North Gosforth Chapel Traditional Cache
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Nano cache with log only. You will need a pen or pencil.
If you didn’t already know that it was there you might be surprised to find the remains of a medieval chapel near to the cache location in the middle of the 1950s housing estate.
Little is known about the history of this chapel which consists of a few courses of stones showing the layout of a small nave with a doorway in the south wall and chancel with a doorway in the north wall. A Roman altar was found built into the stonework raising speculation that the site may well have Roman connections. The earliest reference to the chapel is in 1296 when mention is made in the lay subsidy rolls of “Robert the Chaplain”. In a 1601 visitation it was reported that the churchwardens “… have not used the perambulation these two years past; they have no register book these seven years, nor the Queen’s injunctions; their Bible is torne ...”. The chapel is also mentioned in a survey of church livings in 1650, the first year of the Commonwealth.
By 1663 the chapel is reported to have been derelict for two years, possibly as a result of a fire, and does not appear to have ever been restored although the graveyard probably continued to be used until the early 18th century, at least. In 1879, Richard Welford in his “A History of the Parish of Gosforth” mentions that, at that time, there were the remains of about a dozen tombstones and records some of the inscriptions. Although one or two of the gravestones still survive the inscriptions are almost completely illegible.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Obggbz bs gur cbfg?
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