Venice of the North Part II

A WALK IN THE SUN

The day I walked around the Central Motorway (see Venice of the North Part I below for images) was cool but sunny. The trees planted beside the motorway where it slashes through Exhibition Park and Brandling Village were bright with fresh foliage; sunlight flashed on windscreens as cars and commercial vehicles passed by.

What could be the problem?

The Central Motorway was planned when car use in the United Kingdom was lower by far than today; particularly lower in the regions further away from the Home Counties. Ambitious to a degree, it was less a road system than a planning statement. It was a tool with which the small core of Newcastle city, old, refined and yes, faded it must be said, was to be made irrelevant. I remember on a first visit to Newcastle in 1971 seeing a large drawing headed 'Newcastle 2000?' in a window. It presented an isometric view of a city criss-crossed by broad highways spotted with the odd vehicle, flanked by numerous Modernist tower blocks; think Scalelectric and Lego. This was to be a completely new city, modern, clean and sharply proportioned, a break with the past in more ways than one.

As  child I remember going through grey and derelict streets - some spaces between dingy shops boarded over, above which growths of shrubs could be seen against scarred brickwork. Bombed out buildings. Together with my mother we climbed steps into some forbidding goverment office, huge dark and cold, to wait for 'our turn'. As I recall, we were there under sufferance. Post War England was still then a place where social degree counted. For ever after I have equated the sight of marble with the objectionable term 'knowing my place'.

T. Dan Smith's generation of socialists were determined to overthrow privilege and to build it out of sight. The association of a unjust and unwarranted social division with buildings is hard to grasp now; not then. The temples of the ruling class had to give way in a new democratic age, one best expressed in the Modern Movement in architecture. It is with that aim in mind I write about what went wrong.

The plans were never completed as conceived. It was evidently much easier to gain access to government funds for road building than to attract investors for commercial ventures; a few of today's many empty office blocks around the city date from this time, including one surviving 'vista blocker' stretching out over Pilgrim Street. Some money did flow into Newcastle. Marks and Spencer's store on Northumberland Street was built in this period.

The Central Motorway went ahead despite protests. The lovely Royal Arcade was demolished. The Holy Jesus Hospital building with its quaintly small brick, was cemented into a canyon of a prison surrounded by dual carriageways. A vast office block named Swan House was built partly to cover the throat of the Motorway as it led off in the direction of the Town Moor beyond Shieldfield, Sandyford, Brandling Park and Exhibition Park, a route that took it through Victoria Square. Completed it acts as a physical barrier between two halves of the city. As such it remains; inflexible and immovable now.

In the photographs I took on that day I made sure to record all the pedestrian routes from north of the road towards the city centre. All require walkers to enter tunnels. I am no longer young and I am not so small; but I always feel uneasy entering pedestrian tunnels; I do not suffer from claustrophobia either. It is however somehow a threatening experience. Walkers have no choice. It is this or a bus. Yet, in my early days living in the city a walk to work or study was popular and easy. Now pushed underground by cars, the experience seems less attractive; even on a sunny day in Spring.

I had to weave about to gain access to views of the motorway. It's branches cut in and over one another. The complex around Exhibition Park is particularly confusing; in a car in heavy traffic it can be decidedly alarming. A link to the city and the north combines with one going west to south. Huge concrete legs stride between grown trees. A slice of Brandling Park is linked to Exhibition Park by the largest of the motorway's underpass pedestrian tunnels, one that incorporates stairways to abandoned bus stops. Climbing up I found only broken glass, green slate marquetry walls daubed with anti-graffiti paint and a close up view of speeding traffic. Perhaps someone had a dream of crowds being dropped off here to attend rallies in what was left of Exhibition Park?

Later, beside the Great North (formerly Hancock) Museum, I found Lord Armstrong's statue glaring down from its plinth on the 'city' spur of the motorway and took his photograph. (See slideshow) He looks grim, even for an arms dealer. Unhappy? He might feel more so if he had been unlucky enough to have been placed next to Swan House. The southern end of the Central Motorway is certainly far less prepossessing; in fact it is a blighted, cheerless place in any weather. Abandoned by its corporate tenants last century, Swan House was converted into apartments and given a flashy contemporary name. It should have been demolished.

What is done is done. Roads have been widened, most recently around St Thomas' in the Haymarket. Of the remaining parts of the jig-saw of urban motorways planned to meet up here, there are currently no plans to complete. It seems unlikely anyone would try to do so now, much less likely they would find the public support Smith could count upon or buy. The days of T. Dan Smith are over. Guided only by a misplaced vision of equality, Smith did much damage to the city of his birth, even beyond the scope of the Central Motorway. Contrary to belief he did not profit from the schemes he laid in place, though others did. When I saw him in the flesh he was living out his time quietly in a tower block of quite intentionally inappropriate design for its setting, with, however, a great view of his one abiding legacy to Newcastle; the western spine of his 'grands projets' speeds past below.

Intermission

A slight pause. I have been watching with interest as the new University of Newcastle Business School at Gallowgate takes shape. Ingeniously sandwiched between the former Newcastle and Scottish Breweries administration block (itself being converted into a hotel) and Pitt Street, the distinctive cladding and angular facades give this building a 'stealth bomber' appearance.

Behind lies the huge spaces of the former Scottish and Newcastle Brewery site, destined so it is claimed to become Newcastle's 'Science City'. Maybe. In these straightened times finance must be an issue. This is sad news. If the building designed for this impressive corner of the city - for too long neglected and stymied by single use and access problems - is an example of what to expect then this will be an exciting addition to the city, adding to a growing re-orientation westwards in the city's focus.

