Blyth and its port could be great again
THEY say if you build it they will come, and it has.
In Blyth they don’t need to – it’s already built and ready to use.
The River Blyth, a very deep water port, is ready to be exploited with the potential that no other river in England can offer.
If ever they were a town or a river in England that has risen from its ashes it must be Blyth.
The port was said to be the busiest in England once, mostly with the transportation of coal but slowly went into decline, it’s once thriving shipbuilding having done the same.
Shipbuilding and coal mining are both past tense and for obvious reasons, won’t be revived, but they is plenty of scope in building deep-sea fishing trawlers in the vacant dry docks which will surely be called for if we are to expand our fishing industry.
Herring fishing in the early 1900s was massive from the river and was known as “little Grimsby” with a fish market distributing herring throughout the North East.
It was an essential port during two world wars as it housed submarines, it was also quite famous as shipbreakers and now this industry is being revived by Thompson’s of Prudhoe in decommissioning and reclamation of North Sea oil platforms at Battleship Wharf.
Blyth up till recently was the main importer of timber from Scandinavia for the paper industry, it once had a major power station at Cambois (demolished in 2002).
The riverside quays, wharves and dry docks have acres of land ready for development within the tidal stretch.
I’ve never known a town to expand as fast as Blyth in new house building, the whole of Newsham, South shore, the caravan site and Wellesley nautical school, the area from Cowpen Road to the river are now building sites, all the riverside derelict sites like Bates colliery are taken over by brand new affordable housing. Blyth’s population has virtually doubled since the early 50s to the present day of 37,300. It must have a Metro or train link back.
You now have a town that changed its opinions, it proved it in the last election when Ronnie Campbell their well respected favoured Labour MP of 30 plus years retired, Blyth then owing no elegance to the Labour Party dramatically changed to Conservative. Blyth has a new MP in Ian Levy. Boris recently said we need to revive between eight and 10 new ports, also seeing we are taking back our fishing industry, then we have to have fishing boats and somewhere to land the catch and distribute it, Could it be Blyth? Why not?
Britishvolt has chosen Blyth for a new business with a promise to create thousands of jobs.
G WANNOP, Whitley Bay