Archive for Change

Decades

• 2020s

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    Scotswood Regeneration Site

  2020s

  Currently underway, the regeneration of the 60-hectare Scotswood site is due to be completed by 2026.

• 2010s

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    Scotswood Redevelopment Area

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    Demolision of Delaval Gardens 2010

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    Artist Impression of the area

  2010s

  This decade will see big changes in the built landscape of Scotswood. At the beginning of 2010, many of the houses and buildings that had been compulsory purchased during the 90’s were still standing empty, often attracting vandalism and keeping surrounding property prices rock-bottom.

  However, after 10 years of economic wrangling between private & public investors, an agreement was finally struck between three builders (Barrett Homes, Yuill Homes and Keepmoat Homes) and Newcastle City Council to form the New Tyne West Development Company (NTWDC). Groundworks have started on a 60-hectare site extending along Armstrong Road down to the River Tyne.

  The proposed plans have brought about mixed feelings from local residents, many of whom have remained in Scotswood in defiance of the demolition carried out around them, determined to campaign for and witness the rebuilding of their neighbourhood. Whilst there is a feeling of relief that some redevelopment has finally begun, many people are concerned that the plans will price out the existing populace and be aimed at attracting only a new demographic of residents. Despite reassurances from the NTWDC, after being left for so long in a state of limbo, there is an understandable wariness between residents and developers.

  The redevelopment outlines plans for 1,800 mixed tenure homes, improvements to local parks, transport systems and amenities to be realised over the next 15 years.

  However, further demolition will happen before re-building can begin. Scotswood Support Centre, locally nicknamed ‘The Pink Palace’: Scotswood Area Strategy’s base for over 10 years is due for demolition. The Strategy has refurbished a number of derelict shops across the road from the Pink Palace, adding to the existing Scotswood Diner to create a shop, post office and creche, as well as offices and space for the centre’s existing youth work.

  Here as well as elsewhere in the west end, the national economic crisis has hit many long-running community organisations hard, forcing people to make difficult decisions about employment and much needed resources such as local activities and services.

• 2000s

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    Armstrong Rd, 2001

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Armstrong rd, 2006

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Armstrong Rd 2001

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Armstrong rd & Deleval, 2001

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Evening Chronicle

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    Save Scotswood Campaign, protest at Newcastle Civic Centre

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Save Scotswood Campaign, protest at Newcastle Civic Centre

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Save Scotswood Campaign

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Save Scotswood Campaign, protest at Newcastle Civic Centre

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Save Scotswood Campaign

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

  2000s

  By the end of the 20th century, few traces remained of the variety of manufacturing industries that used to fill the land above the Tyne. It was possible to cycle or walk along the riverbanks and even to fish in the river – unimaginable 20 years earlier. Instead of the former heavy industries, there were miles of warehouses, retailing outfits and office developments. These looked better than the dirty old factories but they provided only a fraction of the jobs previously to be found along the riverside.

  The area was still relatively deprived and bore the scars of the years of social and economic deprivation and unrest. However for the most part the serious problems that had manifested themselves during the high unemployment years of the 1980s and 1990s began to recede, as improved policing combined with a better economic environment and greater opportunities for young people took effect.

  However, the beginning of the decade was to bring a bombshell. The City Council launched its ‘Going for Growth’ strategy, which set out a vision for Newcastle as a “competitive, cosmopolitan and cohesive capital”.

  This strategy envisaged the demolition of over 7,000 homes, most of them in the inner west. Most of Scotswood and large parts of Benwell were deemed “unviable”. Going for Growth was seen as a brave and visionary plan for the city, which over a 20 year period would tackle the social and economic problems of its most deprived areas by removing them wholesale and replacing them “mixed communities”. The plan was not just about housing – it also included ideas for improving shopping and community facilities, building better schools, and creating new employment opportunities and transport links.

