John Hodgson was an antiquarian famed for his influential county history of Northumberland and for being one of the founders of the ‘Sunderland Society’, a committee established in 1813 that sought to improve safety in coal mines (see RCIN 1090409). Born in Westmorland, he moved to Sedgefield in County Durham in 1801 to work as a schoolmaster. There, he became acquainted to the rector George Barrington, nephew of the Bishop of Durham, Shute Barrington, who supported his career and eventual entry into the Church. Hodgson became curate of Lanchester in 1804, moving to Gateshead in 1806 and finally in 1808, he received the living of Jarrow with Heworth. Jarrow had been the home of the Venerable Bede and, along with its sister monastery at Monkwearmouth, was a major centre of learning in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria.
The heritage associated with this new parish suited Hodgson’s interests, sparked during his time at Lanchester, and from 1810, he was commissioned to write the account of Northumberland for the series Beauties of England and Wales (see RCIN 1140784). The account was regarded as one of the best of the series and in 1817, Hodgson set about writing a fuller history of the county.
The history was to be extensive and in 1819, he announced it would consist of six volumes divided into parts. The first volume would describe the general history of Northumberland with the next three focusing on towns and parishes and the final two detailing the history of the Borders. Part three of the first volume, containing records and accounts of the county at large, was published in 1820, but the next book in the series would not appear until 1827. Further volumes were published until 1840 and Hodgson was still conducting research for additional books in the series at his death in 1845.
The work initially met with little success and, as with many other niche projects of the period, Hodgson incurred a loss with each book. Luckily, as interest in county histories began to flourish in the mid-nineteenth century, the history became very influential. He left over 100 volumes of notes at his death and in 1858, John Hodgson-Hinde used these to publish an introduction to the work describing the general history of the county (RCIN 1140013). In the 1890s, the Northumberland County History Committee was set up to finish the history, covering places that Hodgson’s published works had missed. This history was published in 15 volumes between 1893 and 1940 and, as a result of its comprehensive scholarship, Northumberland remains the only county not to have its history published by the Victoria County History (see RCINs 1140049-63).