Corpus of Percy Bacon & Brothers

Prudhoe Hall (new) Chapel. Reredos. c1892.

Prudhoe Hall Chapel. Photo of c1870 showing the chapel built onto the north side of the hall.
The chapel apse is orientated towrds the north-west.

Prudhoe Hall Chapel. Photo of c1891/2 showing the new enlarged chapel reorientated north-east to south-west. The original aspidal chapel was rebuilt as the chancel of the new church.

Prudhoe Hall (new) Chapel. Reredos. c1892. PD Image.

Posted 11 May 2026.

In about 1870 a wealthy mine owner, Matthew Liddell, built a large house, Prudhoe Hall, to the south of the town. He was a staunch Catholic, and as there was no Catholic church in Prudhoe he created a place of worship.  One source suggests that this was a large room in the hall repurposed as a chapel. However, an image of c1870 on the Prudhoe History website shows a fine chapel with an apsidal sanctuary added on to a wing of the main house, so it is likely this was planned from the outset. Here services would be held for Liddell’s Roman Catholic mine workers and their families, many of whom were from Ireland, to save them the long journey to Hexham or Stella.¹ Following Liddell’s death in 1881, and as a result of the chapel becoming too small to accommodate the growing number of worshippers, his wife, Susannah decided to build a new church in the grounds of the hall. This was designed by the local architect, Archibald Matthias Dunn. It was opened on 16th July 1891. The old chapel was taken down and reused as the chancel of the new church. Susannah Liddell died in 1894 and the hall passed to her nephew John Liddell. In 1904 John sold the hall to Henry Swan (a Protestant) of the shipbuilding firm Swan Hunter, and rather than leave the church with the hall, paid for it to be dismantled stone by stone and re-erected a mile or so to the north and nearer to the town.² Our Lady and St Cuthbert is still in active use. When Henry Swan died in 1908 his heirs sold the hall to the Poor Law Guardians and it became a mental hopital, and saw considerable expansion over the next few decades. It fianlly closed as a hospital in 2012, and a great many of the buildings have been demolished to make way for a housing estate. The hall still stands, awaiting conversion into flats.

The only reference so far discovered to a Percy Bacon work in the new church built by Susannah Liddell appears in a "List of Recent Works by his firm in the Illustrated Guide to the Church Congress and Ecclesiastical Art Exhibition, Birmingham, published in 1893.³ This records the execution of a reredos for “Prudhoe Hall Chapel”, which was presumably commissioned by Susannah Liddell before her death in 1894. Photographs of circa 1893/4 and another on the Taking Stock website ⁴ would indicate that the reredos and retable were transferred to the relocated church, and that they are still in existence.

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1. Prudhoe Local History: From Family to Hospital & Place of Worship.
2. Photographs of Our Lady and St Cuthbert on the Taking Stock website.
3. Illustrated Guide to the Church Congress and Ecclesiastical Art Exhibition, Birmingham, published in 1893.
4. Photographs of Our Lady and St Cuthbert on the Taking Stock website includes the original reredos in the relocated church..