Once regarded as our Silicon Valley, the area was just scrubby heathland 200 years ago with a few rabbits & coal pits on the hillside and several workshops on the river bank (See oil painting below of West Newcastle c 1838 looking across the Tyne. A line of smoke shows the passage through Benwell of an early steam train, returning to Newcastle from Carlisle.)
Yet 70 years later the West End of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, fueled by coal mining had become the foremost engineering centre in the world with a population of 70,000. It kick-started the railway age, and produced inventions in hydraulic lifting, bridges, rifling & armaments, electric lighting and coal mining technology. Those who controlled these new industries made, said one commentator, “riches beyond the dreams of avarice”.
Walk now along the Scotswood Road beside the Tyne and you’ll find plenty of unemployed there but few signs of the area’s unique role in powering the world’s Industrial Revolution.
I’ve been reminded of all this just recently, firstly through reading Eric Schmidt’s comments in his MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh last week. Google’s CEO there contrasted the UK’s technophobic attitudes today with the past; and argued that our unwillingness to promote education in science and technology was hindering our capacity to create an economy for the digital age.
The second reminder came when we crossed the Pennines two weeks ago into Northumberland, Tyneside’s hinterland, to visit some of its finest houses & countryside.
Years ago I researched the history of the area (The Making of a Ruling Class: Two Centuries of Capital Development on Tyneside. Benwell Community Project. 1978) and showed the wealth accumulated by a handful of families from coal extraction and engineering. Significant amounts of this were invested in huge landholdings, mansions and castles in Northumberland and the Tyne Valley.
Today there’s little recognition of this process of capital flows. Cragside near Rothbury (See photo opposite), a mansion now owned by the National Trust, is a case in point. It was built in the 1870s by the armaments manufacturer, Lord Armstrong, whose huge factories and shipyards adjoined the Tyne in Newcastle’s West End. It’s fascinating for its use of technologies for the home.
It was the first house in the country to be fitted with electric lighting; and Armstrong is celebrated there for his range of inventions. But there is no mention of the lives and skills of the thousands of workers who created his wealth. I hope the National Trust takes note.
We had a welcome contrast at Longhirst near Morpeth where we stayed. This Georgian mansion and 4,000 acres were bought in 1887 by Baron Joicey, whose family had an engineering company in West Newcastle and were the largest coal owners in the north east coalfields.
Used as a college in the 1970s and now as a hotel and conference centre, Longhirst has a beautiful embroidered banner (See photo opposite) with a colliery’s winding gear towering above the mansion. At the bottom of this riveting image are two pitmen bent horizontal, straining every muscle to move the coal trucks down the track. Check it out – it’s worth the visit from Cumbria!
