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

• 
  
• “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.

One (bad) idea ...

I located the e-mail sent mentioned in the post below this.

 'One idea being mooted is the creation of a New Ouseburn Interceptor for Sewage Effluent (NOISE). The logic of this is that a piecemeal approach to solving the sewage outflow problem will not be sufficient. Fifty years ago, a friend of mine, Nog O’Rorke, was in charge of building the new interceptor sewer along the north bank of the Tyne, which was supposed to solve Newcastle’s sewage problems. Well, time and development have caught up with us and Newcastle’s sewage needs a fresh approach. The most logical route for NOISE is buried under the existing banks of the Ouseburn and creating a new covered channel underneath the Stadium. This would bypass the existing Ouseburn culvert, which has been there for over 100 years and we have no information about its present or future condition. Does anyone?

However, just bunging our sewage into the Tyne instead of the Ouseburn is not a permanent solution and the possibility of rescuing the organic components of human sewage is tantalising in this age of renewables. If this was done, then a state of the art sewage works in the Stadium could produce up to 100,000 tonnes of clean, healthy, organic fertiliser each year.'

Where does one start with such an idea? By ignoring the locals that's how.

Just the place for a sewage works?

Sludgefield?

The Ouseburn in thoughtful mood

 

A slightly disturbing idea that has been mooted to solve the chronic sewage pollution issue that is inflicted on the Ouseburn – see previous post. I am reluctant to criticise people who have done much to raise the profile of the key problem affecting our local waterway, but fear I must.

There needs to be serious (and expensive) engineering to solve the present conditions; heavy rainfall is dealt with by the same pipework that conveys sewage and waste water. When I write 'dealt with' I mean dumped. The risk of sewage plus rainwater backing up into homes or onto streets is too graphic. So 'outfalls' to cope with storm flows – sudden, and violent – dumps the excess into the nearest river. Hence the entire U.K. (mostly England) now faces the unhappy fact that its numerous streams and rivers are polluted to a greater or lesser extent with human waste. Hold on, you 'wild swimmers'. 

It has been just too convenient (pun intended) to use this cheap mechanism to side step improving at considerable cost, the combo of sewage and rainfall, money that would be paid out these days to shareholders.

One idea raised in discussions by the newly founded Ouseburn Way pressure group would be a pipeline running parallel (?) to the Ouseburn fetching up somewhere like the City Stadium (a.k.a. Battlefield) and into a new treatment works!

This stuck me as a very unwelcome idea. However, Newcastle has a fairly impressive track record for bad ideas becoming reality.

Since much of the most aggressive use of the 'now you see it, now you don't' technique applied to sewage occurs around the Benton district, a simpler solution (these puns just write themselves) would be somewhere higher up the Ouseburn route.

Massive house building along the upper route of the Ouseburn should have included new or modernised sewage and waste water management. It appears it hasn't, but I see no reason to visit this neglect on slowly improving Shieldfield and the Lower Ouseburn Valley. That really would be passing the dirty end of the stick to somewhere that thought its days of grime were long gone. Besides, a tunnel would be a hell of an undertaking and the foreign owners of Northumbrian Water would have to really have their arms twisted to fork up the cash required ... Not that I dismiss that in and of itself.

We await events.

Where there's muck ...

 The sad truth is that the key to cleaning up the Ouseburn, the stream that runs beneath the City Stadium (a.k.a. Battlefield) lies out side the reach of either the Newly formed Ouseburn group or the City Council. Investors in Northumbrian Water plc, a foreign owned company, expect a return on their cash and if that means this insignificant (to them at least) waterway is regularly flushed with raw sewage, so? Any fine issued by Ofwat, the official industry 'watchdog', if it materialised, would be relatively small, a mere 'cost of doing business', compared to the very large sums required re-engineer sewage disposal, sums that would impact dividends. You do know how this works, don't you?

The Guardian columnist George Monbiot explains.

I sincerely hope the new Ouseburn Initiative group inspired by the Reece Foundation achieves much. However, the insuperable obstacle will be how to enforce the one thing that would make a crucial difference: Water quality. Re-Nationalisation of the water companies – who have squeezed thousands of millions out of the consumer for less than stellar performance over pollution and systemic leaks – would seem to be the only real option.

Chain saw and chain letter (revisited)

 Three years ago – it seems longer – the lovely cherry trees along Portland Road facing the miserable in all weather conditions Shieldfield office block* were cut to stumps, part it seemed of a site clearance for a new Lidl's supermarket. They were about to come into bloom.

This isn't the prettiest spot in the district, though improving slightly. The loss of this signpost to Spring was particularly depressing.

Battlefield wielded its pen (e-mail version). Three local Councillors were contacted. Always be polite, and we were. The question was why? The position of the largest Cherry tree was not going to be a problem for the development. A previous showroom on this site hadn't found it to be.

Answer there came none. Your local Councillors have better things to do**.

Lidl U.K. however could not have been more helpful. We received a long explanatory letter with complete drawings and renditions of the building planned for site, and the intention to plant further trees up 25 in total. The would also be a comprehensive re-cycling facility to handle packing and other waste a materials. 

Then the bombshell: Lidl U.K. had been instructed to cut down the existing Cherry trees by Newcastle City Council! The 'long term' idea, they apparently explained to Lidl U.K., was for a cycle path alongside the pavement. Going where, I ask?

