Birtley Fell was a common in the manor of Chester, and was explicitly excluded from the 1794 act for the enclosure of commons in that manor. It was therefore never divided by act. The bishop of Durham was originally the lord of the manor, though he seems to have lost the ownership of the soil to the freeholders in ? C19.(1) The 18th century map (2) shows Birtley Fell stretching from the Wrekendyke (N) to Portobello (S), and hence including Eighton Banks which is normally part of Lamesley township. A narrow tongue stretched W to Birtley village to give access to the fell. The N end of the E boundary is formed by the Pelaw Main wagonway.

"The cropmark of a ring ditch with a central blob - ? barrow" showed NE of the A19/A1231 roundabout N of the River Wear on an air photo taken in 1971. It is not, at the moment, known whether it survives.

From at least the beginning of the 19th century a village existed east of St. Paul's church. The 1808 plan of Simon Temple's estate shows houses arranged round the south, east and north sides of the rough grassed area between the church and the Don (to the east), with another row along the edge of the road north from the bridge. The layout is slightly enlarged on the 1st ed. OS. In 1973/76 C.D. Morris excavated the row of one-room brick cottages which lay west of the end of the bridge, and found them to be late 18th century/early C19. The only medieval structures found were part of the priory. The area was subject to slum clearance in the early 1930s and, according to Morris, then became a chemical waste tip.

At the time of Bishop Walcher's grant in the late C11 Jarrow (Gyrvum) seems to have been a principal vill, with several appendages. It was, however, quite small - in 1345/6 there were 8 named tenants, one being the Master of the cell of Jarrow, paying rent for 9 tofts and 1 cottage. When Hutchinson visited it in 1782 he noted only "two or three mean cottages". Having said this, the actual site of the village to which the documentary references apply is unknown. Was it north of Jarrow Hall, i.e. SMR 1233, and/ or along the road west of the hall, and did it just dwindle away there? Or is it represented by the 18th century/C19 village east of the priory (SMR 1235), and could that be the result of a clearance when the hall was built? Dated C11th.

Excavations in 1989-90 north of Jarrow Hall revealed a "series of ditches and gullies associated with a metalled road with several buildings to either side and a short length of a hollow way, with cart ruts on its surface. Large amounts of 12th-15th century pottery, a bronze brooch and an openwork mount were recovered". Also found were C15 ridge and furrow, and a big ditch, perhaps the monastic enclosure ditch, which contained pottery of the C12-C14. These discoveries were interpreted as part of a village lying close to the medieval priory. Dated C12-15th.

Excavations in 1989-90 north of Jarrow Hall revealed "a series of ditches and gullies cut by post-Conquest features". They were considered to be of Early Medieval date, and were associated "with a fragment of C7-C8 pottery, and a human burial orientated north-south". Dated C7-C8.

It is extremely doubtful if this priory ever really existed. There is only one known reference, in 1329, to the Friars Preachers of Jarrow (spelt thus), when Edward III pardoned them the sum of 12 marks. Though one source believes that such a friary was meant by "the Friars Preachers of Jarue" (c. 1283), Cornford points out that in all other instances Jarue meant Yarm. It must, however, be said that Knowles and Hadcock accept both references as meaning Jarrow on the Tyne. Dated C13th.

Saxon site was reoccupied in c. 1072 by Aldwin etc. from Winchcombe. In 1083 they were removed to Durham, and Jarrow subsequently became a cell, or dependent house, of Durham until its dissolution in 1536. It rarely housed more than 2 monks during the Middle Ages. There are documentary references (in 1371) to church, chamber, hall, kitchen, pantry, bakehouse, brewhouse, larder, stable, byre, piggery, sheepfold, granary, smithy, dairy, grange. The ruins and excavation show a square cloister south of the church, with - in the first phase - an east range (chapterhouse, reredorter undercroft, etc) abutting the chancel of the church, and the south and west boundary walls of the cloister garth. The west range was never completed, and the south wall became the south, not the north, wall of the south range. In the C13 the east range became a domestic block, with hall, brewhouse etc. Dated C11-16th.

The church, which served both the cell and the parish of Jarrow, consisted of two (probably late) C7 churches linked by the lower part (? late C7) of what became a tower probably c1074. Ryder states the foundation as 682 by Benedict Biscop as part of a combined monastery with St Peter, Monkwearmouth. Most of the east church (present chancel) survives. The western basilica is thought to have consisted of a chancel, a nave with four porticus to north and south, and a west porch. It was demolished and replaced in 1782/83, and again in 1866. Part of the original nave north wall remains. The parish consisted of the vills given to Aldwin by Bishop Walcher in the late C11, viz. Preston (and ? Simonset), Monkton, Hedworth, Hebburn, Westoe and Harton, plus Willington and Wallsend north of the Tyne, the Heworths, Felling and Follingsby. The Victorian nave and north aisle are by George Gilbert Scott. Fittings and furnishings: Unique Saxon stained glass excavated and reinstated in south chancel window. C1500 bench and bench ends of choir stalls in north of chancel. Bede's chair probably dates to the 14th century. 15th century font. A petrological analysis of the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman undertaken in 2014 confirmed that the Roman fort of Arbeia supplied good quality building stone for the Monkwearmouth-Jarrow monasteries. However, the source of the Roman squared stone used for the 7th century Eastern Church at St. Paul's is less certain. The two key stone types used are present at Arbeia but not in the main areas. Bidwell's suggestion that the lost branch wall at Wallsend (Segedunum) may have provided the stone for St. Paul's is still plausible although Arbeia still seems to have been the source for the massive quantity of recycled Roman stone. Dated C11-16th.

Fragments of a slab, 13 x 20 in, originally about 13 x 23 in, with die 10 x 2 in, with a figure of Mercury: found in 1892 in the allotments at Philiphaugh west of the fort. To his right stands a cock on an altar, to his left a goat. D(eo) M(ercurio) (...) DIA / NE (... "To the god Mercury..." Dated C2.