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Superintendent’s Report
SWEARING IN CEREMONY
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Since January 2020, the pandemic prevented swearing in ceremonies, so we were delighted to be able to arrange two sessions to take place at the Guildhall on 1st November 2021, one at 11.30 am and a second at 2pm. Members of the Stewards Committee arrived early to find that, unfortunately, due to a serious incident on the quayside the previous night, the quayside was cordoned off preventing access to the Guildhall.
On speaking to the police, we were informed that the ceremonies would not be able to take place, so to prevent disappointment for those invited to be sworn in – some of whom had travelled some distance - we contacted Brenda Joyce at the Lord Mayors office to try and recover the situation.
The City Council did not disappoint and thanks to Brenda, her colleague Ian Humphries and the Lord Mayor Councillor Habib Rahman, both ceremonies were re-arranged to take place at 2pm in the Council Chamber at the Civic Centre. We then set about contacting all of those attending to inform of the new arrangements, we also explained to the police on duty at the Guildhall of our problem and of the new arrangements, and we are very grateful that they took it upon themselves to inform those arriving at the Guildhall of the situation and they re-directed them to the Civic Centre for 1.30pm. It was very pleasing to see all the prospective new Freemen and their families arrive at the Civic Centre and enter the Council Chamber to be sworn in by the Lord Mayor Councillor Habib Rahman, although his first swearing in of new Freemen of Newcastle he took to the task with his usual enthusiasm.
Lord Mayor, Cllr Habib Rahman with Chairman David Wilson
The newly sworn -in Freemen of the City of Newcastle are:
Sarah Mitchell daughter of Nigel Ward Butchers: Callum son of Janet Day Cordwainers:
Jacqueline Elaine Elliott daughter of John Charlton, House Carpenters: Janette Latimer daughter of John Charlton House Carpenter: Emma Imison daughter of Carol Whetstone, House Carpenters: John James son of Carol Whetstone House Carpenters: Kate Watkins daughter of Peter Aylmore Scriveners: Leigh Lawrenson daughter of June Hetherington Joiners: Lynn Hawdon daughter of June Hetherington Joiners: Lynn Sheriff daughter of Sheila Mary Chandler Joiners: Mark son of Sheila Mary Chandler Joiners: Claire Sheila daughter of Sheila Mary Chandler Joiners: Lauren Georgia daughter of Julie Margaret Dorward Shipwrights: Elizabeth Mary daughter of Roy Lishman Shipwrights: Andrew James son of Christine Anne Harmieson Smiths:
Brenda Joyce, Lord Mayor’s Office
MICHAELMAS GUILD
IAN MILLER’S BIRTHDAY
In 2020, we planned to celebrate Shipwright Ian Miller’s ninetieth birthday with a lunch in Whitley Bay. There would be twenty of us; Freemen and some partners; all people who knew Ian well and had participated in the visits to local attractions that he had arranged over the years. On 11th October, we held Michaelmas Guild in the Guildhall. This was Close Guild, confined to conducting Freemen business with no swearing-in. Company Stewards re-elected David Wilson as Chairman, Nick Atkinson as Vice Chairman and David Waugh as Honorary Treasurer. Jim Johnson, Keith Hall, Alan Bainbridge, Chris Atkinson, Phil Powell, Paul Anderson and Helen Birkett were re-elected to Committee.
Josephine Smith of the Shipwrights had the arrangements in place then of course we were thwarted by the pandemic. We assumed that it would be over by the autumn so re-booked for September 2020, coinciding with Ian and Freda’s Diamond Wedding Anniversary. But it wasn’t to be, so the lunch was re-arranged for April 2021. In April, restaurants still weren’t open, so it was delayed again, this time until 4 September 2021 when Ian was almost ninety-one and a half. It was also seventy years since he joined the RAF. We met at Trenchers Restaurant in the Spanish City and had a very pleasant lunch of fish and chips. It was really good to see everyone again and the event went very well. Thanks to Josephine for organising it and to everyone who turned up.
We would like to extend a very warm welcome to Barbara Nesbit (Shipwrights) who became a member of Stewards Committee
Michaelmas Guild began with opening prayers from Canon Clare McLaren
at Michaelmas Guild. Barbara is already a member of the Editorial Team for this magazine and is also a member of the Engagement Strategy Project Team, so she is well used to working with a number of Stewards Committee members and brings a wealth of experience to the table. We very much look forward to working with Barbara on future projects.
