CCLXIII – Newbiggin-by-the-Sea to Tynemouth

THE final morning of my August 2025 trip saw me stagger bleary-eyed from my overnight accommodation to the end of Newbiggin-by-the-Sea’s High Street, ready – for a particular and very approximate value of ‘ready’ – to start the day’s trek, which would end in Tynemouth.  Well, hopefully not actually in the mouth of the River Tyne, but in the town situated next to it.

Newbiggin

Cresswell Arms

My walk began beside the pub called the Cresswell Arms, for no better reason than that’s what stands at the eastern end of the High Street.  There, I again regarded the sign above its window proclaiming it to be the ‘last pub before Norway.’  And, once again, I doubted it.

For one thing, I wasn’t intending to try to walk to Norway and wouldn’t be likely to succeed if I did (unless perhaps I did fall in the Tyne and it swept me out across the North Sea).  And even if I did one day end up in Norway, I was pretty sure I’d have passed another pub by then, because claims like that are very much dependent on your route.

With a final backwards glance, I bade the squirrels of the Cresswell Arms goodbye and stepped off into adventure…

As noted last time, the Cresswells, who were landowners with a castle four miles north of Newbiggin, had arms featuring three silver squirrels on torteaux (red roundels) on an erminois field. Erminois takes the stylised black spot pattern used to represent ermine fur but places it on a yellow/gold background instead of the usual silver/white one.

Newbiggin Beach

I followed an England Coast Path sign that directed me south down Plant Road and onto the end of a long promenade that backed Newbiggin North Beach and part of the South Beach.  The distinction between the two beaches was fairly arbitrary, there being one continuous stretch of sand. Because that’s just how it was dumped there.

In 2007, some 500,000 tonnes of it were brought up the coast from Lincolnshire to replace sand lost through beach erosion. Most of it is still there.

Newbiggin Lifeboat Station

Close to the end of the North Beach was Newbiggin Lifeboat Station, which is the UK’s oldest operational lifeboat station, dating back to 1851.  It was founded by Algernon Percy (1792–1865), 4th Duke of Northumberland, who provided the funds to establish it, and was transferred to the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck (RNIPLS) the following year. Two years later, the RNIPLS renamed itself to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), which is shorter and snappier than the original name but not by much.

In the station’s 174 years of existence, its crews have earned 16 awards for gallantry.

Adapting to contemporary needs, the boathouse was modified in 1866, 1981 and 1998. Today, it operates an Atlantic 85 inshore lifeboat named RNLB Richard Wake Burdon. This is a rigid inflatable design capable of hitting 35 kts (40 mph).

The Rocket House

The 1866 alterations built a rocket house as an extension to the rear of the station.  This sounds cool and impressive and, though now a museum, the rocket house is one of the UK’s oldest surviving examples and retains many of its original features.  Slightly less cool, it’s basically just a garage built from stone to house a rocket cart.

A rocket cart was sadly not a cart powered by rockets, capable of outrunning any horse, but one carrying rescue equipment including a tripod-mounted Boxer rocket apparatus.  Designed in 1855 by Colonel Edward Boxer (c. 1822-1898) – who was improving on others’ earlier designs – this fired a rocket with a lifeline attached, to pull to safety those in distress close to shore.  It’s basically throwing a rope, but further and faster because, well, rockets!

Bridge Street

Moving on from the lifeboat station, I made it an epic 200 m down the promenade before halting again, this time at Bridge Street.

Today, this short street linking the promenade to Front Street appears to be perplexingly named as it hosts no bridge except possibly the musical kind – it contains a bandstand erected in 1993 – but the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map of 1865 shows that there used to be one at its northern end. In those days Front Street, which was then a continuation of the High Street, crossed over a drain that ran down the side of Newbiggin Moor.

It wasn’t the lack of an obvious bridge that had arrested me, however, so much as the convenient access to the nearby Front Street Co-op.  This enabled me to stock up for the day with water, snacks and a sandwich for lunch.

Newbiggin Parkrun

As I got moving again, the universe conspired to properly highlight my appalling lack of pace by suddenly confronting me with runners of all size and shape passing me on the promenade.  It turned out that my path had crossed that of Newbiggin’s weekly parkrun event, which uses the promenade as part of its 5 km route.

If I felt slightly shamed by my lack of speed compared to the runners, it was mitigated by my planned distance, which was about seven times theirs.

Couple

The promenade curved its way around Newbiggin Bay and its beaches, which have retained their sands in part because of the breakwater constructed in 2007 at the same time as the sand was replenished.

The breakwater – which I was now passing – plays host to Couple, an artwork by sculptor Sean Henry.  It comprises two figures – the couple, obviously – whose appearance and clothing are based on two real people that Henry used as models. He has since kept their identity anonymous but they shouldn’t be too hard to identify if the sculptures are exactly accurate as any couple standing five metres tall ought to stand out in a crowd.

They were a bit divisive when first installed – art critics in particular hated them – but they’ve proven popular with tourists and Newbiggin has come to embrace them.

Spital Head

The promenade ended partway down the South Beach,  dropping me onto the sand for just under a quarter of a mile. At the end of the bay, a flight of steps carried me up by ten metres, which is roughly the same height as the Couple standing on each other’s heads.

The landform on which I now stood was a headland named Spital Point on account of the mediaeval hospital that once occupied it (although no trace now remains). At the end of the point was a natural arch, which was named – like so many others – the Needle’s Eye. Not that I could see it from on top of Spital Head.

North Seaton

Hawks Cliff

After Spital Point, the coast path promised imminent excitement and danger:

I guess the confusion between right and left was just part of Dangerous Cliff’s instability. Fortunately, I never encountered him. He was probably off being edgy.