  Going for Growth prompted outrage from many local residents who did not consider that losing their cherished homes was a reasonable price to pay for what they saw as merely paper plans. In many neighbourhoods, residents organised against the demolition proposals, with some measure of success. The plans to demolish part of the North Benwell terraces to create space for a new shopping centre were dropped, for example, and ultimately the final number of houses cleared was considerably less than in the initial plan. However, the main plan to clear a large area of Scotswood and West Benwell in order to create a big empty site for a new “world class” housing development went ahead, despite prolonged and vigorous campaigns by local residents.

  The original Going for Growth masterplan envisaged the first 1,000 new homes being built in Scotswood and West Benwell in 2006. However the legal and planning processes involved in large-scale housing clearance took a great deal longer than the council had reckoned. For several years, Scotswood and West Benwell were peppered with empty sites, partially cleared streets of housing, and rows of boarded-up homes. Dereliction was everywhere, but there were few signs of the promised “urban renaissance”.

  The large-scale new building plans also failed to materialise on the scale envisaged by the City Council. The masterplan had envisaged a big increase in the number of homes in the inner west, mainly through the creation of a “World Class Urban Village” in Scotswood and West Benwell with up to 3,000 new houses. This was criticised by the government and the Audit Commission as unrealistic, and watered down to a more limited scale. The unpopular ‘Going for Growth’ label was also dropped.

  Unlike previous regeneration initiatives which had built or improved housing in the area, the 2000s regeneration strategy had to be led by the private sector. Part of the grand plan was to hold a major Housing Expo in Scotswood to kick-start the regeneration by attracting developers. The Housing Expo was to be “an international demonstration of the best current ideas and approaches to urban living”. The model had been used elsewhere in Europe, but this would be a UK first – and the first set within existing communities. The intention was to hold the Expo in 2008, but the timetable kept slipping until finally the idea was abandoned altogether in the context of the national economic recession.

  Throughout this whole depressing period, committed community activists continued to invest time and effort in helping to shape the plans and working in other practical ways towards the aim of creating a better quality of life in their local communities.

  By the end of the decade, there was little to show in terms of a housing renaissance, although Scotswood did by this time have a brand new Academy on a former housing site. This replaced the former Westgate Community College.

  Ten years after the launch of Going for Growth the last of the condemned homes in Scotswood and West Benwell were still to be demolished, and the area was blighted by empty sites, empty houses and empty shops.

• 1990s

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    The Pink Palace Youth Club, Armstrong Rd

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    The Pink Palace, Armstrong Rd

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

  1990s

  For the west end of Newcastle, the key moment of the decade was the so-called “riots” of September 1991. Suddenly the area – inevitably christened the “wild west” – was national news. Three nights of large-scale disorder and criminal damage on the streets created a reputation for serious crime and social problems that the area has found it hard to shake off. For years afterwards the media continued to be obsessed with the riots and their legacy, even though life in the west end eventually settled down to normality again by the end of the decade as a result of a combination of more effective policing and the beginnings of an improvement in the economic situation.

  The other big event in 1991 was the advent of City Challenge. This was a national government initiative with £37.5 million to spend over a five year period in defined areas with the aim of “regenerating” them. It was around this time that the word “regeneration” – previously mainly associated with spiritual growth or Star Trek – began to be widely used by policy-makers to describe measures to improve aspects of life in rundown or disadvantaged areas. Most west end residents associate the word with housing demolition, but it is used to cover all sorts of different policies aimed at particular geographical areas.

  Newcastle’s City Challenge programme covered most of the inner west neighbourhoods, and its generous budget enabled many local voluntary organisations to survive and new ones to be set up through the lean years of the 1990s. This meant that, despite continued high unemployment and associated social problems, life for many in the local communities was perhaps better than it would have been otherwise.

  City Challenge was not the only government initiative to bring money into the west end during the 1990s. Even before the City Challenge programme had come to an end, the Single Regeneration Budget arrived. Again, this targeted specific geographical areas. There was an SRB programme called ‘Reviving the Heart of the West End’ which targeted North and South Benwell and High Cross, and another which targeted Scotswood, as well as some themed programmes that covered a wider area.