FINDING MY PAST
by Tom Charlton of The Hostmen’s Company.
About 1974, during a conversation with my father I found out that my grandfather was a Freemen of the City. My father had not joined as my grandfather was not a company keeper (which means he had become a Freeman but had not formally joined his Company) He believed mistakenly, this excluded him from becoming a Freeman. In January 1975 my father became a Freemen of the City, I was admitted in October 1975 and my two brothers were sworn in shortly afterwards. As we were prohibited from being Company Keepers, I joined the Gild of Freemen that acted as a social arm of the Freemen; the Gild met for talks on various topics including the history of the Freemen and held social evenings. I soon found myself getting involved and was invited to give a talk on the Freemens’ role of maintaining the peace in the City prior to the formation of the city police. This sparked off an interest in finding out how the Charltons became Freemen in the first instance. My research was mainly carried out using the records of the Freemen held at Moor Bank Lodge and at Newcastle Archives. I established that there have been 150 people with the surname Charlton admitted to the Freemen of the City and the companies from which they hailed were recorded. However, I do not know which of them became Company Keepers. The earliest recorded Charlton was in 1655 when John Charlton was admitted to the freelage and the latest person, Daniel Charlton was admitted in 2019. The Charltons have been represented in 18 different companies. I was able to sort out the list of Charltons into companies and members of the various families, but I could not find any evidence of how we became Freemen. I later subscribed to Ancestry UK and other family history sites and researched their records for many years. This proved successful in discovering my family tree but on several occasions, I hit stumbling blocks when I discovered the number of Charltons with the same names and similar dates of birth. Researching family trees can become very frustrating and I was seriously considering giving up my research, however, three things happened; number one was my wife pestering me about concentrating my research solely on the Charlton male family line and ignoring the female line, thereby missing out on at least 50% of the information available. You can only ignore a wife for so long, so I opened the research process as instructed! The second was an offer of help from a lady from Australia who originated from Eachwick, Ponteland, a distant cousin who had completed 35 years research into her family tree and the third event was taking a DNA test that proved my origins were in Newcastle, Northumberland, and the Scottish Borders and most of my links to the past were female relatives who had also taken DNA tests. The results really joined up the family tree. Another unforeseen link presented itself when I offered to do some research into the History of the Hostmen’s Company of which I have been a member since 1984. For the past three years I have been compiling a history resource base that included biographies of the founders and prominent members since 1600 AD. I hope to expand it to all the current members and to their ancestors and create a company “Who’s Who” directory for members and other researchers. When I joined the Hostmen, I believed that I was the first Charlton to join the company and that there had never been any relatives of mine in that company. By researching my maternal line and the history of the Hostmen I discovered I was wrong, in fact, to my amazement, many of my ancestors turned out to be prominent members of the Freemen, the Government of Newcastle upon Tyne, Members of Parliament and were the founders and developers of the Hostmen’s Company, thereby the developers of the Great Northern Coalfield and the wealth that was brought to the North-East by the coal industry and later the railways. I am sure you will recognise some of the following surnames: Anderson, Armorer, Bowes, Cresswell, Delaval, Dent, Errington, Fenwick, Grey, Haggerston, Jenison, Lambton, Lumley, Manners, Marley, Mitford, Ogle, Ridley, Selby, Shafto, Surtees, Swinburne, Tempest, Thornton, Widdrington. Outstanding members included Sir John Marley (16th GGFather), Sir George Selby (13th GGFather) Sir Henry Anderson (13th GGFather) Sir Christopher Ridley (15th GGFather) and Roger Thornton, (18th GGFather) the benefactor who built the first Guildhall and the Maison Dieu. An additional bonus is that my DNA shows my northern heritage over the past 500 years and beyond, but that is another story for the future… The most amazing fact is that descendants of Edward Errington (b.1416 -15th GGFather), two brothers Sir Anthony Errington of Denton (12th GG Uncle), married Elizabeth Dent, and George Errington of Denton, (12th. GGFather), married Barbara Shafto. They both had families and my wife is descended from Sir Anthony and I am descended from George. I still do not know how The Charltons became Freemen but In the words of Dame Judy Dench on the TV programme, “Who Do You Think You Are?” “I started off knowing very little about my mother’s side of the family, what a journey it turned out to be”
Sir John Marley, responsible for the defence of the city against the Scots and Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians, is my ancestor
