A SKETCH OF OLD NEWCASTLE. 



BY THE REV. J. S. BROAD, M.A. 



I AM afraid there is nothing of very special or romantic 

 interest in the history of our old borough, and certainly 

 our antiquarian relics are but few. Still, it is an old 

 borough, and it has a connection with several individuals 

 of note, who figure in the annals of our country. Hence 

 it is not without interest to those, at least, whose lives 

 and labours have been identified with it. There is some- 

 thing tantalizing in the name Newcastle : it should now be, 

 as far as age is concerned, Oldcastle, or, still more cor- 

 rectly, No-castle. Like its more gigantic namesake in North- 

 umberland, whose grand, massive keep, begrimed with the 

 marks of time and the still more recent smoke of our 

 manufacturing age, carries us back some hundreds of years, 

 our Newcastle presupposes an older castle, but the old 

 and the new are alike among the things that were. I need 

 not tell you that the only trace of the castle at present 

 is its site. One of our townsmen (Mr. Thomas Ward) 

 says " traces of an underground room a small square 

 chamber of hewn stone on the Castle Hill or mound 

 were visible in (and possibly after) 1805, and were seen 

 by me." If this was part of the castle, it has disappeared 

 and we are left to conjecture what kind of a structure 

 our stronghold was from a quaint description of it which 

 I shall presently read, and perhaps from the rude sketch 

 forming the borough arms and seal. But what is the 



