The links above are to a previously unpublished story by the North Shields novelist, Robert Westall (1929-1993). It takes place in Tynemouth during a Viking raid in the 8th century and is written in a style alluding to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
So many of us grew up captivated by the stories of Robert Westall, such as The Machine Gunners and The Watch House. As a boy from Tynemouth, these stories carried extra significance and wonder for me and my friends. For children like us, playing around Tynemouth’s idyllic and endlessly curious Priory, beaches and village, his stories directly fed our imaginations and quests for adventure.
Given that this site is dedicated to the history of Tynemouth and shares the same esoteric name of the story, it’s a privilege to be able to share it and to provide readers with the work of such a celebrated novelist, while preserving publicly this hitherto unknown story for future generations.
Robert Westall’s works are held by the Seven Stories National Centre for Children’s Books, based at the Ouseburn in Newcastle. Many thanks go to the contributors and curators of this fantastic resource for children, including Lindy McKinnel, Michael Geary and Georgia Glover of David Higham Associates. Thanks also goes to the Westall estate for granting me permission to publish this on Penbal.uk
Luan Hanratty
Enjoy.
Penbal 1 – 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)
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)