In his absence, I found this section of path quite calm and untroubling as I followed it along the top of the low cliffs, heading towards the mouth of the River Wansbeck.

Sandy Bay Holiday Park

After Hawks Cliff came Red Heugh, but I would neither be walking its edge, nor descending into the dunes of North Seaton Links that lay beyond it. Instead, the coast path turned inland, cutting through the heart of Sandy Bay Holiday Park.

Some poor waymarking at one point caused me some uncertainty but I knew roughly where the path had to be going and it wasn’t hard to pick it up again. Another walker on the coast path – perhaps he was Dangerous Cliff, he was certainly moving with incautious haste – caught up with me just as I entered the holiday park.

This Incautious Hastener looked at the waymarks, then looked at me and made an expression of undisguised disgust. With a shake of his head, he set off along the top of Red Heugh anyway.  Five minutes later, I saw him again as he overtook me in the middle of the holiday park, having chosen the waymarked route after all.  He harrumphed and snorted with irritable contempt as he passed by. I’m not sure if his disapproval was aimed at me, the holiday park, or just things in general.

Wheatley’s Ferry

The Incautious Hastener had rushed off beyond view when I emerged from the far side of the holiday park to find myself on an unsurfaced but well-defined footpath beside the Wansbeck Estuary, which I now needed to cross.

Had I been wanting to do so prior to 1941 then, for the cost of one penny, I could have used Wheatley’s Ferry. This was a small chain ferry that crossed between North Seaton Links and the opposite village of Cambois (pronounced ‘cammus,’ because why not?)

Robert Wheatley was the ferryman from the late 1870s, when he was in his teens, until his retirement in 1941 but the ferry had been in existence before he took it on.  Publisher Samuel Lewis (c. 1782-1865) mentioned it in the entry for Cambois in his Topographical Dictionary of England (7th ed, 1848):

‘The village is situated among rich pastures on a dry green knoll, formed by the banks of the sea and the Wansbeck, which here has a ferry over it.’

North Seaton Bridge & Weir

Having missed the last ferry by 84 years, I was going to require an alternative and the coast path soon obliged. After teasing me with the North Seaton Bridge, which crossed over my head, it then led me to a weir with a footway over it.

North Seaton Bridge carries the A189 – also known as the Spine Road – and is actually two bridges, albeit only about an inch apart. What is now the southbound carriageway was built in 1974 and was originally two-way.  The other was added in 1994, when this section of Spine Road was doubled, turning it into a dual carriageway.

The weir was also built in 1974 and served to create a new tidal limit, enabling the three miles of river directly upstream to be made into a country park. A lock at its southern end allowed small boats to pass.  It had always had a walkway, but this was gated and inaccessible until 2018, when the England Coast Path became routed over it.

Railway Bridges

North Seaton Bridge is not the first bridge to cross that point on the Wansbeck.

Between 1935 and 1961, a wooden trestle bridge spanned the river on an almost mirror alignment (NW-SE instead of SW-NE).  Known locally as ‘The Trot,’ this carried a short mineral railway line connecting North Seaton Colliery (1859-1961) and the coal washery at Cambois Colliery (1862-1968).

With the closure of North Seaton Colliery in 1961, the bridge became a maintenance liability without purpose and was duly demolished.

Another wooden trestle bridge, this one built by the Blythe & Tyne Railway (B&TR) in 1859, used to stand a mile upstream.  This became property of the North-Eastern Railway (NER) in 1874 and then the London & North-Eastern Railway (LNER) in 1923.  In 1929, the LNER had it demolished and rebuilt in steel and this replacement – known as the Black Bridge – still stands today, carrying trains across the Wansbeck.

East Bedlington

Bedlingtonshire

Crossing the Wansbeck took me into what is today the civil parish of East Bedlington within the county of Northumberland but was once part of an exclave of County Durham known as Bedlingtonshire.  There were a lot of weird county exclaves until the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844 did away with them by merging them into the counties in which they were physically located.

The merger made Bedlingtonshire an urban district of Northumberland until the next major local government reorganisation in 1972, when it became part of a larger Wansbeck District with Ashington. This was abolished in 2009 and Northumberland became a unitary authority, eliminating the district-level tier.

The Bedlington for which these are all named is a small town two miles southwest of Cambois, on the other side of the Spine Road.  I would be brushing its southern edge later but for now, it was Cambois that I was entering.

Cambois

‘Cambois’ probably derives from Cumbric camas, meaning ‘bay’ or ‘river bend,’ with some later French-style respelling – it was even ‘Camboise’ with an ‘e’ on the 1865 1st ed OS map.

Prior to 1862, when the coal-mining began, it will have been an agricultural and fishing village. The Topographical Dictionary of England observed in 1848 that:

‘There is a small harbour, where corn, timber and grindstones are shipped. Some spacious granaries were built during the late war with France, at which period a great quantity of grain was exported.’

The opening of the coal mine would see Cambois develop into a mining village, with many new houses constructed to its south, but the oldest part of the village, in its north, comprised old stone cottages and farm buildings.

Blyth Offshore Wind Farm

Once past the old farm, the coast path veered left to join a bench-dotted footpath along the grassy seafront, backed by empty derelict land where the colliery once sprawled. In the other direction, arrayed along the horizon, were five symbols of modern, renewable energy – the wind turbines of Blyth Offshore Wind Farm.

The current wind farm was erected in 2017 and was the first UK offshore wind farm to utilise gravity base foundations. This means that ballasted foundations were floated out and then submerged, relying on their mass to keep them in place rather than drilling foundations into the sea bed.

It is actually the second offshore wind farm here, another two turbines stood closer to the shore between 2000 and 2019. A pilot project, they had been the UK’s first offshore wind farm ever.

