| St Mary's RC Church,
Cullercoats |
Location
St Mary's is located on Farringdon Road Cullercoats, off the
Broadway leading to Whitley Bay.
Map
Mass Times:
see This Week (left navigation
bar) for full information
Facilities
One of the most welcome facilities at St Mary's is the Blessed
Sacrament Chapel, which is described in full elsewhere on this
website.
Another is St Mary's Church Hall, which has recently been redecorated
and refurbished. It is well used by various groups in the Parish,
and also for Parish based activities ie meetings, courses, shared
suppers etc. It is available for hire for birthday parties and
other private celebrations at very reasonable cost. Hire includes
the full use of the very well equipped kitchen, and it is a
very popular venue with parishioners.
History
St Mary's School was opened after the Easter holidays in 1964.
Up to that time our children had been bussed to St Cuthbert's.
It had accommodation for 150 children, and comprised a hall,
five classrooms, staff room, toilets etc all centred around
an enclosed court. Cost: £36,647!!
Father Fee, Parish Priest at the time, fought very hard to
have the building of a school approved. He had to collect the
names and addresses of all children likely to come to the school.
When he went to London to fight his case he was still a few
names short. "These I will leave to Our Lady to provide"
he told parishioners before he went. How well his prayers were
answered. 165 children were enrolled on the opening day. Sadly
Father Fee died just before the opening, after 24 years service
as Parish Priest.
By Easter 1965 the school had 205 children and permission was
obtained to increase accommodation by 80, extending the hall
and adding two more classrooms and toilets. The extension was
opened in 1967 and a second extension was built in 1971, adding
a classroom and group room.
In 1996 a Nursery Class was added. The Nursery Class has part-time
places for 52 children.
This year, 2003, has seen extensions to five of the school classrooms
to house and store equipment, and the school now has 220 pupils.
So, after the building of the original School in 1964 St Mary's
has grown to be what is now a happy, progressive and efficient
school.
In 1970 St Mary's Church was opened. (From autumn 1965 Sunday
Mass had been celebrated in the School Hall.) Fr Scarr of Whitley
Bay kindly donated £10,000 towards the cost, at the same
time moving his parish boundary to the old Tynemouth Borough
boundary giving our parish 400 more parishioners.
In 1998 the Presbytery was built on the site, prior to the
arrival of Canon Cunningham, who that year succeeded Father
Aidan Pickering as Parish Priest. Father Pickering continued
to live in Tynemouth and remained active in the Parish, celebrating
Mass at St Oswin's up to his death in January 2007 aged 90.
(In a sense, St Mary's School has long years of history behind
it - 1800 in fact, because our playing field is the site of
an interesting native settlement. It was first observed during
aerial reconnaissance and excavations revealed it to be a rectangular
enclosure containing a cobbled yard and a small round hut, both
in the South West corner of the playing field. Many such enclosures,
which are not military but agricultural camps, have been found
in North Tynedale and Redesdale; the interest of the Marden
find is that it shows the extension of the Romano-British occupation
to include the coastal plain. The halves of the top-stones of
two querns (hand mills) and a rim fragment from a jar suggest
the date A.D.140-210 (cf. Archaeologia Aeliana 4th series vol.xii)
It is thanks to Father Pickering that we are able to present
such an informative history.
