Built into the surrounding walls of St Andrew’s Church in Corbridge are a couple of shuttered stone lancets and while you think they are just old boarded-up windows, they are part of a medieval cooking system called the King’s Oven.
In 1200, King John saw fit to grant Corbridge the title of a royal borough due to its prime positioning at a junction of two roads, making it an up-and-coming place of commerce.
The King’s Oven (Image: Fabulous North) Living under a system of medieval land ownership where land was held by the King in exchange for economic or agricultural services, villagers were granted the same privileges as the people of Newcastle, Rothbury and Newburn, where tenants paid rent to their King for the right to live and work there.
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Despite the King’s wealth, people lived in relatively humble homes with minimal means of cooking. Tenants would have had to have their corn ground in mills belonging to the King, of which there were a handful close by along the Cor Burn and one a mile away at Dilston. People then had to pay for the privilege of baking their bread in communal ovens also owned by the king.
The plaque explaining the history (Image: Fabulous North) In 1310, this bread oven was built and introduced to the people of Corbridge. Made from bricks and faced with stone, the oven would be fired with wood. The bricks enabled the ovens to reach and maintain fierce heat, enabling meat to be cooked in the oven after the initial baking of bread. The ashes would be raked across the base of the oven and the meat left to tenderise.
One oven master would oversee the whole process, but peasants would come from around the vicinity carrying home-kneaded dough on wooden boards. Having proved at home by the warmth of the fire, they’d rush through the lanes of Corbridge before the cool of the air compromised the cooking in the King’s Oven.
Each loaf would be crissed and crossed and marked in a way making it specific to the baker, so upon return, you received your own loaf and not your neighbour’s substandard heavy offering!
Homes were built largely of timber and clay, and roofed with reeds, so the fire risk was great. The communal nature of the King’s Oven would have been a welcome addition to community life as people would have been oven-less and would have gathered around the centrally placed location in the village, socialising, catching up on news and waiting for their loaves.
It was used for more than 500 years until the 19th century when people may have popped in their roast before church on a Sunday.
With the arrival of smaller, safer ovens for people’s homes, and the advent of ready-baked bread, the communal over has cooled its coals over the last two hundred years.
The vicar’s pele, King’s Oven and hearse house are all Grade II listed buildings.
Source – King’s Oven In Corbridge – Fabulous North.