Following a personal interest in Susan Philipsz site specific installations which use found sound and old Scottish laments to create eery sound pieces of the city of Glasgow, I decided to take on board Ashleigh's comments during the group tutorial where she described Philipsz work as the imprint of Glasgow and apply Philipsz techniques and interests in Industry and Heritage and try to apply them to Newcastle.
This began my research into Newcastle's industrial heritage, looking for sites of interest where, historically, large production, transportation and development took place to accommodate Newcastle's industrial age. I wanted to see whether any sites of historic interest were still in use today and, if not, what had happened to these obsolete industrial sites - had they been refurbished into something new or left to be reclaimed by nature.
Industrial Period (1750-1950)
A term used to describe a range of economic activities which are based on the sourcing, manipulation and movement of raw materials for commercial gain, Industry has, in the modern era, expanded to include activities as diverse as banking, computer software engineering and forestry. Originally however, in the industrial development period (1750-1950), it was associated with the transformation of natural raw materials into useful products using water-power or coal as the primary source of energy.
The Great Northern Coalfield, long established as the biggest producer of coal in the country, and a variety of other industries had became established on the banks of the River Tyne by taking advantage of the abundance of cheap fuel. During the 19th century, however, when coal replaced water as the main power source of industrial Britain, this apparent advantage of the region in terms of its coal supplies and access to waterways did nothing to encourage the development of industrial Newcastle. Growth was not as rapid as areas such as West Yorkshire, Merseyside and Clydesdale in the crucial fields of iron production and engineering. Shipbuilding was also held back due to the terrible state of the river Tyne and by the continuation of the wooden shipbuilding tradition.
In the mid 19th century, river improvements were undertaken and the increase of iron and later steel production in the region allowed for the the regions transformation to Britain's most forefront industrial centre. This period of rapid growth in the 19th century, particularly after 1850, was fuelled, critically, by a dramatic increase in North-East coal production and, along with ready access to sources of other raw materials, such as iron, and access to markets via river and sea, was the main factor in the industrial success of the region. The industrial development of the region was associated with large-scale social change. The recorded population of Newcastle rose from 28,000 in 1801 to 215,000. Large new housing developments grew alongside the major collieries, engineering and shipbuilding works, as well as in the commercial centres, while the new elite of industrialists built grand residences for themselves. The wealth of Tyneside contributed to the wholesale planned redevelopment of a large part of Newcastle city centre in the 1830s, an example of successful town planning which has survived to the present day.
Industries
Coal
Coal had been extracted from outcrops or shallow seams in the valleys of the Tyne, Derwent and Wear from the 13th century. By the mid-16th century, Whickham and Dunston were the main areas which had been extensively developed for the coal industry. As more of the shallow coal deposits became worked out on Tyneside, in the late 17th and early 18th century there was a steady drift of mines towards Newcastle itself. The introduction of the Newcomen pumping engine to North-East coalmines in the 18th century helped to ease the problems caused by flooding. This, along with other improvements, including innovations in shaft and tunnel construction, saw the depth at which coal could be mined increased from 300 feet in 1700, to around 600 feet in the middle of the century and up to 1000 feet by 1800.
Coal Transport
The early coal industry persisted with the use of horse-pulled carts on 'wains' (trackways) until well into the 18th century when the introduction of railways enabled coal production to keep pace with demand, particularly when industrial use increased n the 19th century, and in consequence rail transport had become inextricably linked with the coal industry. The first railways, or 'waggonways' were introduced from the early 17th century and were largely responsible for a considerable increase in coal production during the early 18th century. The earliest waggonways used timber tracks and wagons pulled by horses. By the late 18th century stationary steam engines had begun to be used to haul wagons up steep inclined, for the first time replacing the horse as the means of traction. Then, early in the 19th century the first steam traction engines came into use. By the time the early locomotives began to replace stationary engines and horses, wooden rails had been replaced by iron.
Most of the commercial wagonways and railways led to the banks of the navigable rivers where structures known as staithes were constructed in order to off-load the coal into boats known as keels. Staithes are known to have been present on the Tyne by 1600 and many others were built subsequently, notably at Wallsend, North Shields, Dunston and Swalwell. These structures were built on an increasingly large scale during the 19th century, culminating in the huge drops at Tyne Dock, Jarrow, built in the 1850s, and the even larger Dunston Staithes (Europe's Largest Wooden Structure), constructed in 1890 by the North Eastern Railway Company.
