BYWELL (ST-PETER'S), a parish in the eastern
division of TINDALE ward, county of NORTHUMBERLAND,
comprising the chapelry of Whittonstall, and
the townships of East Acomb, Broomley, Espershields
with Millshields, High Fotherly, Heally, Newlands, Newton,
Newton Hall, and Stelling, and part of the township
of Bywell St. Andrew and St. Peter, and containing
1406 inhabitants, of which number, 174 are in the township
of Bywell St. Andrew and St. Peter, 8 miles (E.by S.)
from Hexham, on the northern bank of the Tyne. The
living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Northumberland,
and diocese of Durham, rated in the king's books
at £9-18.1., endowed with £600 parliamentary grant,
arid in the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of Durham.
There are meeting-houses in the parish for Baptists,
the Society of Friends, and Wesleyan Methodists.
Bywell was anciently the head of a barony, the ruins
of the' castle being still visible at a short distance from
Bywell Hall. The village is partly situated in the parish
of Bywell St. Andrew, and partly in that of Bywell
St. Peter, and was formerly noted for the manufacture
of saddlers' ironmongery, which was in a nourishing
state in the middle of the sixteenth century; it has
now wholly declined, but there are still some vestiges of
the works. In the river Tyne, which flows southward
of this parish, two stone piers of an ancient bridge are
still standing.