Colliery Monument

The coast path continued along the seafront, separated from the road by a broad grassy verge, across which I nipped to investigate this:

Titled simply Cambois Pit Wheel & Pit Tub, this is actually a pit wheel from the old colliery, erected in 1990 as a monument to it, 22 years after its demise. Judging from its unkempt surroundings, it hadn’t received much love since.

A pit wheel was part of the headstock apparatus used to hoist men and materials into and out of the pit shaft.  When the mine was in operation, such wheels would be constantly in motion.

Unity Terrace

From the monument, I returned to the seafront path and followed it southwards.  This meant that I was still separated from the road when it became Unity Terrace, so that I saw it only from a distance. The terrace comprised a number of colourful houses flanking the dark grey bulk of the former Cambois Miners’ Welfare Institute, which today houses an arts & community charity called The Tute.

The institute  building opened in 1929, replacing its 1904 predecessor, which had burnt down. It was designed by JT Pringle, engineer to the Cowpen Coal Company.

Cowpen Coal Co. owned Cambois Colliery and several other mines and existed between 1885 and 1947, when it was nationalised as part of the National Coal Board (NCB).

North Blyth Branch Line

The footpath not only ran parallel to Unity Terrace, but ended parallel to it too, terminating at a car park for Cambois Beach. The exit from the car park was a narrow lane, Rose Ginnel, which passed beneath a railway branch serving the North Blyth docks via a very low bridge.

Rose Ginnel spat me out onto a roundabout from which I needed to go west. But first, I succumbed to distraction and took a few steps down North Blyth Road – the road to the docks – to investigate some railway infrastructure that wasn’t nearly as ageing as I expected, having been installed in 2006.

The rest of the North Blyth branch was opened by the NER in 1897 as a spur from the Cambois branch line – itself opened by the B&TR in 1867 –  and facilitated coal movements to the North Blyth staithes (rail wharves) and, later, Blyth Power Station (1958-2001).

Harbour View

Returning to the roundabout, I headed westwards along a fairly uninviting road.  Both sides were lined with metal fencing to keep me out of largely derelict industrial land. To the south was the former site of Blyth Power Station, upon which new industrial units were now sprouting, while to the north had once been a sprawling mass of associated railway sidings.

It was more than a little depressing and I was overjoyed when I made past the fences to Harbour View, where I found a number of houses on the north side and a field on the south. The latter had two occupants, who had nothing positive to say.

East Sleekburn

From Harbour View, I crossed over another roundabout onto what was officially part of Brock Lane but was also the East Sleekburn Bypass, built as an extension to that lane in 1990. The residents of nearby East Sleekburn had been clamouring for such a bypass since at least 1979, fed up with a constant stream of coal lorries thundering through their village.

Construction of the bypass not only routed such traffic around the village but also cut its connection to Harbour View, as I found out shortly thereafter.  The pedestrian pavement curved southwards to join the severed road while Brock Lane swept westward, separated from it by a screen of trees.

A pub in East Sleekburn – the General Havelock – was named for Maj Gen Sir Henry Havelock (1795-1857), who recaptured Cawnpore during the Indian Mutiny of 1857 but then died of dysentery in Lucknow later that year.  He was sort-of local-ish to East Sleekburn, in that he was born in Bishopwearmouth in County Durham, which was only about twenty miles further south.

Floral Display

A little further on, I came to what had been the original eastern end of Brock Lane, before the bypass was tacked onto a point just north of it. It now forms a short spur into East Sleekburn, ending at a junction that was graced by a splendid floral display:

Sleek Burn

Brock Lane would have been a right-hand turn, but I went straight on into Moorland Avenue, which then crossed the Sleek Burn for which the village is named. 

A tributary of the River Blyth, it meets the latter at its estuary and is accordingly a tidal creek.

I probably took East Sleekburn Bridge for granted, but I maybe shouldn’t have. Up until the late 1940s, the Sleek Burn had been crossed by a ford instead. Given that it’s tidal, that may have been challenging at times.

River Blyth

Shortly after crossing the Sleek Burn, the coast path diverted off Moorland Avenue and down a delightful leafy tunnel, which brought me out onto the Sleek Burn’s southern bank.  Rather than tarry there. It then cut inland across several fields, heading for Mount Pleasant Farm.  It then skirted around the western edge of the farm to reach the north bank of the River Blyth, whereupon it headed upstream.

Kitty Brewster Bridge

The first bridge upstream that I came to wasn’t much help. Kitty Brewster Bridge was certainly a bridge – in fact it was two, much like North Seaton Bridge and for exactly the same reason. But also like that bridge, it was inconveniently overhead with no easy way to access it from the riverbank.

The downstream part of the bridge was built in 1960, with the upstream part added in 1996, when this part of the Spine Road was doubled.

Bedlington Railway Viaduct

The railway viaduct was a couple of hundred metres upstream from Kitty Brewster Bridge and predated it by 30 years.  It was built for the LNER in 1930 at a cost of around £55 k to replace an older and less robust predecessor.

The earlier bridge, built in 1850 by the Bedlington Coal Company for £26 k, had been a wooden trestle bridge supporting a mineral wagonway. It was designed by Robert Nicholson (1808-1855). He was engineer for the B&TR at the time, and it bought both line and bridge in 1855.

The coal company operated Bedlington Colliery from 1838 until 1947, when it was nationalised as part of the NCB.  The colliery then continued under NCB ownership until closure in 1971.

Furnace Bridge

Continuing another quarter-mile upstream brought me to Furnace Bridge, where the coast path could finally cross the Blyth.

The current bridge is a masonry arch erected in 1996. It replaced a 1928 concrete bridge, which in turn replaced an 18th-century stone bridge that was, when built, the lowest downstream bridge on the Blythe.

