Oak Table
Generations of students will remember seeing the old oak table in RGS at home on the stage of the Main Hall. We believe this table may pre-date the school itself!
A far less noble use was also made of the table in school. There are reports that it was used as a ‘flogging table’ when corporal punishment was standard practice in schools across the country.
Hundreds of students have carved their names into the wood, between probably 1839 to around 1920. ON Bryan Stevens collated a list of the names back in 1995, including the sons of Headmasters’ James Snape and S.C. Logan!
During our time at Rye Hill, ON Lionel Markham remembered it being used as a serving-table, calling it the “Elizabethan Table”. This use likely continued in our early years at Eskdale Terrace, as one of the earliest photographs we hold of the building shows the table in the first Dining Hall.
Photograph of the RGS Dining Hall, 1910s. [RGS Archives, ref No: 149] ©RGS Newcastle
Historian R.J. Charlton wrote about it in his 1895 history of Newcastle, where he dates some parts of the design of the table to the reign of Henry VI (reigned 1421-1471). Certainly the table was a well-known feature of the school when we were located on the Westgate Road.
It used to live in the ‘election room’ in the Hospital buildings, where the Mayor of Newcastle was elected. On the day of the election it had a starring role, as the retiring Mayor would break his 'rod of office' over it before the new Mayor could take up their office. We can perhaps state with a fair degree of confidence that every single Mayor of Newcastle between 1607 and 1844 would have been elected at this very table.
