Hetton-le-Hole

Okay, so it wasn't St. Paul in Aspic. When I asked for more details, the bursar at St. Acca assured me that someone had been pulling my leg. He suggested that perhaps I was looking for the old St. Paul Priory that had disappeared at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s. It amazes me that people talk about looking for something that disappeared 450 years ago the way we might speak of looking for a restaurant that went out of business last year.

At any rate, he did give me directions to where the place was located in Hetton-le-Hole about seven miles away. It was a good two hour walk through the lanes, but walking is something people do here without much thought to it. And yes, the name of the place really is Hetton-le-Hole, to distinguish it from Hetton-on-the-Hill (now gone) and nearby Houghton-le-Spring. (And not, I was told firmly, to be confused with Hutton-le-Hole, a village about 6o miles away. Holes apparently were a popular distinguishing mark for naming places in days of yore.) I could find no trace of any priory, although there were the usual charming names for lanes and streets -- St. Bede's Close, St. Cuthbert's Close and my personal favorite, Fairy Street, which almost intersects with Chapel Street. Except for that out-of-place fairy, it does reek of religious houses.

The photo is not of the ruins of the priory -- there are none -- but of St. Nicholas Church. Built in 1901, it was closed because of structural problems in 2004. Two years later the building was almost destroyed by arson. What remains is supposedly being turned into flats. Which is to say, into apartments.