There has been a church on the site for over 1300 years since Etheldreda, Queen of Northumbria, made a grant of lands to St Wilfrid, Bishop of York, c.674 AD.

Of Wilfrid's Benedictine abbey, which was constructed almost entirely of material salvaged from nearby Roman ruins, the Saxon crypt still remains; as does a frith stool, a 7th/8th century cathedra or throne.

In the year 875 Halfdan Ragnarsson the Dane ravaged the whole of Tyneside, and Hexham Church was plundered and burnt to the ground.

The choir, north and south transepts and the cloisters, where canons studied and meditated, date from this period.

[3] The Abbey was largely rebuilt during the incumbency of Canon Edwin Sidney Savage, who came to Hexham in 1898 and remained until 1919.

This mammoth project involved re-building the nave, whose walls incorporate some of the earlier church, and the restoration of the choir.

It consists of a chapel with an ante-chapel at the west end, two side passages with enlarged vestibules and three stairways.

Translated, this means The Emperor Lucius Septimus Severus Pius Pertinax and his sons the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius Augustus and Publius Geta Caesar the cohorts and detachments made this under the command of …..

York diocese was then divided in 678 by Theodore of Tarsus, forming a bishopric for the country between the Rivers Aln and Tees, with a seat at Hexham and/or Lindisfarne.

A period of disorder followed the Danish devastations, after which Hexham monastery was reconstituted in 1113 as a priory of Austin Canons, which flourished until its dissolution under Henry VIII.

The slab is thought to have once stood near the fort of Coria near Corbridge and was brought here as a building stone in the 12th century.

[5] In 1833 a hoard of approximately 8000 stycas were discovered whilst a grave was being dug in the Campey Hill area close to the north transept.