Ouseburn Walk Part the Two

Sometimes I think one should be silent and let the images do the talking.

Link to Part the Two slideshow here.

I would say just this. How much I love the inconsequential and the unplanned; a roadway made long ago from pieces of volcanic dolerite jumbled together are to be treasured. Jacob's Sheep and nearby a veteran Rolls-Royce (when they were such). Views of places that might be far outside rather than inside a city.

Ouseburn Walk Part the First

A run of days of clear blue, cold skies. Time to record the passing season and note the changes taking place between 'Battlefield' open space and the Lower Ouseburn Valley as the days grow longer.

Increasingly, I am attracted to chaos. Interposed against the creep of planning, its order and mediocrity, are the stubborn, the ugly beauty of chance and accident. Despite the earth movers and cranes, tarmac and 'directions', Ouseburn retains its scraps and scars like a unloved fringe, waiting for recognition. 

I hope you agree. Link to off site slideshow gallery here

A View from the Bridge

 Quayside

Amber Films – a collective of like-minded film makers and photographers – made this short film in 1974. It is about Newcastle and was made for the City's planners at a time when the city was being re-developed along Modernist lines. Some of the city's fine architecture that had been valued and was of historic importance regionally and nationally, had already been demolished by this time. More was to follow in the next decade.

You can watch it on this link here.

The film was rejected by the planners – they appear at the end of this film working in an office that is high up in the then newly built Civic Centre where T. Dan Smith, the controversial leader of the Labour local government, worked to bring about this transformation of a run down, but still magnificent Georgian Victorian city, into somewhere that could have been anywhere. Smith later fell from grace and went to prison for corruption – though he personally seems to have made little or nothing from this. After his release Amber Films made a film about him instead of one about the city he and his associates set out to destroy. The film about Smith is somewhat better than this one Amber made on Newcastle, but it does give a truthful portrait of how the city looked and felt forty years ago. Perhaps that is why it was rejected.

The opening shots of Newcastle's Quayside and the bridges is taken from the then run down area called The Side, where Amber were based and still are. Murray Martin, who produced this film, went on to nearly single handedly prevent the destruction of the Quayside by the planners. If you watch the planners in their office playing with their tiny plywood rectangles and plain faced tower blocks you can get a sense what might have been.

Bigg Market

Full Circle

Another year comes to a warmish and wet close. More activity around Battlefield than in previous years: A cycle track and another huge student accommodation block nearing completion with what looks like another being built alongside. How many more student accommodation blocks can this city sling up? Maybe next year comes the answer. (A former trading estate site close by Battlefield has been cleared for development …)

To close the year's blog posts a record of a recent walk around the patch I call Battlefield here.

With Best Wishes to you and yours at this season of goodwill.

Grace notes

What struck me when I came to live next to the dene that carries the Ouseburn down to the River Tyne, was the speed with which one could move from quiet suburban streets into woodland and riverside. That and the visible signs of past occupations, the remnants and the patch work of time. No planner does this and it is quite impossible to re-create outside of a television or film set.

It is the reason now that when planners do think of heritage the ideas are as fake as Mary Poppins Old London Town. Someone once told me – and this may be true – that a lot of city re-creation efforts (hard design) are sourced from a style manual: 'Victorian' lamp posts, bespoke paving slabs, authentic cobble-type features, bollards and litter bins and so on; all mail order heritage. One can find this tat everywhere now.

Untidy as it is, the genuine arises from and through human activity over a long time period and should be cherished as such. Time apparently is in short supply now. Imagination in very short supply.  The public has to be ushered through life like tourists being fed the basic facts – 'Got it?' – and rushed off to the next sales point. Our function as consumer spending units is being underlined to us in so many ways in so many places. Time is blurring before our eyes. Everything is the same and has never altered.

This photographic journey was lazy leisurely and thoughtful. I share it with you here.

Grace notes