Iron and Steel
The local availability of iron ore, alongside coal, provided the lifeblood for the giant nineteenth and early twentieth century industries of shipbuilding, locomotive engineering, civil engineering and armament manufacture. The raw material of the iron and steel industry, iron ore, was quarried from a number of places locally and imported by sea from Yorkshire. The large Tyne Iron Works opened at Lemington in 1797 and the nearby Spencer’s Steel Works, developed in the latter part of the 19th century from a small forge site that had operated from c.1810. However, in association with shipbuilding, important ironworking concerns formed part of coherent industrial complexes on the lower Tyne, as at Jarrow under Charles Palmer, whose colliers returning from London brought in ironstone from Staithes. In addition to industrial ironworks, a large number of smaller forges and smithies continued to operate for local use in the villages of Tyne and Wear examples include works at Blaydon Burn, Lamesley and Whickham.
Shipbuilding and Engineering
Engineering developed on Tyneside hand in hand with the coal and shipbuilding industries, which not only supplied cheap fuel, but also a source of demand for engineering products. The second half of the 19th century was the main period of expansion in the engineering industry, led by pioneers such as W. G. Armstrong, who established and ran his Elswick factory throughout most of the second half of the century, developing it into a huge integrated complex incorporating shipbuilding, marine engineering, armaments production and various other engineering enterprises. The engineering industry led to innovation and commercial success, but also caused social change. Many innovations were exhibited at institutions such as the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society, whose members came from the entrepreneurial elite whose members had been propelled into the higher ranks of society by their commercial successes. The industrial workers, meanwhile, were housed in vast estates of terraced housing which grew around the main industrial areas and swallowed what had previously been small rural settlements, such as Elswick and Wallsend. Schools, churches and other public buildings and services not previously provided for the working classes were built in association with the new housing developments, often paid for by the major employers. The engineering workers were relatively prosperous and, by the 1870s, very numerous, allowing them to gain reduced working hour on both Tyneside and Wearside in 1871.
Quarrying A very large number of quarries are listed in the County Heritage Environment Record. Most were used for the extraction of stone, but clay, gravel and coal can also be quarried. The stone quarried may be further divided into those sourcing grindstones, as at Springwell quarry near Gateshead, building stone (usually sandstones), and those quarrying limestone for the lime industry. In the latter case the quarries, particularly those of the 19th century, are often associated with lime kilns or with waggonways leading to kilns, as at Sunderland Town Moor and Fulwell quarry.
Pottery making The development of the pottery industry in the region was facilitated by the availability of cheap coal, ballast cargoes including Cornish clay and flint for glazes and local brown earths. These factors meant that most potteries were located on the riverside, where raw materials and finished products could be loaded directly onto ships. The pottery industry developed strongly from the mid-18th century and, a little later, in the Ouseburn area, where many potteries operated in the 19th century. The number of potteries in Newcastle grew from six in 1801 to over 20 in 1827, and the Wearside pottery industry was exporting around 300,000 pieces annually by 1818. Most of the potteries in the Newcastle area had closed by the early 20th century, but the famous Maling and Sons works in Walker Road, Newcastle survived until 1963 and pottery pieces from here are still widely sought after today.
Brick and tile-making Brickmaking became established in the 18th century and grew further in the 19th/20th centuries, when local brown earths were used to produce building bricks and fireclay from the coal seams was used to produce heat-resistent firebricks, used for the construction of kilns and furnaces in various local industries. Many early brickworks were small-scale, short-lived operations, sometimes connected to collieries and lime works but in general larger works were more successful and longer-lived, such as Cowen’s brickworks at Blaydon, one of the most important in the 19-20th centuries.
Glass making In the middle of the 19th century the glass industry of Tyneside and Wearside produced the greater part of the national output, making this the greatest period in the long history of glass making in the region. Production also continued on the Ouseburn into the early or mid-19th century, having peaked there in the 17-18th centuries. Lemington Glass Works, opened in 1787 by the Northumberland Glass Company was also an important producer from the late 18th to late 20th centuries. Initially, flat glass was produced from 4 large glass cones, but after 1906 the works was expanded and fitted it out for production of light bulbs and tubes. The remaining cone at Lemington stands 120 feet high. Glassmaking fell into deep decline in the depression of the 1880s and the following decades.
Chemicals The chemicals industry always exploited riverside locations and was important from the mid-18th century. On the Wear, the first copperas works was established at Hylton c.1750 and another at Deptford c.1760. The production of alkali for use as a bleaching agent in the textile industry was carried out at various locations, including Hebburn and Jarrow. Alkali works produced a variety of by-products, some of them useful but others, such as hydrochloric acid gas were extremely noxious and polluted the surrounding areas. There was also a guano processing works at North Shields. Other chemicals works were spread along the major rives, at Newburn, on the lower Ouseburn, Wallsend, Hebburn and Jarrow. However, the chemical industry on Tyneside became uneconomic in the latter part of the19th century in the face of competition from South Durham and Teeside, which came to dominate the industry.
Below is a map showing the industrial growth across the region, currently the map only shows the industrial areas of the 1860s and 1890s, but this will also show the 1920s and 1950s ahead of Monday's tutorial.
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