Short biography (updated December 2019)
Robert Gilchrist was born on 8 September 1797 in St Mary’s Parish, Gateshead. He was raised by his mother, Mary, nee Green (1763 - 1842) and his father, John Gilchrist, (1767 - 1829), a sailmaker with premises on Newcastle’s quayside. There is little detail of Robert’s formal schooling, though in 1811, he was apprenticed to William Whittaker Spence, sailmaker, who was a nephew of the English radical Thomas Spence. In 1813 William Spence was made a Lieutenant in the Southern Regiment of Northumberland Local Militia and in 1817 it is reported that Robert Gilchrist, being a freeman, was balloted to join his mentor, though he found a substitute in the figure of Matthew Winship, a shoemaker.
Robert started writing poetry from a young age and found support in a thriving local literary community of poets, writers and balladeers. He gained the friendship of Thomas Thompson (1773-1816), who was considered to be one of the finest and earliest Newcastle poets. Gilchrist was held in high regard. In 1818, at the age of 21, he received a silver medal from his companions in appreciation of his poetry. His special place amongst the community was recorded in the song ‘Thumping Luck to Yon Town’, by William Watson, author of the famous North-East folk song Dance to thy Daddy, which is still heard today. Watson notes Gilchrist’s “comic song” amidst the wit and humour of notable others such as Thompson and William Mitford.
There are few examples of Gilchrist's juvenile efforts. The earliest found in the archives is 'Verses on Tanfield Arch, in the County of Durham', which is dated 5 May 1815. By the 1820s Gilchrist's compositions, both poetic verse and song, were beginning to be published, lending him a degree of local fame. His first book-length poem Gothalbert and Hisanna was published in 1822 by W.A. Mitchell's Mercury Press. In 1824 his Collection of Original Songs, Local and Sentimental was published, again by W.A. Mitchell. A second edition followed in the same year, with the title altered slightly to A Collection of Original Local Songs, and the addition of an extra poem, ‘The Loss of the Ovington’. Poems, a collection of eighty-four verses, followed in 1826 published by W. Boag. In all, Gilchrist’s published output of songs and poetry numbered over a hundred separate and original pieces, appearing in these collections, in broadsides and chapbooks, and in the local press, including: The Newcastle Journal; Tyne Mercury; The Newcastle Courant and Newcastle Magazine.
The most productive period of his life also saw Robert Gilchrist expand his family. He married Margaret Bradley Morrison (1799-1876) on 15 November 1823 in All Saint’s, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. They had at least six children: Margaret Ellen (1824-1828), John Greene (1826-1870), James Morrison (1829 – ?), Robert Shaftoe (1831-1914), William Crawford (1833 - ?) and George Henry (1839 - 1912). It was reported that Gilchrist, like the Spence family, was a Glassite (a Scottish dissenting non-conformist Christian sect) and attended the Forster Street Meeting House in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Upon the death of his father in 1829, Robert took over the sailmaking business near the Custom House on the Quayside. He was not successful in the business, preferring the country and long walking tours which took him around the North of England and to Scotland. For most of his married life Gilchrist resided in the old house facing Shieldfield Green, reputed to have housed King Charles during the English Civil War as a prisoner of the Parliamentarians. In 1838 he wrote a poem 'The humble petition of the old house in the Shield Field' to Town Clerk Mr John Clayton Esq. complaining of plans which threatened to destroy this house. The house was spared. A memorial plaque stands on Shieldfield Green to commemorate the famous inhabitants of the house, which eventually succumbed to redevelopment in the 1960s.
Robert started writing poetry from a young age and found support in a thriving local literary community of poets, writers and balladeers. He gained the friendship of Thomas Thompson (1773-1816), who was considered to be one of the finest and earliest Newcastle poets. Gilchrist was held in high regard. In 1818, at the age of 21, he received a silver medal from his companions in appreciation of his poetry. His special place amongst the community was recorded in the song ‘Thumping Luck to Yon Town’, by William Watson, author of the famous North-East folk song Dance to thy Daddy, which is still heard today. Watson notes Gilchrist’s “comic song” amidst the wit and humour of notable others such as Thompson and William Mitford.