Furnace Bridge was so named on account of its proximity to the Bedlington Ironworks, which operated between 1736 and 1867. In 1820, this ironworks invented the wrought iron rails that enabled the railway age.

Blyth

Nothing To See Here

Heading back downstream from Furnace Bridge, I again passed under Kitty Brewster Bridge where a couple of teenagers were lounging with guilty-looking expressions.  They called out ‘hello’ as I passed in one of the most unconvincing attempts at trying to appear nonchalant I have ever witnessed.  Fortunately for them, I didn’t at all care what it might be they were doing that they shouldn’t be, so I cheerfully called ‘hello’ back and left them to it.

Kitty Brewster Farm

Immediately east of Kitty Brewster Bridge was Kitty Brewster Farm, which was not and never has been owned by anyone called Kitty Brewster. The etymology of Kitty Brewster, which is the name of the bank on which the farm sits, is uncertain but the kitty part may derive from a Cumbric term meaning a hillock or bank, making it the brewer’s bank.

Thanks to the path being at the bottom of that bank, I never laid eyes on Kitty Brewster Farm, but I did pause to gaze down the River Blyth, knowing the path would soon take me from it.

Bates Colliery

The coast path continued downstream to Factory Point, just east of the confluence of the Sleek Burn and Blyth, and then cut inland along the edge of the site of Bates Colliery (1932-1986). This was the third pit of a larger Cowpen Colliery complex owned (until nationalisation in 1947) by the Cowpen Coal Co.

Today, the site comprises a mine water treatment scheme (MWTS), a school and a housing estate and the coast path skirted carefully around these, coming close to the A193 in the process.

I, sensing an opportunity for ice cream, chose to ignore the waymarks and take to the A-road, where a garage shop satisfied my want for refrigerated refreshments.

Shipyard Corner

The coast path and I reacquainted ourselves at a bend in Hodgsons Road popularly known as Shipyard Corner  on account of its former proximity to Blyth Shipyard, which operated under various owners from 1810 until 1966.

The above sculpture, while stylistically pleasing (to me, at least) can be forgiven for any lapses in actual maritime architecture as its creators were labouring 55 years too late to consult the experts at the shipyard. 

Titled Shipyard Corner, it was made by local firm Blyth Bespoke Fabrication at the behest of County Councillor Susan Davey who secured Local Improvement Scheme funding for it.

Market Square

A few minutes later, I parted company with the coast path again as it headed off towards Blyth Harbour and I instead headed for Blyth’s Market Square.  This was a large open plaza surrounded by shops and it seemed to me to be a suitable place to stop and consume that sandwich I’d been carrying since Newbiggin. I’d catch up again with the coast path, when I was good and ready.

Blyth Library

Eventually, I was forced to concede that it was time to re-join the coast path, as indicated by this clock adorning Blyth Library in Bridge Street:

Blyth Library has inhabited this splendid building since 1930, but the building is older than that. It was originally opened in 1882 as Blyth Mechanic’s Institute, its £2 k construction cost having been met mainly by public subscription.

The Gut

Much like Newbiggin’s, Blyth’s Bridge Street today shows no sign of an actual bridge. It got its name because there used to be one – Waterloo Bridge – which spanned a marshy creek called the Gut at the street’s western end. The OS Name Book, used to prepare the 1865 1st ed map, described it as:

‘A stream which gathers in the adjoining fields and falls into the River Blyth at the Flanker. Flooded at high water but not navigable.’

This description naturally prompts the question ‘what was the Flanker…?’

The Flanker

Multiple online sources would seem to suggest that it was just an alternative name for the Gut, as was ‘the Slake,’ but that makes little sense in context. Fortunately, the Name Book also had an entry for the Flanker:

‘Name applied to a creek between the wagon way and the River Blyth. There is a quay along a portion of it where there are berths for two or three small vessels.’

The 1st ed OS map itself further clarified the situation, showing the Flanker as the lower end of the Gut. It comprised a narrow channel, draining a larger marshy area that today, tarmacked over, forms Simpson Street Car Park. The wagonway mentioned ran from Cowpen Colliery, down to the harbour.

The Gut was filled and reclaimed in the 1890s and Waterloo Bridge demolished.

Blyth Harbour

My journey along Bridge Street was dominated by the looming presence of a wind turbine towering over Blyth Harbour, so I was hardly surprised when I reached the quayside and saw it looming before me in all its glory.

The Port of Blyth dates back to 1138 when monks from nearby Newminster Abbey were using it to ship out salt they’d panned on the banks of the Blyth.  It remained small and insignificant for over half a millennium with the hamlet of Blyth overshadowed by neighbours such as Seaton Sluice. 

Things properly kicked off in the early 18th century, with the building of a coaling quay in 1730 and the commencement of boatbuilding in 1748. The first breakwater followed in 1765 and the first elevated staithe in 1788. Further development then followed into the 19th century with the formation of the Blyth Harbour and Docks Board in 1854. Many additional staithes were added over time.

Spirit of the Staithes

Staithes are wharves or loading points, but that doesn’t really get across what they were or how they worked. They were elevated wagonways or rail tracks onto which coal wagons would be pulled to allow them to drop their cargo by gravity into coal ships below.  They were quite elaborate feats of construction in their heyday and, though looking like a mad framework of timbers, they survived the occasional accident involving boats bumping into them, or trains colliding and then falling off.

The staithes are largely gone now, with only the lower supporting layer of the North Blyth staithes still in situ. They are commemorated, however, by the sculpture Spirit of the Staithes – the Chthulhoid monstrosity shown above.

Created in 2003 by Simon Packard, it is designed to look like an abstract artwork from any other direction than from Wellington Street East, in which case it is supposed to evoke an elevated steam train via panels we are seeing end-on in my photo. The panels are set at the original rail height of the staithes.  It is quite clever in concept but I found the execution lacking.

