Professor Rosemary Cramp (1929-2023)

Our founder and first President, Dame Rosemary Cramp, died   on 27 April, a few days short of her ninety-fourth birthday. Increasing frailty had prevented her from playing an active  part in the Friends’ activities in recent years but she never ceased to take an intense interest in its affairs.  Not only would the Friends not have come into being without Rosemary, but without her drive and vision there would have been no Bede Museum, no Jarrow Hall and, before that, none of the excavations which revealed the internationally famous collection of finds which is now housed and displayed there.  Few things gave Rosemary greater pleasure than the realization of her long-standing ambition to establish a museum dedicated to promoting public understanding of the astonishing achievements of Bede and his monastery and to exploring the cultural context within early medieval Northumbria which produced and nurtured them. Even when well into her eighties she successfully led the Friends’ campaign to procure a full-scale copy of the Codex Amiatinus, currently on loan to the Museum.

As we mourn our loss and give thanks for her life we should also remember that the Friends has a particular responsibility to consider how this aspect of her remarkable legacy should best be carried forward for the benefit of succeeding generations.

Eric Cambridge (Chair, FOWB)