Since when, following Covid and a recession, the site languishes. We could do with a Lidl's – a point I made in reply to Lidl U.K.'s kind advices to us here at Battlefield.

But the Cherry Tree has been reborn. With a bit of craft it might be restored to something fine and beautiful, a harbinger of better things to come.

Mutilated but still magnificent in bloom April 2024

*Used mostly by good sorts of organisations these days. I am not blaming these for the architectural failing to inspire.

** None are standing any longer.

Spring Stop Go

 Warm weather then more rain and cold. It's Spring as we know it.

I caught a rumour about the Council having 'plans' for the City Stadium, but as yet no solid information. When it comes it will be bad news. One can rely on that.

Next the Daffodils (and sunshine!)

Ouseburn Way – Downhill from here?

 

An initiative has been launched that plans to regenerate the entire length of the Ouseburn. This initiative is supposedly sponsored by the Reese Foundation who have a website with details of their plan and a video here. (off site link)

The Reese Foundation gave a presentation to the Natural History Society of Northumbria (NHSN) on 13th January 2024. NHSN supports the Reece Foundation's 'vision' for the Ouseburn Way.

I attended this meeting. I concluded that Reece are sincere but that the scheme a.k.a. Ouseburn Way fits into a pattern that Newcastle (and North Tyneside Council) are keen to expand over green space:  Housing.

In a communication that I had before the meeting of the N.H.S.N. I wrote:–

'... my experience of Newcastle City Council’s public consultation is negative (pace the Leazes Park scandal of last century). As I understand it, the City Stadium site that I have devoted much time to recording on my blog, has no Statutory designation. When Newcastle City Council applied for National Lottery grants for the route of the Ouseburn through Armstrong and Heaton Parks the City Stadium was excluded. There were plans on the table in 1997-8 to convert the Stadium site into (variously)  a car park (1300 spaces!) and then a sports complex for students. During one viewing of these public plans of the City Stadium site as it then existed, it was described to me by a P.R. agent as ’threatening’ – a ploy used with some success against Leazes Park.

Much of what the Ouseburn from Haddrick’s Mill down to the Tyne has arisen through local initiative or that great ally of Nature, neglect. The chief issue is the water quality. Since this is the responsibility of a foreign owned water business with only a fiduciary duty to its shareholders I see this as an Achilles heel for the promoters of the scheme. Other factors are a lack of husbandry and litter – I do a small amount when I can. New exercise equipment and furniture rapidly disappeared beneath graffiti.

Newcastle City Council (a series of Russian dolls in truth) are irredeemably corporatist and well matched to the theme park approach ably set out in the [Reece Foundation] video. I judge this to be a way to entice property developers to brick in the upper Ouseburn even beyond current plans; the character of the Lower Ouseburn has been lost through greed. The interest in wildlife is pure Disney-dressing.'

Tidying up the Ouseburn and giving this water course a 'branding' is way to attract house builders and increase property values and Council Tax receipts for two cash strapped local authorities. Reece may think they can play the Councils' but my thoughts are entirely 180 degrees opposite.

A public meeting has been called to discuss the less than obvious implications of these proposals further.

A view

I stumbled on this video recently. It covers some of the same ground and opinions shared by this blog, so I post it here: Link to YouTube in new window.

David's Linkedin  (Off site link}

Lighting up green space ...

Whoever we are, wherever we are, contact with something greater than ourselves

The indefatigable John Urquhart has been campaigning for several years to retain the integrity of Havannah Nature Reserve from being entirely swamped by Newcastle City Council's chums and co-partners in ribbon housing development on the city's Green Belt (sic). Here is his latest missal (missile?) delivered to the self promoting 'green conscious' planners in the Civic Centre: 

(The Journal 9th January 2023, reproduced by permission)

 Dear Sir

If anyone wonders why biodiversity is on the decline, they need look no further than Newcastle City Council.  Their latest move on the environment is to drive a strategic lighted path smack through the middle of Havannah Nature Reserve, involving 25 streetlights at a height of five metres each.

Even a nine-year-old child knows that such a plan will play havoc with the ecology of Havannah, particularly nocturnal wildlife and bats.

This plan is a complete misuse of public funds at a time when vital sectors in Newcastle are crying out for cash. If our 78 city councillors are so concerned about putting “development” before wildlife, then they should pay for this plan out of their own pocket.  Already we pay them thousands of pounds a year to act in our best interests, but this certainly is not.  Each of them should also provide an answer to the simple question; “Why are you so unaware of nature that you are prepared to wreck Havannah by putting through this ridiculous lighting scheme?”

Even a nine-year-old deserves an answer to that question.


Yours faithfully

John Urquhart
Cities 4 People

During the restrictions imposed by the Covid Pandemic, millions of us discovered the mental and physical benefits of accessing green spaces close to home; numerous anecdotes and articles attested to the 'saving grace' of being able to walk outside locally, even in the least of green places close to home, islands in which for a while one could lose oneself, unwind, relax, think .... The mental health aspects of contact with nature – even being able to see it from a sick bed – are well known and widely accepted. For this insight into our lives to be pushed ever further away by an entirely financially driven cynical answer to our national housing problem is worse than short sighted*. But it is surely part of a pattern – that our Council's  greenwash is getting so dilute now however much they splash it around, one can see straight through it.

* My thoughts on that real housing crisis will play a part in future posts. Expensive, aspirational housing (often investment vehicles) on the countryside fringes aren't and never were meant to be the answer to the problem.