SUF Terminal

Looking back across the harbour to a point west of the wind turbine, I could the three orange-coloured silos of the Ship Unloading Facility (SUF) Terminal, which is pretty much the opposite concept to the staithes. The SUF Terminal was opened in 1970 to handle shiploads of bauxite destined for the Alcan aluminium smelters at Lynemouth, just north of Newbiggin and Kinlochleven and Lochaber in Scotland.

Reconditioned in 1990, it handled half a million tons of the stuff annually, transferring it multiple trains per day, which then sped north, crossing that low bridge over Rose Ginnel in Cambois that I had passed under earlier.

Alcan closed its Kinlochleven plant in 1996 and Lynmouth in 2012, leaving Lochaber as the UK’s last remaining aluminium smelter. Now owned by Alvance, it continues to receive about 80,000 tonnes of bauxite ore per year. Alvance clearly intends to continue this relationship, as it had announced an impending £500 k upgrade to the facility a few weeks before I took this photo:

MSV Seawell

The vessel inexplicably moored to a SUF she had no use for was MSV Seawell, a multi-purpose support vessel launched in 1987. Her initial role was North Sea diving support but she spent the 1990s performing a series of pioneering installations and interventions  that were apparently world firsts  but that I don’t really understand. The website of her owner, Helix Energy Solutions (est. 1980) proudly proclaims that:

‘The Seawell has entered more than 730 wells, decommissioned over 200 live and suspended wells, including 15 subsea fields.’

Which is probably impressive. It certainly sounds like a lot. All I know for sure is that carrying thousands of tonnes of bauxite is not, and has never been, any part of her capabilities.

Williams II

A little further along the harbour, I came to another ship unlikely to be carrying thousands of tonnes of ore, although this one had at least started out as a freighter. She was Williams II, a 36 m ketch, which I had previously seen on the slipway of boatyard Eyemouth Marine in Eyemouth.  As she is owned by the charity Blyth Tall Ship, Blyth is unsurprisingly her home port and I had been hoping that I would find her here again.

Constructed in Rødvig in Denmark in 1914, Williams II originally served as a Baltic trader under the name Haabet (meaning ‘the hope’). Blyth Tall Ship bought her in 2019 and had her renamed and refitted to more closely resemble Williams, the Blyth-based merchant brig that accidentally discovered Antarctica in 1819 by bumping into the South Shetland Islands.

The original Williams was broken up in 1882, but Williams II has almost identical dimensions.

Blyth High Lighthouse

The road along the quayside – accurately if unimaginatively called Quay Road – began to curve inland after passing Williams II, but help was at hand lest I fear getting lost in Blyth’s back streets. Rising up behind an otherwise unremarkable car park I saw a guiding landmark in the shape of one of Blyth’s oldest structures:

Blyth High Lighthouse was erected in 1788 on what was then the quayside but now, thanks to land reclamation and reshaping, is about 100 m from the shoreline. Or, at least, the bottom part was.  The 1788 lighthouse was just under 11 m tall but it now stands at almost 19 m, having been extended in height in 1888 and again in 1900 in order to show over buildings springing up around it.

The lighthouse was converted from oil to gas in 1857 and then to electricity in 1932.  It remained in operation until 1985, when it was decommissioned but Grade II listing in 1987 has helped preserve it. 

The Other Lighthouses

The Blyth Low Lighthouse with which it was paired was less lucky. The original was replaced in 1936 and its successor didn’t survive decommissioning. Today, its site is somewhere under the footprint of Shed 15 in the Port of Blyth’s South Harbour Terminal.

There are two other lighthouses, which are still guiding harbour traffic. These are Blyth Snook Lighthouse in North Blyth and the East Pier Lighthouse, guessing the location of which earns no prizes. The latter was built in 1907 to replace one from 1884.

I can’t find a definitive date for the installation of Blyth Snook Light but old maps seem to show it from the 1930s onwards, which suggests it may have been added when the Low Lighthouse was replaced.

Ridley Park

Having not paid all that much attention to my map since reaching the harbour, I was surprised but not undelighted when the coast path waymarks then directed me into a pleasantly leafy park.

The park in question was Ridley Park, which was created in 1904 on land donated by local landowner and former Home Secretary Matthew White Ridley (1842-1904), 1st Viscount Ridley. In 1880, he had also donated the land on which the Mechanic’s Institute (later Blyth Library) would be built.

I, for one, was very appreciative of Lord Ridley’s bequest, as I walked beneath the park’s trees and availed myself of its opportunities to buy my second ice cream of the day.  So much so, that when I ran out of park and found myself on a fairly dull road between a dock fence and some houses, it barely dented my good mood at all. Indeed, I was still smiling (and finishing my ice cream) as the coast path finally left that road and deposited me onto Blyth’s South Beach.

Lord Ridley’s arms comprised three pellets (black roundels) on a silver chevron between three close falcons (i.e. falcons with closed wings), all on a red field.

South Beach

Blyth South Beach was a glorious crescent of sand stretching around two and a half miles from Blyth’s East Pier to the village of Seaton Sluice.

Boots and socks removed, I soon started my southbound splash.  The water was cold but tolerable and the waterline was mostly free of pebbles. I approved.

Edward Boscawen

Admiral Edward Boscawen (1711-1761) defeated the French at the 1758 Siege of Louisbourg and 1759 Battle of Lagos during the Seven Years War (1756-1763). He was Cornish – the third son of Hugh Boscawen, 1st Viscount Falmouth (1680–1734) – and had no personal links with Blyth during his life.

