Building of the Tyne Bridge was Quay to a new look for the riverfront
THIS scene at Gateshead Quays is unrecognisable from the one which stands in its place today – nearly 100 years later.
Our photograph taken in the early 1920s shows the steeply-descending Bottle Bank, leading to a short stretch of Bridge Street and on to the Swing Bridge (just out of sight on the left) surrounded by a cluster of old shops, bars and tenements – some of which are adorned with advertising.
On the Gateshead riverfront, we see factories and chimney stacks while over on the Newcastle side of the Tyne ships are berthed.
This was the town’s original business and shopping hub but the street – including the notable pub the Goat Inn – would be obliterated by one of the abutments of the soon-to-beconstructed Tyne Bridge.
The idea for a new bridge linking Gateshead’s High Street and Newcastle’s Pilgrim Street had surfaced as early as 1863.
By the 1920s there were compelling reasons to begin the project.
The Swing Bridge, which regularly opened to let river traffic through, and the High Level Bridge were becoming increasingly congested.
There was also the desire to keep the skills of unemployed shipbuilders alive during the deep economic recession of the time.
In August 1924, mass demolition began at Bottle Bank, Church Street, Bridge Street and St Mary’s churchyard – as well as on the Newcastle side of the Tyne – as the ground was cleared for the new bridge’s supports.
Little from the Gateshead section of the 1920s image remains today, save for St Mary’s – formerly the town’s parish church but today a heritage and local history centre.
Later, in 1930, a Housing Act would be passed which led to the clearance of more slums in Britain than at any time previously and the construction of 700,000 new homes.
Yet more streets of dilapidated houses in the town were targeted.
Pipewellgate and Oakwellgate were notorious for lack of sanitation and streets with names like Garden Street, Sun Street, and Rhubarb Terrace sounded pleasant – but were not.
By the 1950s, swathes of Gateshead which dated from Georgian and Victorian times had gone.
When the slums came down, people were moved out to new housing estates in Beacon Lough, Springwell, Harlow Green and Old Fold.
One wonders what the folk of Gateshead from 100 years ago would make of 2020’s Gateshead Quays with the Sage music centre and the Millennium and Tyne Bridges?