  One of the features of these local regeneration initiatives was that they were required to involve the community in a formal way. Many local community activists devoted an enormous amount of time to helping to manage these initiatives, engaging in consultation processes meant to shape priorities and spending, and helping to publicise the programmes. Although experiences varied, the level of commitment to working to improve the quality of life in their areas was widespread across the inner west.

  Newcastle by 1991 had one of the worst male unemployment rates of any English city – only Liverpool, Manchester and Knowsley were worse. By the same year the police were officially admitting that the west end of Newcastle was one of the highest crime areas in the country. The problems of poverty, unemployment, crime and disorder that had reached crisis levels during the 1980s continued to affect particular neighbourhoods more or less severely.

  The Buddle Road Estate had to be almost completely demolished following years of increasing dereliction and decline. This was despite a successful campaign by the tenants association which achieved a major investment of several million pounds in housing and environmental improvements – much of which was destroyed almost as soon as it was built.

  Even more alarming perhaps, areas which had previously been stable and popular, and relatively untroubled by the problems that affected neighbourhoods such as South Benwell, Scotswood and the North Benwell terraces, began to enter a dramatic decline – the long-established “garden suburb” Pendower Estate was one such.

  Many residents chose, or were forced through harassment or other problems, to leave the area during this period. Others however stayed to fight for a better life for their communities. The ‘Scotswood Area Strategy’, for example, was set up in 1990 by local residents from across Scotswood who had first come together to campaign against the rising tide of crime that was blighting their lives.

  Residents felt that Scotswood had reached a crisis point, and that the dimensions of its problems were so great that only a comprehensive effort, tackling all the major problems at the same time, could hope to bring about real improvements. In other words, they wanted a strategy for Scotswood not just a bit of help here and there. Just as importantly, they argued that, while it was the council’s responsibility to take action, local people should take a leading role in deciding priorities and choosing how money should be spent because it was they who experienced the consequences of that action.

  The Strategy’s work during the 1990s was instrumental in shaping policy and investment in the area, and led on a local level to the establishment of the Support Centre (known locally as the Pink Palace) in a former co-op building on Armstrong Road.

• 1980s

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    Scotswood library 1983

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Armstrong Road, 1980s

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Scotswood Swimming baths, 1980s

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Elswick Works Occupation, Film Still 1980s

  1980s

  The 1980s saw the closure of the Vickers Elswick works after more than 130 years of continuous production. When the factory closed in 1982, tank production was transferred from there to a new factory on the Scotswood site which employed only a small fraction of the previous workforce.

  The decline was not caused by loss of demand for the products or the skills of the workforce but was the result of a strategy of disinvestment by the company from its UK plants and development overseas. This was compounded by the introduction of new computer-based technologies during this period which could replace the work of hundreds of skilled workers with some expensive machinery worked by a handful of operatives. The workforce fought to keep the factories open and retain the jobs, arguing that existing skills and equipment could be used for profitable and more socially-useful purposes such as making medical equipment, but they were ultimately unsuccessful.

  The demise of the Vickers factories also changed the landscape of the west end. Despite the severe and continuous decline of its industrial base since the war, the West Newcastle riverfront had still been dominated physically by heavy industry until the 1980s. A visitor driving along Scotswood Road might have been unaware of the presence of a river behind the miles of factories. This was to change drastically during the 1980s as one closure followed another. The Vickers Elswick site was cleared and replaced by a modern Business Park with tree-lined avenues and walkways along the riverside. One effect of this, together with a major programme to clean up the formerly sewage-filled Tyne, was that people began to fish in the river once again.

  A new Conservative government brought in a set of new policies to revive areas like Benwell and Scotswood. There were Enterprise Zones – watered-down versions of free trade areas,  loosely modelled on the experience of places such as Hong Kong. The idea was that, freed from ‘burdens’ such as planning regulations and rates, the private sector would bloom and expand, creating new wealth and jobs. Then there were Urban Development Corporations which invested huge amounts of public money into assembling land and preparing infrastructure in order to stimulate private sector business activity. The west end of Newcastle had both of these, but jobs continued to disappear, unemployment continued to grow, and social problems multiplied. The local problems of industrial decline were exacerbated by a national recession and central government economic policies predicated on the belief that unemployment was reasonable price to pay for bringing down inflation.

