Before Grey Street and his Monument

 

This is part of a map of Newcastle upon Tyne, showing (one wants to write shewing) the city centre in the early nineteenth century before the grand streets were built. But not before they were conceived – you can see the markups of numerous ‘intended street’ on the plan. Those who know the city may find the absences of Grey Street, Grainger Street and the Grainger Market, quite interesting.

Only a generation later a chap would be able to say to his children “I remember when this was all fields”. Eldon Square’s there though. And Stowell Street (but without Chinatown). The blank area to the east of Newgate Street (here labelled Nun’s Field) pre-shadows the clearance, demolition and remolition which would happen two hundred years later. Most of the place is still quite recognisable though.

This is one of John Wood’s maps. He was an Edinburgh surveyor who produced 52 plans of Scottish towns and and nearly 60 (known) plans of English and Welsh ones. The Newcastle map was published in 1826 or 1827.

For Sale: Collapsed Bank

There’s an odd bit of business going on at Gateshead Council. As we can all see when we cross the bridge by Metro, the bit of riverbank which collapsed into the river Tyne in mid January 2011 has been left broken and untended for nearly two years now. It’s nearly impossible to find out anything about it on their website though as none of the obvious search terms turn up anything at all on the matter. So as regards what’s currently happening, I’ve no idea. That would take an FOI request and about a month.

I blogged about it last year. It has interrupted a national cycle path and nobody seems to care about it. Who is responsible for fixing it? Probably, one would think, the landowners. Who is that? The Council, again, you’d think.

But no. At least not yet.

As it happens, that particular little bit of the once delightful Pipewellgate is owned by Nexus, the very folk who carry you over the bridge by Metro. Apparently, thirty-odd years ago when they were building the bridge, they needed a couple of bits of land either side, so they bought the necessary. Well that’s not quite true – the bridge was built for the original Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive, before the mass privatisation of all our local services. Nexus just ‘kind of inherited’ the land. All these years later, it’s still theirs. And now they would like very much for the Council to own it back.

Now they are – as responsible landowners providing right-of-way to public cycle-pathers – going to fix the damage. That’s underway, apparently, despite any visible evidence. And this will be to the satisfaction (whatever that means) of GMBC before the title deeds are transferred to the council. So that’s OK then. But they’d also like “to receive a percentage (to be agreed) of any future sale/development value“.A gift that is, as yet, both unlimited and eternal. Wow. Nice.

As the report (Agenda Item 22, dated 24 November 2011, page 119 of 156 in the PDF, their page 117) says, “The area has little potential for development due to its current use as highway and footpath/cyclepath and also its location and topography.” So I don’t quite know why that ‘consideration’ is being proposed without raised eyebrows. Once they’ve got the land back to the council, why would they expect to have or deserve any further interest in it?

Like I said. An odd bit of business.

Blip

NorthEastern Population by Age, 2011

How many people there are, by age, in each of the mutually exclusive regions labeled GHD (Gateshead), NCL (Newcastle upon Tyne), NT (North Tyneside), ST (South Tyneside) and SU (Sunderland).

Spiky, innit?

Figures from an excel spreadsheet freely downloadable from a page at the ONS 2011 Census results.

Pyrmont

See the full gallery on Posterous

In the issue of The Engineer dated 2 February 1917 are pictures – on pages 110 and 125, of the Pyrmont Bridge. This is a swing bridge over the Darling Harbour at Sydney. Sydney has, of course, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, built by the same people who had put up a similar structure over the River Tyne at Newcastle in 1926. And Newcastle also has Armstrong’s Swing Bridge of 1876. It’s almost as if the Australians are copycatting the Geordies.

Kwik-Bridj

Not too many places on the High Street where you can pop in for a bag of bridges. The Motherwell Bridge Company is, today, quite a large concern. This is an advert from 1917, found amongst all the adverts piled in at the back of the volume containing all of the issues of the journal The Engineer for that year.

This one’s from a Bristol company, Llewellins (an unusual spelling), also still around after 95 years – which is good to see. The great pile of worm and spur reduction gears in the ad is impressive, but there’s no sense of scale. They feel big though.

To get a sense of scale, there’s nothing quite like putting a working engineer in the picture, standing next to the product. Let’s see the ad for one of our very own Steel casters, John Spencer of Newcastle upon Tyne at Newburn.

Finally, still in 1917, there’s this Ferodo ad. The brake-pad people. They are still around but I’m wondering if they are now so embedded into the infrastructure that nobody needs to mention them any more. Last I heard their name was on some small pieces of plastic scenery adorning a scalextric set. And that was when I was a youngster.

What’s on

Week commencing Sunday October 21, what’s showing this week at the local cinema? Fifty years ago, that is.

On at the Odeon is The Miracle Worker, bizarrely X-certificated, supported by the B-picture The Lamp in Assassin Mews – a comic murder romp with Francis Matthews (aka Captain Scarlet or Paul Temple). At the Queen’s – our local widescreen cinerama theatre at the time – is the sunken epic Barabbas, one of the less often shown spectacles on the box (has it ever been on?). Then, up the road, there’s Dr No supported by another B-movie called Deadly Duo. All links lead to IMdb.

It is the time of the Twist, as the evenings advertised in the local palaces of dance proclaim.

Brucie

It’s Saturday, October 20:

And this is what’s on the TV, this very evening, exactly 50 years ago to the day:

Thing is, it’s exactly 50 years ago – and Brucie’s still on the box. Turns out 1962 is the same as 2012, October 20 being a Saturday in both these years. So – what else was on this commercial channel, in the North East of England, that evening? There was – later – the imported:

With the delightful Poncie Ponce – a Spanish name if ever there was. Many will remember the series from ABC in the US; a decade or so before Hawaii-5-0.