He was, however, a good namesake for a warship and two named HMS Boscawen subsequently served the Royal Navy. The first was a 4-gun cutter in service from 1763 to 1773, the second a 70-gun third-rater, which is quite the ugrade! She served from 1844 until 1874.  And technically, the figurehead in the photo wasn’t actually hers.

The second HMS Boscawen became a training ship in 1862. She was replaced in this role and left RN service, transferring (still as a training ship) to Wellesley Nautical School in 1874. It renamed her TS Wellesley but kept her Admiral Boscawen figurehead.

The admiral had no specific, differenced arms of his own but here are those of his father, Lord Falmouth, for no other reason than they fit with the accidental heraldic theme of the day – arms displaying ermine spots. The Boscawens used an ermine field upon which to display a red rose.

Wellesley Nautical School

From its name and possession of a training ship, Wellesley Nautical School sounds like a training establishment for sailors, which it sort of was. It had been founded in 1868 with the express purpose to:

‘Provide shelter for Tyneside waifs and train young men for service in both Royal and Merchant Navies.’

This makes it sound more like an orphanage but it was actually a reform school – a type of penal institution for teenage offenders that focussed on rehabilitation. In 1933, it was redesignated an approved school, but that was basically the same thing with a new name.

Wellesley Community Home

TS Wellesley caught fire in 1915, forcing the school to move ashore. Her salvaged figurehead went with it. A 1969 rebrand to Wellesley Community Home saw the school abandon the nautical training theme in favour of more general education and training but, again it kept the figurehead, even going so far as to replace it with a replica when the original rotted in 1991.

The school closed its doors in 2006 and its site was redeveloped for housing. The replica admiral spent some time in storage, and then with the Ashington Sea Cadets, but now seems to have retired to the sea front, a stone’s throw from  the site of the school.

Seaton Sluice

Hartley Links

I passed a small number of colourful beach huts and then enjoyed nothing but beach for about half an hour.  The coast path was officially somewhere in the dunes of Hartley Links, sharing a broad, surfaced cycle path but, lovely as that no doubt was, it could hardly compare with shin-deep splashing through seawater.

Time flies by when you’re having fun and thus, seemingly as instantly as if I’d time-travelled by Williams II, I found myself approaching Seaton Sluice.  I’d been looking forward to this ever since a friend – Alice, who joined me in Somerset and Monmouthshire – had enthused as to how pretty it was.

Seaton Burn

My southward travel was arrested by the mouth of Seaton Burn, not that I’d have wanted to continue across it anyway as the far shore was all rocks. I followed a path up off the beach onto Sandy Island, which isn’t actually an island but a bend in the burn’s meander.

An all-female group of four were swimming near Sandy Island, by which I mean a woman and (I think) her sister were trying to persuade the daughters of one of them that jumping into the burn was a great idea. The girls were not at all convinced by this but their elders’ demonstrations of how it is done did serve to hammer home that this was not a burn that could be forded.

Fortunately, I didn’t have far to go upstream – roughly 200 m or so – before I found a better means to cross it in the form of Seaton Sluice Bridge (erected in 1968). The bridge wasn’t particularly pretty, being a typical 1960s concrete road bridge, but the view from it was quite pleasant:

Hartley Pans

Seaton Sluice has not always been called that. It started out in the 13th century as Hartley Pans, being where salt was collected via salt pans for the village of Hartley which then lay to its south but now forms Seaton Sluice’s southern end. It was owned by the Delaval family, the descendants of Hubert de Laval, who was married to William the Conqueror’s niece, Dionesia (the daughter of William’s half-brother, Robert, Count of Mortain).

From around 1550, salt was shipped directly from the natural harbour at the mouth of Seaton Burn instead of transporting to Blyth and this prompted a new name for the place, Hartley Haven.

In 1660, Sir Ralph Delaval (1622-1691) had the harbour developed, building the quayside walls. The harbour was prone to silting, however so, in 1690, he added a sluice gate which stored up water to be released at low tide to wash out sand and silt.  Located beneath the current road bridge, It is from this sluice gate that the village got its current name.

Royal Hartley Bottleworks

Seaton Sluice got quite a boost in 1763, when Sir Francis Delaval (1727–1771) established a glassworks in the village and his brother, Sir John Delaval (1728-1808) – who would be ennobled as Baron Delaval in 1783 – blasted a new harbour entrance channel. Known as the Cut, this had its own gates at either end, enabling it to act as a lock and retain water at low tide and helped to facilitate a growth in the volume of shipping, with salt, coal and glass bottles being exported in quantity.

To give an idea as to what sort of quantity we are talking, the Royal Hartley Bottleworks (as the glassworks was known) was producing 1,740,000 bottles per year by 1777. From 1768, it even had its own shipyard, in order to build enough bottle sloops to keep up with deliveries.

Nothing lasts forever, though and the glassworks closed in 1792, having been outcompeted by rivals.

Hartley Colliery

Other local industries included a copperas (iron sulphate) works that operated from 1763 to 1828 and the Delaval-owned Hartley Colliery, which opened its first pit in 1754 and closed the last in 1959. The colliery was, until the 1860s, connected to the village by a wagonway.

The wagonway was obviously intended first and foremost for coal freight, but it experimented briefly with a passenger service from 1851 to 1853.

Hartley Colliery Disaster

During its existence, the colliery managed to experience two disasters the lesser of which killed ‘only’ five men in a 1761 explosion at Hartley Pit.

The other, in 1862, took out 204 miners when the beam of a pumping engine broke and fell down the shaft of Hester Pit. The collapse killed five in itself but it had three deadly consequences in that the shaft was now blocked, preventing escape, the ventilation system that ran through it was damaged and the mine was now unpumped, meaning that it was going to flood.   It was the ventilation issue that proved fatal, with those trapped below succumbing to carbon monoxide. Hester Pit was not reopened and, though another was later sunk, the colliery never recovered.