  There were changes on the housing front also. The government was keen to increase owner occupation and to reduce the scale of council housing. This was to be achieved partly through the introduction of the “right to buy” which meant in practice that the more popular council estates became increasingly privately owned, whereas the least popular remained largely in council ownership. This led to a situation of increasing ghettoisation, where those with fewest resources and least choice were concentrated together in particular areas. Among the worst affected were those estates in Benwell and Scotswood at the bottom of the banks with relatively poor access to shops, transport and other facilities. South Benwell and Lower Scotswood were especially badly affected, as their high levels of unemployment of almost 60% attested. Difficult economic circumstances produced serious social problems, and the area as a whole became beset by growing levels of crime, disorder, anti-social behaviour and other difficulties.

  The problems were by no means confined to council estates. Benwell and Scotswood had many areas of owner occupation and of mixed tenure, and many of these began to be affected by spiralling problems of crime, anti-social behaviour and void housing, often linked with a rise in irresponsible or downright criminal private landlordism.

  One of the private estates that began to show signs of serious problems towards the end of the decade was the showcase Low Delaval Estate. This had been the city’s first example of a block sell-off of council housing. The entire estate had been sold to a private developer at a token price, and the developer was given a large government grant to refurbish the flats to be sold on for low-cost owner occupation. After a short honeymoon period during which prices rose rapidly in line with house price inflation, many of the new owner occupiers found themselves trapped in negative equity or unable to sell at all at an adequate price as the housing market declined. Despite restrictive conditions in the leases, many sold to private landlords. The resulting influx of private tenants with anti-social or even criminal tendencies led to a vicious cycle of falling house prices, worsening living conditions, and rising levels of void properties.

  Such situations were repeated across many parts of Benwell and Scotswood, and the area as a whole was increasingly affected by worsening crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour, which the police and the council appeared unable to tackle effectively. This in turn led to more and more people trying to move out of the area, leaving behind them growing levels of void housing and despair.

  Throughout all this, in most neighbourhoods, determined groups of community activists worked hard to protect and improve their communities and to try to reverse the deterioration of the area.

• 1970s

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    1977, Joan Street area which later became Benwell nature park

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Demolition, Deleval Estate 1978

    ©: Jimmy Forsyth

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    View of Benwell & Scotswood across River Tyne, 1977

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Armstrong Road 1978

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

  1970s

  Large-scale housing demolition was still in full swing as the 1970s began.

  One of the streets depicted in the 1971 film ‘Get Carter’ (Frank Street) fell to the bulldozers shortly after being filmed. However as the decade progressed, there was shift towards a new policy of improving homes where feasible, rather than resorting to wholesale demolition, and a significant part of the old terraces was saved.

  Many active residents associations sprang up in this period to defend the homes that could be saved, and to fight for more sensitive re-housing policies for those whose homes were destroyed. As people were re-located on the new housing estates such as Buddle Road, they often took their experience of community organising with them and set up new tenants associations in their new communities. In the terraced areas that remained, new residents associations were also set up. Their main aim was to ensure better living conditions in these older housing areas by fighting for housing and environmental improvements.

  The redevelopment schemes of the 1960s and 1970s also had an impact on the patterns of shopping and social life. In particular, Scotswood Road was transformed from a busy street of shops, pubs and churches at the heart of a dense residential area into a sterile through route intended to enable vehicles to travel into and out of the city centre as efficiently as possible). Further north, on Adelaide Terrace, many of the existing shops were demolished to make way for a new concrete shopping centre. This was labelled a white elephant almost as soon as it opened and, after remaining more than half empty for years, was eventually demolished in the 1990s.

