Peter Allan (6 September 1799 – 31 August 1849) was an English eccentric, a publican who carved rocks in the Marsden Bay at Marsden, South Shields into an inn as well as a home.

Early life

Born to Peter Allan, a shoemaker in

Gladsmuir Gladsmuir () is a village and parish in East Lothian, Scotland, situated on the A199 and near Tranent and Prestonpans. Description Gladsmuir's principal "claim to fame" relates to its role as the site of the Battle of Prestonpans (1745). Some ...

and Jane Rennie, who was the daughter of Archibald Kenley of

Tranent Tranent is a town in East Lothian (formerly Haddingtonshire), in the south-east of Scotland. Tranent lies 6 miles from the boundary of Edinburgh, and 9.1 miles from the city centre. It lies south of the A1 road (Great Britain), A1 road that r ...

, Allan grew up in Whitburn from the age of 3 or 4, after his father took the post of gamekeeper to Sir Hedworth Williamson. As a young man, Allan Jr was initially a valet to William Williamson and a

gamekeeper In the United Kingdom, a gamekeeper (often abbreviated to keeper) is a person who manages an area of countryside (e.g., areas of woodland, moorland, waterway or farmland) to make sure that there is enough Game (hunting), game for hunting, or fish ...

for the

Marquess of Londonderry Marquess of Londonderry, of the County of Londonderry ( ), is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. History The title was created in 1816 for Robert Stewart, 1st Earl of Londonderry. He had earlier represented County Down in the Irish House of ...

. He later took over his father-in-law's pub, The Ship, in the village of Whitburn on the

Durham Durham most commonly refers to: *Durham, England, a cathedral city in north east England **County Durham, a ceremonial county which includes Durham *Durham, North Carolina, a city in North Carolina, United States Durham may also refer to: Places ...

coast. His wife was Elizabeth Collie.

Marsden

After becoming infatuated with and working at the

quarries A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to manage their safet ...

near his property, and on the North Dock in Monkwearmouth, he decided to turn a

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

cliff in Marsden Bay into an actual house and inn. He blew out fifteen rooms, setting up a tavern on the beach (''The Grotto'') at the bottom of the cliff. In doing so, he followed the example of an old man, Jack Bates, who had previously (1780s) attracted custom to a cliff cave about a hundred yards to the south. It is falsely alleged that "he mostly remained with his wife and children in the rock and did not often visit the surrounding town". As is shown by contemporary newspapers like the Sunderland Herald, he was a well-known and eccentric presence on the streets of Sunderland and South Shields, wheeling and dealing, sometimes winding up in court as a result. He also rescued a number of people from the sea, including a group of children in danger of drowning. Between 1846 and 1849, the new owners of the copyhold, Andrew Stoddart and John Clay, with the financial backing of Cuthbert Ellison, attempted to eject him, having bought out all the claimants to the land above the Grotto. (They are sometimes wrongly described as "lords of the manor" - the titular lord was the Bishop of Durham, who had supported the Grotto.) Allan's lawyer, Daniel Stack, managed only a compromise in the lawsuit that followed, maintaining Allan's right to live at the Grotto for an annual rent, but Allan died on 31 August 1849, perhaps affected by the stress. The Grotto, which was a sort of public attraction, was closed for a while by a collapse of the cliff in February 1865. It reopened, as popular as ever. ''The Grotto'' is still open, and is a pub and a hotel.

Controversy

Some have mistakenly accepted Allan's designation as a "hermit" literally, when it was an ironic nickname, based on Scott's novels and the like. Allan was marooned there for a few weeks in a cold winter, but he was a very clubbable man, who loved company. Alan Robinson wrote a book in the 1970s denying the notion that Allan was a hermit, and this is confirmed by Bill Greenwell's research in 2021.

External links

Grotto
- pictures and history of the Allan, the pub, and the area

- Mysteries of the Grotto

References

* Sidney Lee, ‘Allan, Peter (1799-1849)’, rev. H. C. G. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. {{DEFAULTSORT:Allan, Peter 1799 births 1849 deaths People from South Shields People from East Lothian