Just next to the Vampire Rabbit on Amen Corner you will also find this bust of another famous Tyneside son Thomas Bewick who is was an ornithologist and probably the most famous wood engraver ever - he produced a wealth of prints of birds and wildlife and there is even a society called the Bewick Society.
Bewick was born at Cherryburn House in the village of Mickley, in the parish of Ovingham,Northumberland, England, near Newcastle upon Tyne on 12 August 1753. His father rented a smallcolliery at Mickley Bank, and sent his son to school in the nearby village of Ovingham. His current descendants are living in Nuneaton and Birmingham, United Kingdom.
Bewick was a poor scholar, but showed, at a very early age, a talent for drawing. He had no lessons in art. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to Ralph Beilby, an engraver in Newcastle. In Beilby's workshop Bewick engraved a series of diagrams on wood for Dr. Charles Hutton, illustrating a treatise on mensuration. He seems thereafter to have devoted himself entirely to engraving on wood, and in 1775 he received a premium from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce for a wood engraving of the "Huntsman and the Old Hound". In 1776 he became a partner in Beilby's workshop.
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