  Meanwhile the rate of job loss continued to accelerate. By the mid-1970s, employment at the Vickers factories along the West Newcastle riverside had fallen to little more than 3,000 – less than 16% of the previous wartime figure. The Vickers Scotswood works closed altogether in 1979, despite a lengthy campaign by the workforce, supported by their colleagues in the other two local Vickers factories – Vickers Elswick and Michells.

  This story can be repeated for other factories in and around the area. The 1970s were particularly disastrous years for local employment. During the last two years of the decade, for example, almost 1,500 jobs were lost from the eleven biggest local employers – representing a decline of 22% – and two of these eleven had closed altogether. Not only were thousands of workers thrown on the scrapheap during these years but the rising generation were left in many cases to face long-term unemployment or dead-end jobs.

  One of the factory closures during the 1970s was the famous sanitaryware makers Adamsez, whose toilets adorned bathrooms across the nation. Adamsez had been a family firm until the 1960s when it was sold to new owners who appeared to want to keep it as a going concern. Prior to the sale, a new managing director had been brought in to knock the company into shape for a profitable sale. He sacked 40% of the workforce in a brutal manner. The new owners, who were from the booming fringe financial world of the 1970s, turned out to be interested in quick results rather than investing in the company to update its equipment and processes. When it failed to perform as hoped, they closed it down in 1975 with the loss of 170 jobs.

  It is not surprising that by the early 1970s Benwell and Scotswood had been officially classified as an area of deprivation by being allocated a local Community Development Project (CDP) as part of a national programme which was Britain’s first and only poverty programme and its answer to America’s War on Poverty. The Benwell CDP was given five years to research the causes of poverty locally, and to try out ways of tackling this at a local level. The Project’s research showed that the social and economic problems of the area were rooted in de-industrialisation: too many jobs were disappearing from the area and most jobs were in the low-wage, low-skill service sector.

  Following the CDP, the west end of Newcastle has experienced a long series of special national initiatives. These have gone under a string of different names – urban policy, inner city policy and most recently regeneration policy – all of which have tried to tackle the bigger problems of poverty and industrial decline by putting in limited amounts of money at a local level.

  Benwell and Scotswood benefited from the Inner City Partnership programme, which started later in the 1970s and continued for over a decade. This was was an annual fund which financed many of the community-based voluntary organisations still active in the west end today, and therefore has had a significant and enduring impact on the community infrastructure of the area. In many cases, it provided the resources to allow local ideas developed by local people to be put into practice.

  The community of Scotswood has a long history of community action, self-help and voluntary work. It was Scotswood residents who set up the first credit union in the morth east, for example. The original Scotswood Tenants Association campaigned vociferously in the 1970s for improvements to the estate, and later ran the Tenants Hut which provided a lunch club, children’s activities and other community facilities. Fergusons Lane Tenants Association was set up later on to represent residents from the upper part of the estate. It set up its own premises, which are still in operation today as the Fergusons Lane Hut, providing a community meeting place and also volunteer-run activities and services for almost a hundred older people a week from across the west end.

• 1960s

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    Clara Street, 1967

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Blaydon Races Centenary 1962

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    Scotswood Road Compulsary Purchase Order 1962

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Park Road Demolition,1963

    Local Studies Newcastle Library

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    Building Cruddas Park Flats

  1960s

  During the 1960s, much of Benwell was transformed as the bulldozers advanced. Clearance of the long terraces that stretched from Adelaide Terrace south to the industrial area along the riverside began during the 1960s, demolishing the houses in phases starting from the lower end where the property tended to be of poorer quality and making its way up towards High Cross which was scheduled to be cleared later in the 1970s.

