The Tyneside street opened by the future King and Queen Mother
IT’S one of South Tyneside’s premier thoroughfares and it received an official royal opening 90 years ago.
York Avenue in Jarrow remains a desirable location with its smart interwar semis, tree-lined central reservation, and fine nearby public parks through which Monkton Burn meanders.
Built across former farmland as the town of Jarrow expanded, the new houses provided homes for the professional classes away from the noise and grime of industry on the River Tyne.
A new house on the prime street would have knocked you back around £550 in 1928, expensive for the time, when the average UK weekly wage for a man was £5.
(To illustrate how house prices have rocketed way beyond inflation, £550 in today’s money equates to £32,000. Semi-detached properties on the street now tend to go for around £250,000).
The street takes its name from the Duke and Duchess of York who performed the official opening on July 17, 1928.
It was one of a number of Tyneside engagements carried out by the future King George VI and Queen Mother.
On the same day, at Palmer’s shipyard in the heart of industrial Jarrow, they launched the battle cruiser HMS York.
The closure of Palmer’s in 1933 was the catalyst for the 1936 Jarrow Crusade, while in 1941 HMS York was put out of action in Crete during World War II.