Amid the Clamour

A slow year for posts. Partly this has been due to your correspondents age and health. Yet, the purpose that drove me to create this record of a green place here in busy and built up Newcastle has ripened as it resisted. There are now signs up to mark this 'battlefield (actually City Stadium) as definite place. 

Over my acquaintance with the City Stadium it has grown remarkably in character. It really does look and feel like a maturing open space*. The wildlife interest has grown – I hear intriguing news about what's been seen and not long ago saw a Buzzard not far away. Thus, my anxiety about what might happen here – de facto privatisation for one – has receded. But we all know that threats to 'open space' nowadays never can be said to have gone away. The fact that City Stadium was by-passed by the proponents of the Ouseburn Way was troubling.

In the intervening years the place of green space in cities has moved much higher up the political agenda. I think that cultural change is now more than a passing fashion. Covid 19 imposed more than a virus on to people's lives; it produced much anxiety and feelings of alienation that so many subsequently described as having been ameliorated solely through access to green space. Walking under trees and the sky suddenly became a life saver, something that scaled the social wellbeing ladder to recognition.

* As far as I am aware the City Stadium has no officially protected status

Another cause for some hope on the urban renewal front has been a growing awareness of heritage with a small 'h'. True, some fine buildings are in states of shameful neglect, awaiting some imaginative thinking. Numerous office blocks that never have had tenants and the 'here to stay' reality of internet shopping is closing down huge department stores with their high rentals and diminishing footfall, adding to inner urban dereliction. Some initiative is being trialled and I hope it succeeds in changing fortunes, life styles and culture with surprising .benefits ..

'Art Deco store to become apartments'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gl978dv0eo

Meanwhile .... We abide.

Peace and Joy to all
at this time

A Town walk

Pink Lane

In the last days of this on off Summer, I walked a route through what I call the heart of this city.

Because it still has a heart, – just. Despite the decades long assaults mounted on its once formidable Georgian and Victorian credentials by successive of City Councils, parts have somehow struggled through into the 21st century. Tellingly, these have a genuine character, that mysterious alchemical process of time and use that conveys something that mock stone paving and gleaming stainless steel beloved of planning mediocrities never can.

Here's hoping sometime in the future not too far off, this quality and its gift to the present will be cherished more than fat contracts to developers.

The Town walk photographic gallery can be found here. (off site link)

The walk begins outside St Andrew's Church, one of the city's oldest. and close to what was once the 'city cross', that marked the town centre in  olden days. A gaudy and useless piece of 'street art', an overblown desk ornament that might well be an up scaled version of the sort of thing chief planners have on their vast polished desks, blocks the pavement outside a modern gin palace.

The route turns right down into Stowell Street and then sharp left through into the site of Blackfriars Monastery, a ruin of an even earlier period of iconoclasm in the city's history. Some of the new development here isn't as crass as elsewhere. It's almost as if the developers paid attention to their surroundings.

Charlotte Square next. Once huge elm trees graced this little piece of green space in the gap between the Roman West Road and the New Town of Richard Grainger. Disease put paid to them. For some reason the City Council have never thought to replace them with more than shrubs and, you guessed it, paving and shining steel. One or two of the shop fronts around about are left overs from the past. With minimal attention here is a genuine 'place' that gives off the sort of feeling of the past times that other people in other places have valued. What it is not is a fake 'Quarter', a vapid invention of estate agents.

The walk continues past Pink Lane's exit onto the West Road. More of which later.

This area just to the west of the route of Hadrians Wall. Sandwiched between the St James's Boulevard (honest!) and the great Central Station, John Dobson's masterpiece and one of the finest railway stations in the U.K. is an area without a name. It has plenty of turnings, alley's and two of the best recent buildings, the North British apartments on Waterloo Street and Dance City. The Boulevard merits some praise if only for its trees, all of which have grown well without attendant vandalism. For some with a memory of how wretched this part of the city looked once upon a time in the 60s and 70s – hundreds of near wrecks sold on as secondhand cars only a tiny few of which shared body panels of the same colour – just an expanse of mud and packed down rubble and cyclone fencing. And a sex shop ...

Today it seems to want to thrive, needs to be loved for itself. Brave souls are pushing the boat out in the shape of a café and comedy cum community hub. And no one has cursed it by attaching the 'something Quarter' to it.

Here the walk turns south and then east back along Waterloo Street to admire a wonderful pairing, first of a Arts and Crafts facade with more than hint of the Vienna Secession about it; another fine building also needs some loving. Second, diagonally across from it stands a monument to bricklaying, standing tall and proud. If it isn't listed, there is a scandal in the making.