Following  an inquest, Parliament passed the Coal Mines Act 1862, which mandated that all collieries must have at two or more independent escape routes to avoid any future such incidents.

The Octagon

Seaton Sluice may have lost its various industries, but it does industrial dereliction surprisingly decorously. Take for instance, the Octagon.  Built circa 1720 as the harbourmasters house and HM Revenue office it quite unnecessarily takes the form of an octagonal castellated tower.  Its construction was funded by the Delavals and it may well have been designed by Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), the architect of Seaton Delaval Hall, which also featured octagonal turrets.

The Octagon subsequently became an office for the copperas works and then a public reading room. It is now home to an art gallery.

Waterford Arms

The Waterford Arms, built in 1899, was named for Susanna Beresford née Carpenter (d. 1827), Marchioness of Waterford, who inherited the copperas works through her mother in 1822. Which is all fine and good. Its pub sign, though, annoys me as what it shows is not the ‘Waterford arms’ but some generic idea of a coat of arms with no factual basis whatsoever.

Mind you, one could argue that the Waterford – i.e. Beresford – arms would be the wrong arms to represent her anyway, given that they were those of her husband, Henry de la Poer Beresford (1772-1826), 2nd Marquess of Waterford. As the sole heiress of her father, George Carpenter (1750-1805), 2nd Earl of Tyrconnell, she would have inherited his arms.

But, then again, the pub is named after her because of her connection to Seaton Delaval and the copperas works, and she inherited that through her mother, Sarah Hussey Delaval, the daughter and co-heiress of Lord Delaval (who blasted the Cut). So, perhaps Lord Delaval’s arms would be most appropriate?

Watch House

When Lord Delaval had the Cut made, it severed a rocky headland, which is now known as Rocky Island. Given that there was only one way in and off it, via a narrow footbridge, crossing onto it was not going to do much to advance my journey but I went anyway. Mostly I wanted to look at this:

The above is the Watch House, opened in 1880 as a lookout for the Seaton Sluice Volunteer Life-Saving Company, an independent group of volunteer life-savers equipped with a Boxer rocket. Before their first year was out, they had rescued the survivors of two wrecks, the Dutch smack Drie Gebrouders and a vessel called Mary Ann.  They then continued in this vein for another 100 years, before the Watch House closed its doors in 1990.

Today, it is a museum which, appropriately if less heroically, is still manned by volunteers.

Lord Hastings

The creation of the Watch House was funded by George Astley (1857-1904), 20th Baron Hastings.  He was descended from the Delavals through a female line and his grandfather, Sir Jacob Astley (1756-1817) had inherited the estate in 1814, when the male Delaval line died out.

Although Lord Hastings was descended from the Delavals, their arms did not feature in his. Instead, he bore quarterings for Astley (1), Constable (2), LeStrange (3) and Hastings (4). The weird shape in the Hastings quarter that looks like a letter ‘M’ is a maunch, a stylised representation of a detachable sleeve with a long, draping cuff, which was an item of high ladies’ fashion in late mediaeval times. This might seem at first glance like an odd choice for a heraldic charge, but it was a thing for ladies to give them as favours for knights to wear in tournaments, making them a badge of supposed bravery and honour.

King’s Arms

Standing around on Rocky Island wasn’t going to get my walk done, so I crossed back over the footbridge and passed around the back of the King’s Arms. This was a coach house in the 18th century and a customs house in the 19th but today is a pub that avoids the Waterford Arms’ pub sign nonsense by not showing any arms at all.

Collywell Bay

Behind the King’s Arms, I found a path along a grassy clifftop dotted with benches, which had an excellent view over Collywell Bay and onto the stack called Charley’s Garden.

The stack is named for an actual person, Charles Dockwray, who really did keep a garden on top of it in the early to mid-19th century. Like you do.

The bay, meanwhile, is named for the Colly Well, which used to lie on its shore.  The relevant OS Name Book described it as ‘a well of excellent spring water’ in 1858, but it had disappeared off the map when the 2nd ed was published in 1898.

Whitley Bay

County Boundary

Having gazed admiringly upon Collywell Bay, I then proceeded to walk around it to Crag Point at its far end and then past Old Hartley Caravan & Motorhome Club to reach the modern boundary between Northumberland and North Tyneside, the latter being a metropolitan borough in the ceremonial county of Tyne & Wear.

Both Tyne & Wear and North Tyneside were creations of the 1974 local government reorganisation, before which the part of North Tyneside I was entering – Whitley Bay – had been a part of Northumberland and the boundary I was now crossing had been in a different place.

St Mary’s Island

From Crag Point, the path conveyed me along the top of rocky cliffs to Curry’s Point. Off the tip of the point lay St Mary’s Island, also known as Bates Island after a former landowner, or Bait Island as a corruption of that name.

The eponymous landowner was Thomas Bates (d. 1587) – MP and land surveyor for Northumberland to Elizabeth I – whose arms featured a silver engrailed fess between three bendwise (i.e. diagonal) hands. Thomas’s paternal family were minor gentry that originally hailed from Bedlingtonshire but had relocated to southern Northumberland by his father’s time. His mother was a Cresswell of Newbiggin.

The island hosted St Helen’s Chapel in mediaeval times and later, between 1862 and 1895, an inn – the Square and Compass.  The inn closed when its landlord, George Ewen, was evicted by Lord Hastings after the rowdiness of his clientele prompted complaints from his neighbours.

St Mary’s Lighthouse

A lighthouse was built three years later, in 1898, with John Miller & Co of Tynemouth contracted to do the work. 