  This period is closely associated in popular memory with the figure of T Dan Smith, the Labour politician who was leader of Newcastle City Council from 1960. Smith initiated a series of slum housing clearances in the city that saw large amounts of money and effort placed on housing redevelopments that experimented with new building methods that would produce more units of housing at lower cost. The Cruddas Park flats are a product of such redevelopments. Smith also had grand plans for the city centre, such as an urban motorway, a rapid transit system and a new library, and he authorised the demolition of a large part of the city centre to create a new shopping centre. Nevertheless, he is mainly remembered today for his criminal activities, after being imprisoned for corruption in the 1970s. It is easy to over-estimate Smith’s significance in the history of Newcastle, however. He led the council for only five years, and many of the decisions and actions popularly associated with him were actually carried out by his successors. Smith died in 1993 still protesting his innocence.

• 1950s

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    Pendower Commercial school 1953

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

  1950s

  The postwar years were to see the area’s local industrial base enter a terminal decline.The number of people employed at the Vickers-Armstrong works fell once more until, by the 1960s, employment was down to 7,000 compared to the war-time high of 18,500. This was part of a wider pattern of job loss; between 1964-1971, for example, 2,200 mechanical engineering jobs were lost in Benwell – a 39% reduction.

  This period also saw the start of a huge programme of housing clearance intended to solve Newcastle’s terrible slum housing problem. The city had the worst record of poor housing in England outside London. Much of the worst housing was in the west end. Some parts of Benwell, such as Noble Street and adjacent streets, were demolished as early as the 1950s and new housing built on the cleared sites.

  It is tempting to romanticise the past, and bemoan the loss of the old housing as the destruction of strong and proud communities. Undeniably some of the houses that were knocked down in the mass slum clearance programmes of the postwar decades were of good quality and could have been refurbished rather than demolished. In some cases, houses were demolished for planning reasons rather than because they were genuinely slums. However there were also without doubt many thousands of substandard homes lacking in basic amenities which were beyond reasonable repair. Stories abound of tenements with several families sharing one tap and an outside toilet, or of damp, cramped terrace flats without electricity, hot water or inside toilets. These are paralleled by accounts of the delight experienced by families moving into new homes with bathrooms and gardens for the first time.

  Most people agree that a price was paid in the form of a weakening of community – although it is hard to separate the effects of physical redevelopment from wider social factors such as the increase in women taking paid employment and the decline of the extended family.

• 1940s

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    Scotswood 1949

    © West Newcastle Picture Collection

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    Women workers at Vickers-Armstrong Factory

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

  1940s

  War had always been good for business at the West Newcastle works of Vickers-Armstrong. The Second World War was no exception, and employment shot up to 18,500 as the demand for tanks, shells and guns rose again. Women were encouraged to join the workforce in order to free up men to serve in the armed forces.

  Home life was also affected by the war. Benwell and Scotswood were seen as at risk of bombing because of their proximity to the armaments factories on the riverside. Thousands of local children were evacuated, some with their mothers and some alone. Many returned after a short time either because of homesickness or because families decided that they preferred being together despite the potential dangers. For those children who remained in the area, education was badly disrupted as schools closed altogether or only opened part-time.

  Air raid shelters were built in an effort to protect the resident population, and schools had their own shelters and carried out regular air raid drills. Residents in areas like Pendower where the houses had gardens were given Anderson shelters where they could go during bombing alerts. Many of these were still there, functioning as garden sheds, decades later.

  Despite repeated efforts to bomb Vickers and the other shipyards and factories along the riverside, Benwell and Scotswood actually got off quite lightly. Very few of the bombs hit their targets and there was limited damage to local factories or homes. There were civilian casualties but nothing like the losses suffered in London and other cities. In fact, during the later stages of the war, evacuees from the south were being sent to the west end of Newcastle to escape the Blitz.

  One of the most famous incidents to occur during the war in this area was the snapping off of the top of the spire of St James’ Church by a stray barrage balloon. Many older residents remember seeing the resulting heap of stones and slates scattered across the road, where it remained for some time.

  At the end of the war, life in the west end gradually returned to pre-war normality. The children and families who had been evacuated to the countryside to escape the air-raids returned to their homes. Just as had happened during the First World War, the women who had been brought in to work at the armaments factories and in other ‘men’s jobs’ were pushed out again, and encouraged to take up roles as full-time housewives and mothers. Men and women returned from the armed forces, the Land Army, and other services, and took their place in civilian life once more.

