Icons of the North East coast
TODAY the piers at the mouth of the Tyne are, weather permitting, the place for a placid and relaxing stroll.
But 120 years ago on Thursday, they were the setting for a rather more stormy affair.
The Tyne Improvement Commissioners had erected a barrier on the south pier to assert that the piers were their property.
South Shields Council took exception, claiming the piers were part of the public highway and a place where people should be able to walk.
A newspaper report of the time takes up the story: “Last night an exciting scene occurred at South Shields. In the morning, barriers were erected on the south pier by the Tyne Commissioners and river police placed in charge to prevent the public entering.
“The pier is a mile long and is a popular public promenade. The town council claim the right to the use of the pier, and when the action of the commissioners became known it was decided at a special meeting to tear down the barriers.”
This was carried out by the mayor and town clerk.
The furore has been uncovered by Newcastle University PhD student Kathryn Watson, who has carried out a study of the piers, funded by the university’s Humanities Research Institute as part of the Challenge Lab scheme.
She has examined how the piers were built to tackle what had been a dangerous and exposed river for ships to enter, with the Black Middens rocks at Tynemouth, a sand bar across the mouth, and the Herd Sands off South Shields.
The clash between commissioners and council ended up before a judge in London. The commissioners argued that the structures were financed by port dues and not public funds, and that the pier was engineered to benefit river traffic and the businesses on which safe navigation depended.
The mayor cited unobstructed public access during construction of the piers. Witnesses provided evidence of the disruption to public activities caused by the construction of the south pier which essentially split the Herd Sands in two.
“Prior to the erection of the pier, horse racing was a wellattended and regular event on Herd Sands, and one which, if consent was sought to construct the pier today, would no doubt have resulted in a large amount of public representation and objection to the project,” said Kathryn.
The judge found the mayor and town clerk not guilty of trespass, but that the pier was not part of the highway as it did not lead to anywhere and therefore was not a public right of way.
Kathryn said: “This has resulted in the piers being opened for public access today, but only at the grace of the commissioners and later the Port of Tyne.”
Kathryn, who has a masters in town and country planning, had a particular interest in the piers because, before embarking on her PhD, she worked for the Marine Management Organisation in Newcastle.
She was a marine regulator, which involved licensing offshore development.
Before the piers, the Tyne could be a perilous river to enter, especially in bad weather.
There were so many shipwrecks that voluntary life brigades were formed in the 1860s in Tynemouth and South Shields.
“Visiting Tynemouth or South Shields today it is hard to imagine the mouth of the River Tyne without the piers,” said Kathryn, who lives in Burnopfield in County Durham.
“Standing at the head of either pier watching the daily ferry to Amsterdam enter or leave port, it is hard to imagine a time when such vessels could not safely enter the river.”
Apart from the danger to life, the situation was seen as an obstacle to Tyneside trade and industry.
“Throughout the 1840s increasingly vocal river users, including colliery owners, and traders made representations to Newcastle Corporation regarding the dangerous state of the river,” said Kathryn.
The growing concerns led to Parliament holding an inquiry into the state of the River Tyne in 1849.
It was stated that: “Shipowners, pilots, harbour masters, captains and keelmen were called as witnesses to prove that the river was actually in a worse state than it formerly had been; that ships grounded on shoals where, in the memory of the witnesses, there used to be plenty of water and that stone ballast was systematically dropped into the harbour to save the cost and trouble of transferring it ashore.”
The result was the creation of the Tyne Improvement Commission.
Plans for piers had been first mooted in 1814 and now, with the new body in place, they were revisited by two engineers.
One favoured a single pier at Tynemouth, the other proposed four breakwaters - two piers, and an additional two structures at the Low Light in North Shields and on the opposite side of the river.
Two piers were decided upon and eventually, another engineer, James Walker, was appointed to oversee their construction.
Kathryn said: “No public consultation was undertaken and no consideration of environmental impact given. The piers are designed as breakwaters not traditional piers. They are engineering projects, not recreational structures. That the public would later come to enjoy using them was not considered during their design.
“Mr Walker was given what developers today can only dream of. No licence conditions were required, monitoring requirements or reporting, and no mention of safety requirements deemed necessary.
“The engineers were to be trusted - they were the experts and the commissioners were best off leaving Mr Walker to get on with the task of construction the piers unhindered by interference and bureaucracy.”
The foundation stones of the piers were laid in 1854. But severe storms damaged the works during construction in the winters of 1861, 1862, 1864 and 1867 where large sections were washed away.
The piers were completed in 1895. Only two years later the north pier was breached by violent storms, cutting off the pier head lighthouse from the shore and resulting in the crane used to build the structure being washed into the sea.
Reconstruction work saw the scrapping of the original curved line of the pier, which was replaced with the straight line of today.
The foundations of the pier were also redesigned, improving the original gravel bed with foundations dug into the seabed. Evidence of the original curved north pier is still visible at low tide today.
Kathryn said: “The piers were designed as breakwaters. They still serve this purpose, but perhaps more importantly they have become icons of the North East coast and of the Tyne.
“Their social value cannot be understated, and they remain spaces for recreation and contemplation.”