Taking advantage of the (nearly surreal) good weather I have compiled a portrait of the new building, tacking on one of another older development slightly further up Barrack Road; the fine 'in-fill' building which today houses a firm of city solicitor's, long a favourite new building. Let us be honest, how many have there been?

Venice of the North Part I

I HAD A DREAM

The dream of a city where a vision of the future could be built over the bones of an older one inspired T. Dan Smith. It was not a contemptible idea exactly. But the vision produced a nightmare to some.

Smith's often quoted phrase that he wanted to create "a Venice of the North" replacing canals with motorways, sums up planning hubris for me. His name is perhaps synonymous with stamping down on corruption in local government, corruption that took Smith to prison; he paid for his wrong doing and ended his life a controversial figure, not without supporters; his tangible legacy to the city of his birth however, is still here, huge and impossible to ignore, or sweep away. Its most fulsome expression for me is the notorious Central Motorway constructed in the early 1970s.

When I first arrived in Newcastle in 1971 work had begun on this giant civil engineering scheme to build four lane highways, parts of which were double decked, straight through the heart of Newcastle, knocking aside Victorian buildings and tree lined parks to carry vehicles into the very centre of the city; cars were to represent gondolas; concrete and tarmac, canals. I had never seen earth works on such a scale before and struggle today to imagine where I was standing when I gazed into those craters. I recall meeting an old man at the time, tall and distinguished, stumbling along a temporary pedestrian walkway over the mud who told me he thought he knew the city once but was now lost. Whole terraces of decent houses were knocked down and streets disappeared. Graceful Victoria Square gone, replaced by a combined flyover and underpass; Exhibition Park bisected and dozens of mature trees felled, a city cut in half. Trying to superimpose what was once there over what is now, is well nigh impossible. Yet, destructive as it was, this scheme for urban motorways was never entirely finished. More routes had been planned. As late as the end of the century, more bits of the network were still being built. Connecting these together has however, happily proved to be beyond Smith's successors.

Before the end of the 70s work on the Tyne and Wear Metro had begun, joining the two halves of north and south Tyneside with a short tunnel under the city, eliminating a huge number of road journeys and opening up distant suburbs to commuting. Then, a western by-pass carried long distance traffic well away from the city centre. The destruction of Newcastle City however remains a fact; the need for it ever more distant and remote like the dream that inspired it.

Walking about with my camera on a very warm April day in 2011, re-living these thoughts, I found a tree in Exhibition Park which still bears traces of the cross and question mark left by protester's who painted signs on so many trees to confuse the motor way constructor's tree felling teams. It did not work. Protests however, there were in plenty.

City of Bridges

I cannot think of a city which has the number and variety of bridges that Newcastle has. If you do, please write to me.

The city is actually built on a gorge, disguised by building now. Transecting this ravine gorge are other deep cut river valleys, hereabouts called 'denes'. One of these is the Ouseburn dene, partly covered over by Victorian planners but still an obstacle to road and rail. The Lower Ouseburn has some wonderful bridges; one, the 19th century marvel of railway building is being given a complete life enhancement. Serious work has begun to tackle this mammoth task. Speaking to a workman I discovered the timetable is no less than fourteen months.

Presently, work is under way to prepare the site. Heavy equipment will have to be deployed and the structure has to be replaced like for like since it is officially listed Grade II. Apart from that badge of national recognition it also carries the vital London to Edinburgh rail link. Traffic is continuous. The bridge will have to remain open for business throughout.

A new exercise and training yard has been constructed away from the bridge for use by the Stepney Bank riding school. Spring has also sprung so it will be interesting to see what effect the works has on wild life. I disturbed a Sparrowhawk from a tree beside the bridge so the outlook seems good – so far.

Wandering about (and abiding by the rules and not infringing the site boundary) I went on via Stepney Bank.

I like Stepney Bank. To me it has precisely the features I have remarked on more than once on this blog; informal, flexible spaces of a variety of interests and businesses. It is neither precious or self consciously 'arty'; graphic designers sit in offices next to garage repair businesses and a stables survives half way up. At the top of the 'bank' (rise), where this 19th century street dipping down to the Tyne, meets a busy and anonymous arterial road, the feeling of alienation common to such suburban spaces is thwarted by the robust bulk of a traditional British public house that might have brought a beaming smile to the face of G.K. Chesterton.

Waiting in the wings

Either the weather or my spirits have been wrong and some planned excursions have yet to take place; others are shaping in my mind. I have several points to raise, issues on which to muse.

Meanwhile George Shaw, painter, has an exhibition of his work on at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art ("The Sly and Unseen Day").

George Shaw. From "The Sly and Unseen Day"

Shaw's work reminds me of Philip Larkin's poetry. Larkin wrote from his adopted Hull and conjures up the flatness and bleakness of that region well, mirroring it's fading purpose (the nearby Humber Bridge, so vast, was described as "the bridge to nowhere") within his own private life and the desperation of internalised disappointment so typical of his finest poetry.

Shaw makes a similar journey through the post war housing estates of his native Coventry (before Hitler, as fine a medieval city as any on the Continent). He depopulates his world, leaving few traces of human activity above the menial: A bus stop, a dog shit bin, scrawled and scratched graffiti behind an abandoned working men's club are the few signs of life; the once fashionable blank walls and Bauhaus Light new town architecture re-cycled in minimalist images painted, as all his work is, in enamel paint, supposedly meant for model makers. Yet, there are some memorable things in the show, even if, in nearly forty works (by my estimate) the sun appears once only directly and once by reflection. Otherwise the Coventry weather is all pewter coloured skies and wet concrete. If that sounds dreary, it is the same dreary one finds in Bergman films or Chekov's plays. Haunting.