Hexham

So the Fens of East Anglia is about as far north as they get.

And when there are efforts to similarly re-found ancient monasteries, famous monasteries in the north of England like Whitby or Hexham that Bede had written about that were really, really sort of powerful and well endowed prior to the Viking Age.

they fall flat on their feet.

So there is no monastic renewal, really, sort of, say, north of the River Trent.

Polly Stevenson, the landlady's daughter, had married a young surgeon named William Hewson in 1770.

Hewson had come south from Hexham, in Northumberland, and had trained in London with the Hunter brothers.

He was brilliant.

He did important work on the blood and on the lymphatic system, the network of fine vessels that carries fluid around the body.

and when I was working on people like Wilfred and Bede and Cuthbert and Hilda, of course, she was the one that was the trigger for me about women in history.

When you're walking around Whitby, when you're on that cliff base, when you are walking into the crypt of Wilfred in Hexham and River, when you are, like we talked about objects, when you're... seeing the cuspid coffin and the pectoral cross that he wore around his neck.

These people aren't one-dimensional anymore.

They are complicated, difficult, problematic, and ever-changing.

I love it.

And this is the story of the Hexham Heads.

In February of 1972, although some accounts do say 71, but 72 is the date that seems most accurate based on the fact that it was in the newspapers that year.

At 3 Reid Avenue, and I've been to that house, I went to that house a few years ago to take some photos for a book I was writing.

11-year-old Colin Robson was weeding a corner in the back garden of that house in the market town of Hexham.

And his family had only moved into it two weeks earlier.

And as he was weeding, he struck something hard in the soil.

The Robsons who had the heads, it just was too much for them.