine the cliff. Thick sea frets roll in wrapping everything in gloom. Dim eyes, hoarse voices, sore throats are the consequences...Shipwrecks are frequent. It is a great pity to see the numbed crew, whom no power on earth can save, whose vessel, mast swaying and timbers parted, rushes upon the rock or reef. No ringdove or nightingale is here, only grey birds which nest in rocks and greedily prey upon the drowned, whose screaming cry is a token of a coming storm... in the Spring the sea air blights the blossoms of the stunted fruit trees, so that you are lucky to find a wizened apple, though it will set your teeth on edge if you try to eat it. See to it, dear brother, that you do not come to this comfortless place. But the church is of wondrous beauty. It has been lately completed. Within it lies the body of the blessed martyr, Oswine, in a silver shrine, magnificently decorated with gold and jewels. He protects the murderers, thieves and seditious persons who fly to him and commutes their punishment to exile. He heals those whom no doctor can cure. The martyr's protection and the church's beauty furnish us with a bond of unity. We are well off for food, thanks to the abundant supply of fish of which we tire.'

Heck. Seemed bleaker still with only some broken walls remaining and the 20th century gun batteries beyond but as we battled through the wind and rain began again we saw an open door, with a roof above it - the Percy Chantry, all quiet and relative warmth within, coloured light from stained glass windows flickering over golden stone and red, blue, golden floor tiles. Overhead carved bosses in the vaulting, angels, roses, saints and their emblems and the ceiling lapis blue, painted with stars.

A 15th century chantry, it was long thought to be the Lady Chapel of the church described in the letter above, housing the tomb of St Oswine, one of the three kings supposed to be buried at the priory. In fact the Lady Chapel was destroyed at the dissolution of the monasteries and only the foundation of the south wall remains. The chantry is the only building to remain intact, renovated in 1850 by, guess who, John Dobson, who added a stone altar, Minton floor tiles and the starry heaven on the vault.