• 1930s

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    Ferguson Lane Development 1934

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Chapel Terrace Compulsary Purchase Order 1934

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Chapel Terrace, 1935

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Scotswood 1930

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

  1930s

  The 1930s saw a further big growth of council housing locally, with the building of the Scotswood and Fergusons Lane estates.

  The push to provide council housing had continued through the interwar years, but the vision of building homes for heroes faded and was replaced by a focus on building more homes for less money. The new estates in Scotswood were built under a less generous government funding scheme governed by lower quality standards. They were meant primarily as a replacement for the slums demolished as a result of city centre clearance programmes.

  These interwar years saw the development of tenants associations on the local council estates as residents got together to push for repairs, environmental improvements and community facilities. Residents on Pendower finally got their own community hall in the 1930s, purpose-built on the recreation ground in the middle of the estate. Here they ran a full programme of social activities for all ages.

  Throughout these years, the local economy remained depressed, and many families struggled to cope with poverty and unemployment. It took another war to revive the area’s fortunes once more.

• 1920s

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    Buddle Road, 1920

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    Benwell Lane, 1928

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

  1920s

  After the war was over, the economic fortunes of the area slumped. Tyneside as a whole suffered badly in the great depression.

  The traditional industries of West Newcastle, such as heavy engineering, coal and steel, were seriously affected, and unemployment and poverty became more widespread. In retrospect it can be seen that an underlying cause of these problems was the endemic failure of much of British industry to re-invest adequately and maintain its competitive edge.

  One of the high profile casualties locally was Spencer’s Steelworks in Newburn, which shut in 1926 with the loss of more than 2,000 jobs. There were also a number of company mergers during this period, and several well known names disappeared. Armstrong’s merged with Vickers in 1927 to become Vickers-Armstrong.

  The area also suffered in other ways. This period witnessed the worst mining tragedy of its history in 1925 when a major disaster at the Montagu Pit in Scotswood claimed 38 lives. Most of the victims are buried at Elswick cemetery.

  On the positive side, the inter-war years saw the building of the first council estates in the area, providing homes for thousands of families who had previously been dependent on private landlords and often lived in appallingly cramped and unhygienic conditions.

  Pendower Estate was built in the 1920s as part of a national crash building programme to provide “homes fit for heroes” after the First World War. The City Council saw this as an opportunity to provide local families with generously designed, good quality homes with gardens at affordable rents. They chose a garden suburb model for Pendower which they hoped would offer the best aspects of a traditional English village.

• 1910s

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    Roberts Street Party, 1918

    ©: West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Children in the West End, 1910

    © West Newcastle Picture Collection

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    Benwell Tram Terminus, Adelaide Terrace, 1910

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

  1910s

  By the First World War, Armstrong’s factories employed an all-time peak of 20,000 workers. Women were drawn into the factories during this period to do jobs formerly the preserve of men – but once the fighting was over the women were out of work again.

  Although local industries were making healthy profits, local people did not always share in this prosperity. Poverty was common in Benwell and Scotswood mainly as a result of low wages and irregular work. Many children went barefoot, and the poorest families relied on meals provided by the council or charities. People lived in fear of the poor law and the workhouse. There was no free healthcare, and infectious diseases were rife, often claiming many lives at a very young age.

  The First World War was a boom time for employment but it was also a time of great loss and sadness for local people. Many Benwell and Scotswood men died as a result of a war which cost an estimated 37 million lives in total. The Benwell war memorial, which is located inside St James’ Church, records the names of all those local people who lost their lives as a result of the war.

• 1900s

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    Bridge Cresent, 1905

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Chapel Terrace 1905

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Canning Street School 1911

    ©: West Newcastle Picture History Collection

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    Benwell Lane, 1902

    © West Newcastle Picture History Collection

  1900s

  The first part of the 20th century was a time of growth for Benwell and Scotswood. Armstrong’s, which dominated employment locally, was booming and new homes were springing up across the area.