Another chap still around is the (now) 90 year old Patrick MacNee who, 50 years ago, was teamed up – pre Mrs Peel – with Honor Blackman, also still with us.

Remember when TV went to bed with the rest of us? Before midnight:

It would appear, however, that the Reverend Henry Bentley died in 1983 at the age of 75 or thereabouts.

Swan Hunter Shark

H.M. Torpedo-Boat Destroyer Shark

Swan, Hunter, and Wigham Richardson, Limited, Wallsend on Tyne, Builders

Picture from The Engineer, 8 November 1912 issue, page 501. It was accompanied by the article below. Which comes across as a bit of a memory test about which they would be asking questions later to test your comprehension. The  third paragraph is a bit sub-par however, as it seems to suggest that the crew will comprise men equipped with fittings.

The Shark would be a casualty, four years later, in the battle of Jutland, one of those cases where the captain went down with his ship.

H.M.S. Shark

The Naval Programme of 1911–1912 included twenty ocean-going torpedo-boat destroyers of what is known as the Acasta class. Of these the first to run her trials at sea is the Shark, of which, by the courtesy of Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson, Limited, who built her, we are enabled to give the accompanying illustration. This firm is building two other boats of the same class, the Sparrowhawk and the Spitfire, the former of which was launched in October last. The other vessels of the class are being built by John Brown and Co., Limited, three, the Acasta, Achates, and Ambuscade; Messrs. Denny, one, the Ardent; Hawthorn Leslie and Co., Limited, three, the Christopher, Cockatrice, and Contest; the Fairfield Company, one, the Fortune; The Parsons company, one, the Garland; the London and Glasgow Company, three, the Lynx, the Midge, and the Owl; and Messrs. Thorneycroft, five, the Hardy, the Paragon, the Porpoise, the Unity, and Victor. The first of these, the Hardy, is being fitted with Diesel engines for cruising purposes.

All the vessels of the class are to be of approximately the same displacement, namely, 935 tons, and to have the same or approximately the same horse-power, namely, 24,500, the trial speed varying from 31 to 32 knots.

The dimensions vary slightly, the length from 257ft. to 260ft.; the beam from 26½ft. to 27ft.; and the draught from 8ft. to 8.3ft. The armament is the same in every case, namely, three 4in. guns and two torpedo tubes, and each vessel will carry a complement of 100 men. It is understood all of them will have water-tube boilers, and all be fitted for burning oil fuel.

The Shark herself is, like her sister vessels the Sparrowhawk and Spitfire, 260ft. long by 26ft. beam, and has a draught of 8.3 ft. She is propelled by three screws, as are to be the Acasta, Achates, Ambuscade, Christopher, Cockatrice, Contest, Lynx, Midge, and Owl, while the Ardent, Fortune, Garland, Paragon, Porpoise, Unity, and Victor are only to have two propellors.

We understand that the Sparrowhawk and Spitfire are in a forward state of construction, and that their builders have two other similar torpedo-boat destroyers in hand, namely, H.M.SS. Sarpedon and Ulysses.

Liner Notes

Frames and Beams in position up to Engine-Room

They’re just saying, saying it with photos on page 568 of the December 8 issue of The Engineer in 1905, that it’s a Liner being built for Cunard. They don’t say what it’s going to be called.

Frames with Bossing for Propellor Shafts

They do refer to it as another great Cunard Liner, and report where it’s being built:

The Construction of A Great Liner

Through the courtesy of the builders — Swan, Hunter, and Wigham Richardson, Limited, of Wallsend-on-Tyne — we are enabled this week to give half-a-dozen reproductions of photographs of the express passenger steamship they are building to the order of the Cunard Company, a similar vessel, as is well-known, being under construction in the yard of John Brown and Co., Limited, Clydebank. The pictures illustrate in a striking way a great ocean steamship “in the making,” and in the earlier stages. They also give a fair idea of what the facilities are in an up-to-date modern shipyard provided with overhead electric crane equipment for dealing with the erection and conveyance of material, and with the transporting, and holding to their work, of hydraulic and other appliances for drilling and riveting material of the heaviest scantling now worked into merchant ship structures. The covered-in shipbuilding berth on which the great Cunarder is being built at Wallsend is 740ft. long — but can at any time be extended to 900ft. — with a clear inside width of 100ft. and a height of 144ft. All the covered-in berths are equipped, as is seen on some of the engravings, with numerous electric overhead cranes.

Midship portion of Structural Cellular Bottom

Here’s the shot that gives you the scale of the thing. They are engineers that did stand in that.

Oh yes, the vessel. It would be launched the following year, 1906, by one Anne Emily Innes-Ker (1854-1923), née Spencer-Churchill. The four-funnelled (it was going to have three, but they had a rethink) floater would be known as Mauretania.

Kashima

First-Class Japanese Battleship Kashima

Built by Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth and Co at Newcastle upon Tyne. Picture from The Engineer, March 24 1905, p 288. There are also photos of various stages of its construction.

State of the Hull on May 11th, 1904 – One Month’s Work

State of the Hull a bit later – note the humans giving a sense of the scale. It’s not a large ship, by Armstrong’s standards.

Progress on the Hull by June 4th, 1904

And here’s a couple of photos of its launch, from page 322 of The Engineer of the following week (March 31, 1905).