He also obtained the lease of the manors of Whickham and Gateshead, close to Newcastle, in 1578, and so gained much of his early wealth from the coal mines in the area and from the sale of this lease five years later.
From the Romans to the early English settlement to the Norman Conquest, agriculture, the Anglo-Scottish wars, the Reformation, the dawn of railway transportation, electoral reform, twentieth century war to suburbia, all of these great historical themes have influenced life in Whickham.
Whickham |
In 1539 he became vicar of Brancepeth in the same county, and about this time he resigned Whickham.
Further income was raised through a windmill below Jesmond (confirmed as the chapel’s property in 1408) and more land, in Whickham, left to the chapel in the will of Roger Thornton in 1429.
The tower was designed by the Owen Luder Partnership on behalf of Whickham Council who at the time controlled the Dunston area of Gateshead.
A number of the town's streets are named after places in Tyne and Wear, England, such as Whickham, Felling, Heworth and Jarrow.
He took the side of Henry IV against the rebel Earl of Northumberland (in whose cause Hotspur had fallen) and received on 28 July 1405 'in consideration of his services and of the losses he had sustained, and the charges he had borne in the late rebellion of the Earl of Northumberland, and others, the Foucher (Fugar) House in Whickham, as well as other estates in Cleveland.'