A swivel through to Clayton Street West's appendage. When is someone, anyone, going to do something about Goldberg's huge building, empty and uncared for in a prime location?

Over the road going down besides Pugin's St Mary's Cathedral and its epic spire and walking past Forth House, undoubtedly engraved by Thomas Bewick who had a workshop somewhere hereabouts. Try telling that to either the Council or the authors of the Buildings of England series. Sharp left and here we come into Pink Lane, once the site where the infamous Keith Crombie hosted his long gone Jazz Café, about which a film has been made. Here is an indestructible part of this city, admired by our present King no less – until they get around to it.

To be continued?

Downhill all the way ...

Stepney Bank August 2024

I met someone on one of my litter picks walking around Battlefield (a.k.a. City Stadium). She talked about Ouseburn and the way it's brighter now than for some time – brighter in the sense of thriving, alternative and welcoming.

So, I went out a few days later in brighter weather to make a photographic essay on Stepney Bank, beginning by Byker Bridge and New Bridge Street, down the step (a clue to the name?) bank noting the variety of buildings and uses as I walked.

Almost at once  found this eccentric plaque high up on a wall – doubtless to prevent someone from stealing it! I have no idea if the legend is true or something made up by a member of the Monty Python team in an idle moment. But it's so odd it might be true ... It just adds something more to the delight of this unconventional space.

The plaque records – 

Jára Cimrman
1869-1966 approx.
Bohemian philosopher
aventurer and inventor.
Jára Cimrman invented the electric light bulb 
assisted by local inventor Joseph Swan.
Thomas Edison later copied the idea and
presented it in his name.

Cimrman is also
noted for donating Jesmond Dene to the
people of Newcastle after winning it
from Lord Armstrong
in a game of cards.

Follow that!

By the finish of my walk I asked myself 'Is this the most interesting quarter of a mile in this city? Judge for yourself. Better, come and see it.

A link to a photographic gallery is here (off site link)

Ouseburn Forest

A photographic essay on the super abundance of high summer in Battlefield (a.k.a. City Stadium).

I walked through the well established woodland in the residual dene over looking the Lower Ouseburn. I deliberately emphasised the 'deep dark' aspects of this part of the open space. I would add that while I worked many people walked through going about their daily lives; this is the part of the green space the City Council wanted to give away last century, first as a car park then to one of the Universities to have and to hold, that a Public Relations wonk told me was 'threatening'. Well, that might be true after dark, but during the day, seems fine to many.

A portfolio here. Opens in new window.

Pilgrim's Way

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• “You can't ever go wrong with pearls. ..."
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Work on the 'Pilgrim Street Quarter' proceeds ... and proceeds. It seems an age since the old Commercial Union Building came down together with the Odeon cinema next door. In fact the entire block was pulverised.

The new offices for H.M. Government is taking shape. A phenomena I have noted before when a new building rises up in a dense urban space is how the newcomer makes one look at the surrounding buildings with a fresher eye. The truly dreadful Pearl Building facing the Ministry Building has assumed a sort of grandeur it never posessed before; a Brutalist quality that one either loathes (most people) or loves (a much smaller band of fans). Brutalism is a hard sell for building conservationists to make an arguement for, and a striking example of this stark style, the Trinity Square Gateshead Multi Storey car park, went to dust long ago, despite starring in famous, or notorious, British crime movie classic Get Carter.*

However, other buildings further down Pilgrim Street towards that 60s grotesque, Swan House, have had a renaissance. Instead of being knocked flat  like so much else across the city in recent decades, these have been given a facelift and are being turned into 'apartments'. The superb facade of the former North Eastern Electricity Board building sweeping majestically down Market Street has been preserved, but the interior gutted. In Carliol Square a huge development is being given foundations that suggest something bigger still to overlook 'stunning views' – of the Central Motorway.

So the contrasts keep coming. This transformation of the inner city has had to take account a declining retail sector on our high street and a determination to get rid of motor cars **

It is too late to lament the planning disasters of the past, the continuing confusion as to purpose that finds it's outlet digging up Northumberland Street or Grey Street for the umpteenth times, shows nothing is really settled in the schizoid world of Newcastle's Planning Department – on pavement astro turf and potted skips, banners and gormless feature objets d'art –  but hopeful the city will survive. It always does.

Photographic gallery here (off site link)

* Link to Wikipedia article on the film  here.

** Ironically, the whole of the Pilgrim Street 'Quarter' was ear marked for credit card shopping in the ill fated era of corporative slush money ventures, namely 'High Street U.K.' The financial slump of 2007-8 did for that.