There are few examples of Gilchrist's juvenile efforts. The earliest found in the archives is 'Verses on Tanfield Arch, in the County of Durham', which is dated 5 May 1815. By the 1820s Gilchrist's compositions, both poetic verse and song, were beginning to be published, lending him a degree of local fame. His first book-length poem Gothalbert and Hisanna was published in 1822 by W.A. Mitchell's Mercury Press. In 1824 his Collection of Original Songs, Local and Sentimental was published, again by W.A. Mitchell. A second edition followed in the same year, with the title altered slightly to A Collection of Original Local Songs, and the addition of an extra poem, ‘The Loss of the Ovington’. Poems, a collection of eighty-four verses, followed in 1826 published by W. Boag. In all, Gilchrist’s published output of songs and poetry numbered over a hundred separate and original pieces, appearing in these collections, in broadsides and chapbooks, and in the local press, including: The Newcastle Journal; Tyne Mercury; The Newcastle Courant and Newcastle Magazine.
The most productive period of his life also saw Robert Gilchrist expand his family. He married Margaret Bradley Morrison (1799-1876) on 15 November 1823 in All Saint’s, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. They had at least six children: Margaret Ellen (1824-1828), John Greene (1826-1870), James Morrison (1829 – ?), Robert Shaftoe (1831-1914), William Crawford (1833 - ?) and George Henry (1839 - 1912). It was reported that Gilchrist, like the Spence family, was a Glassite (a Scottish dissenting non-conformist Christian sect) and attended the Forster Street Meeting House in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Upon the death of his father in 1829, Robert took over the sailmaking business near the Custom House on the Quayside. He was not successful in the business, preferring the country and long walking tours which took him around the North of England and to Scotland. For most of his married life Gilchrist resided in the old house facing Shieldfield Green, reputed to have housed King Charles during the English Civil War as a prisoner of the Parliamentarians. In 1838 he wrote a poem 'The humble petition of the old house in the Shield Field' to Town Clerk Mr John Clayton Esq. complaining of plans which threatened to destroy this house. The house was spared. A memorial plaque stands on Shieldfield Green to commemorate the famous inhabitants of the house, which eventually succumbed to redevelopment in the 1960s.
Gilchrist had some involvement in local politics and must have had a degree of status in Tyneside. He was a freeman, a member of the Herbage Committee, which tended Newcastle's Town Moors, and took part in the annual Barge Day event, a local custom in which the Mayor and barges representing the Town's Guilds sailed the length of the Town Corporation's boundaries on the Tyne. Following the Poor Law Reforms of 1834 and the creation of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Poor Law Union in September 1836, Gilchrist was elected to the Board of Guardians, representing the All Saints' Parish. This role saw Gilchrist involved in the inquest of the death of pauper Elizabeth Graham in 1838 (an event which garnered national press coverage) as well as overseeing the construction of the Newcastle Workhouse.
Robert died on 11 July 1844 at the Old House in Shieldfield, aged 47, and was buried at the East Ballast Hills burial ground. The cause of death is given as a stomach cancer. John Luke Clennell, the son of the engraver and poet Luke Clennell (1781-1840), paid tribute to his old friend in the poem below, dated 16 July 1844:
Robert died on 11 July 1844 at the Old House in Shieldfield, aged 47, and was buried at the East Ballast Hills burial ground. The cause of death is given as a stomach cancer. John Luke Clennell, the son of the engraver and poet Luke Clennell (1781-1840), paid tribute to his old friend in the poem below, dated 16 July 1844:
Gilchrist obtained a posthumous reputation as a noted poet and songwriter. Many of Gilchrist’s songs, drawn from his 1824 Collection of Original Songs, Local and Sentimental, upon which a biographer noted his fame largely rested, were republished in local anthologies in his own lifetime and beyond. These included: Fordyce's 1842 Newcastle Song Book, Joseph Robson's 1849 Songs of the Bards of the Tyne, Thomas Allan's 1862 Tyneside Songs and Readings and Joseph Crawhall’s 1888 A Beuk O’Newcassel Sangs. The reproduction of his work provided Gilchrist with a degree of local fame. Richard Welford, who produced three volumes of biographies of notable and celebrated people in the North-East, included a biography of Robert Gilchrist and called him ‘a Tyneside bard of some celebrity in his day, and certainly one of the brightest of the race’. Even into the twenty-first century he is remembered as ‘the great broadside balladeer’ of the town.