  However the growing population needed more than just housing; Scotswood Road was a lively thoroughfare packed with pubs, shops and churches, and Adelaide Terrace had also developed into a busy shopping area. Hodgkin Park had opened in 1899 in West Benwell, and in 1908 the Carnegie Library opened in Atkinson Road.

  Several new schools – including Canning Street, Atkinson Road and Denton Road – were also provided to meet the needs of the large numbers of children now living in the area.Local people also had their own organisations – the churches, trade unions, co-operative guilds and others – which were the backbone of social and community life in the area.

• INTRO

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    Benwell Village 1900

  INTRO

  The West End of Newcastle has for years, been a place of constant flux. In the last century the economic climate of the area has changed dramatically, from a booming industrial zone at the beginning of the 20th Century, to the decline and unemployment of  post war years stretching through to present day.

  At the same time, the urban landscape has fluctuated and shifted-from slum clearances to mass council housing projects,  privatisation schemes to high-rise tower block developments, interspersed with large-scale demolition, dispersal and ‘regeneration’ schemes.

  However, amongst all the changes, one thing is certain- the area has a rich history of people coming together, forming strong roots, identities and community structures.

  INDUSTRIAL ROOTS

  The area is best known for the huge Armstrong’s engineering works, first set up in 1847 at Elswick, and eventually extending some three miles along the riverfront. However the area had an important industrial history prior to this. The availability of coal and the river attracted key industries such as glass, iron and lead manufacture as well as glue works, brick makers, paper factories and others. This is why most of the big houses and mansions were higher up the slopes, away from the noise and dirt of the riverside industry.

  The Elswick Works originally built hydraulic machinery, but soon branched out into manufacturing bridges and then into armaments.

  The company grew rapidly, and in 1866 Armstrong’s came to an agreement with the shipbuilders Michells of Walker to develop naval work jointly, and later the two companies merged. In 1884 a shipyard was opened at the Elswick site concentrating mainly on building warships. The works now had the capacity to build and equip an entire warship from raw material to finished product.

  Armstrong’s became the most successful exporter of warships in the world. Customers included Austro-Hungary, Japan, China, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Turkey, as well as Britain.

  The Elswick Works now occupied 50 acres. It was at one time the biggest employer in Newcastle. By 1863, 3,800 people worked there, and by 1895 it employed 11,000. When there was a full order book, the workforce sometimes rose to 13,000.

  In 1899 Armstrong built a second armaments works at Scotswood. One of its main products was locomotives. Armstrong’s factories now dominated the riverfront, and also dominated employment locally. A variety of other industries. also ran along the banks of the Tyne, making the river inaccessible to local residents.

  GROWTH OF A COMMUNITY

  By the mid-19th century Tyneside was in the throes of an industrial revolution. The growing industries needed workers, and they came in their thousands – from nearby rural areas and from Ireland, Cornwall and other places further afield.

  The population of Tyneside grew tenfold during the 19th century. The west end of Newcastle became a boom town. The population of Elswick increased from 3,500 to 59,000 between 1851 and 1901, while Benwell’s grew from 1,272 to 18,512 during the same fifty year period.

  The second half of the 19th century saw thousands of new homes spring up across Benwell. By the start of the 20th century, most of South Benwell between Adelaide Terrace and the river was filled up with long rows of terraced housing, and residential development was rapidly extending across the northern part of the area also creating the densely built-up neighbourhoods of High Cross and North Benwell. These homes were for the ordinary working people who were needed to keep the factories and mines going, and also for the growing mass of white-collar workers who staffed the city’s burgeoning commercial and retail industries.

  The new housing was of variable quality. In general, the poorest housing was to be found lower down the banks near the factories, and the better quality homes were higher up.

  This period also saw an exodus of the rich families from their big houses and mansions, bound for more peaceful rural areas away from the encroaching urbanisation.