A1-The Great North Road
There was a time in the distant past when all roads led to the area in and around Washington. It was an area renowned as a Celtic meeting place. During the iron-age there was a network of Celtic trackways throughout Britain and the head of the Celtic Trackway was in fact at Gateshead, situated not far from Washington. The name “Gateshead” literally means “at the head of the tracks”; a gate being a way , track or road. Alternatively, the name may have been derived from Goat's Head. Bede mentions a monastery, Ad Caprae Caput, at a place where wild goats lived.
"Do you know what's the biggest town on the direct road between Newcastle and London? I'll bet you'll never guess. Well, this is it - Gateshead. You can catch a lot of people out with that. Gateshead's the biggest town between Newcastle and London. It's got more than a hundred and twenty-five thousand people in it, Gateshead has."
So said a character in J.B.Priestley's English Journey, published in 1934. Writing in the depths of economic depression, Priestley painted an angry picture of the iniquity of the times.
"There seemed a great deal of Gateshead and the whole town appeared to have been planned by an enemy of the human race in its more exuberant aspects. Insects can do better than this: their habitations are equally monotonous but far more efficiently constructed. As the various industries of Gateshead are in a state of rapid decline, it is possible that very soon it will be in the position of the decayed medieval towns, those ports that the sea has left, but unlike those medieval towns, it will not, I think, be often visited by tourists in search of the quaint and the picturesque. Ye Olde Gateshead Tea Rooms, I feel, will not do a brisk trade. The town was built to work in and to sleep in. You can still sleep in it, I suppose."
I wonder what Priestley would make of the Metro Centre. He lived to see a revival in Gateshead's fortunes that saw the building of the Baltic Mill in 1955 but not its conversion to art gallery half a century later or the Millenium Bridge. And perhaps by 2008 it will be European Capital of Culture. But let's stick to the road, "a dirty lane leading to Newcastle" as Doctor Johnson called it. The Great North Road has wandered about, through, and now around Gateshead. The old road runs due north through the centre of Birtley as Durham Road or the A167. From the roundabout under the A1, by the Angel of the North, the old road is now the B1295 named Long Bank as far as Wrekenton and then Old Durham Road, the B1296. Actually the roundabout is a new affair, Long Bank really going under the A1 a couple of hundred yards south-east of the modern junction, before climbing the hill to High Fell and Beacon Lough.
| The 'beacon' was one of the series of warning beacons established by Queen Elizabeth's reign. Some say there was a beacon here in Celtic times along with a stone circle. The Elizabethan beacon was blown down in 1808. There are new beacons rising over the allotments and pigeon lofts of Wrekenton making Beacon Lough a new centre of communications. |
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To the north, Old Durham Road is known as Sheriff's Highway. In medieval times Sheriffs from Newcastle came along here to Sheriff Hill to meet the judges from Durham coming north to hold assizes. At 533 feet, Sheriff Hill just tops the 514 feet above sea level at Ferryhill, making it the highest point on the Great North Road south of Berwick. Small wonder it was bypassed when the turnpike through Low Fell was built. The road continues as Old Durham Road through Deckham till it meets the not so old Durham Road just short of the Tyne Bridge.
It is this Durham Road that was the new coach route, turnpiked in 1827, avoiding the climb over High Fell of the older road. It is not shown on Thomas Moule's 1836 Durham map but appears on Bell's map of the same year marked "New Turnpike Road". It is also seen on Joshua Archer's 1840 map. Durham Road, the A167, now leaves the A1 at the start of the Gateshead Western By-pass. There's a handy lay-by to stop in for a close up look at the Angel of the North. It's worth the 50 yard walk up the hill to feel the steel really close up. The road heads pretty much straight for the old Tyne Bridge (now the Swing Bridge) but just at the start of the High West Street it is now diverted to the right and and upwards. The flyover, Gateshead Highway, takes the main road over the top of the Old Durham Road to sweep east of High Street on its way round to the Tyne Bridge.
Both the old and new Durham roads are now history, 1871 seeing the end of the turnpike trust and roads responsibility passing to the Town Council. The A1 first by-passed Birtley to the east in the 1930s and more recently swung round the west side of Gateshead, down the Team Valley, to cross first the Derwent and then the Tyne just downstream from Blaydon.
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From Thomas Moule, 1836 |
Frome Joshua Archer, 1840 |
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Harper was particularly critical of Gateshead's dirtiness in 1901. "...the steep and smelly street, paved with vile granite setts and strewn with refuse, which conducts to the Tyne Bridge..." The granite setts were in due course covered with tarmac but are occasionally revealed in road works. This view shows the cobbles in West Street near the Civic Centre. The Tyne Bridge is just visible in the distance. One wonders whether there is any any Roman road metal further down.
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West Street - The Great North Road was paved with granite setts.
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There was a very steep descent to the old Tyne Bridge down Bottle Bank. Church Street was constructed in the late 18th century to lessen the gradient while Bottle Bank itself was widened. The Black Bull, in High Street, was the only major coaching inn.
The Roman road, running up from Chester-le-Street to the Wall at Newcastle, was more or less followed by the later road which runs pretty straight through Birtley but then wobbles a bit off the Roman line up Long Bank.
Margary described the Roman road thus: North of Birtlev it (the GNR) leaves the older (Roman)road for short distances, first on the east near the Coach and Horses Inn and then on the west near High Eighton, and here the structure of the road has been examined. It was found to be I7 1/2 feet wide, built in three layers of 6-inch and 8-inch sandstone blocks, and with kerbs, but it lacked small surface metalling, which may have been ploughed away. Farther south, near the Coach and Horses Inn, where the road was Crossing Leyburnhold Gill, it was on a causewav 26 feet wide, with a cambered mound of gravel, 18 inches thick at the centre, laid upon the sandy subsoil without any bottoming. Sandstone blocks had been laid upon the gravel for 6 feet on the west side and 2 feet on the east to act kerbs.
No traces of the road can now be seen in the open ground near Wrekenton, where an important branch goes off north-eastward to south Shields, but it is known that the course continued direct to the highest ground near Beacon Lough, where a turn to west of north was made. The existing road and the High Street in Gateshead then mark line direct to the Roman bridge, Pons Ælius, over the Tyne to the fort upon Hadrian's Wall at Newcastle. This was the terminus of the road, it did not continue to the north of the Wall.
Click here for some and other History of Gateshead
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©Biff Vernon 2002