It was fuelled by paraffin and remained so until 1977 when, as Trinity House’s last remaining oil-fired lighthouse, it was finally electrified. It was automated in 1982 and decommissioned in 1984.

Today, it and its buildings comprise a museum and café whose visitors, one hopes, are less disruptive than the inn’s.

Curry’s Point

The murder in question took place in 1739 and the culprit was named Michael Curry. He was a glassmaker from Seaton Sluice and was obviously forward-thinking in plying that profession almost a quarter century before the Royal Hartley Bottleworks would even open – I can only assume the glassworks built on pre-existing small-scale industry.  Curry wasn’t forward thinking enough, though, for he failed to foresee the obvious consequences of cutting another man’s throat.

The victim was Robert Shevill, landlord of the Three Horseshoes Inn in Hartley (demolished in 1941), with whose wife Curry was allegedly having an affair.

If Shevill’s murder by razor blade was shocking, the ineptitude of it was even more so. Michael must have missed the carotid artery as, instead of expiring within minutes, Shevill hung onto life for two days, which must have been absolutely awful.

Curry was duly arrested, convicted and hanged. His body was then displayed in a gibbet, said gibbet being placed on Curry’s Point, which quickly came to bear that name. Certainly, three decades later, it was clearly labelled as such on Andrew Armstrong’s 1769 Map of the County of Northumberland. It presumably must once have had another name but, if so, I have been unable to learn it.

St Mary’s Wetland

Curry’s Point is the northernmost limit of Whitley Bay – the actual bay, not the town – and so, in passing it, I began my long arc around the curve of that embayment.

Immediately inland to me, but hidden from my sight by virtue of being atop a raised bank, was St Mary’s Wetland, which together with St Mary’s Island forms part of a nature reserve established in 1992.  According to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), it hosts a panoply of feathered residents and visitors including ducks, snipe, buntings, skylarks and warblers. Naturally, I saw or heard none of these.

The Links

As I progressed southward, I found myself walking along the edge of Whitley Bay’s municipal miniature golf course (est. 1936) and. as it was only miniature golf, I tried to detest it just a little bit. Although, actually, in the case of Whitley Bay, I have to be fairer to golfers and give credit where it is due…

The mini golf course occupies part of a green swathe called the Links, which remained common land when the rest of the Tynemouth Priory estate was sold off during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  Over the next few centuries, the links became disfigured by mining spoil and covered in gorse. But, at the end of the 19th century, Whitley Bay Golf club (est. 1890) played an instrumental role in converting it into the green, open space it is now, when it built its first course upon them.  The club has since moved around and now occupies a site about half a mile inland, but Whitley Bay still benefits from the transformation that its started.

Brier Dene

Between the two photo locations shown above was Brier Dene, a gully carved by the Brierdene Burn. I crossed over this by means of an arched, stone footbridge, which was installed in 1997 as part of a regeneration effort.

Whitley Bay’s pre-1974 northern boundary had run atop the south bank of the dene. Just inside the boundary, according to the 1865 1st ed OS map, was the tollhouse for a private turnpike road, though this had turned into the Culvert Inn by the 2nd ed in 1898.

The pub is still there today, despite catching fire in 2015, though it has borne a few different names over the years. It became Brierdene Hotel circa 1920, later shortened to just the Briar Dene (with an erroneous ‘a’) and then gained a new identity as the Tavern & Galley in 2023.

Lovely Nelly

Contemporary with the turnpike was a dramatic lifeboat rescue that occurred on New Year’s Day 1861. A coal brig, Lovely Nelly of Seaham (launched in 1904), was caught in raging snowstorm and her crew, realising they were not going to make it, attempted to beach her safely on Whitley Sands. Unfortunately, heavily-laden with coal and hence low in the water, she lodged on rocks three quarters of a mile off the coast, well beyond the reach of any rescue rockets.

The conditions meant that the Cullercoats lifeboat – Percy – was unable to launch from her boatshed, and so she was hauled three miles up the coast until she reached somewhere she could. 

Having launched, Percy succeeded in rescuing six of Lovely Nelly’s seven crewmembers, the sole fatality being 13-year old cabin boy Thomas Thompson who, ironically, was killed by his own fear of harm. He was clinging to the rigging, too afraid to make the jump to the lifeboat, when a wave broke the ship in two and swept him to his death.

Mare-Maid Confusion

The lifeboat was hauled by six horses, as contemporary news articles attest, though some modern online accounts claim it was pulled by heroic local women.

While confusing horses for women would normally be somewhat concerning, in this case it is thanks to a 1910 oil painting – The Women by John Chartlon (1849-1917) – that substituted the one for the other in a gesture of support for women’s suffrage, causing confusion ever after.

Rendezvous Café

Heading south along the promenade, I soon came to the Rendezvous Café, which offered an ideal opportunity to acquire my third and final ice cream for the day, because why wouldn’t I? If nothing else, it’s a pleasant distraction from thoughts about drowning and shipwrecks.

The art deco café was built in 1930, opening as Garden Restaurant but was acquired by the Arnone family in 1957, who renamed it and have run it ever since.

Coronation Fountain

About 100 m further on from the café was something else in 1930s art deco style:

This drinking fountain was, as its plaque says, erected in 1937 to commemorate the coronation of George VI.  The colours of its paint job are those it originally wore, although it has come back to them via a circuitous journey that included dull black in the early 2000s and shocking pink before that.

The fountain received a makeover in 2017 as part of a general programme of refreshing the seafront, and apparently the many, many coats of paint they had to strip away had been masking quite a lot of its detail.

Panama Swimming Club

About 100 m further on again was yet another thing that started in the ’30s, in the form of the Panama Swimming Club. This sea-swimming club was founded in 1930, although its clubhouse is something of an ugly 1950s box with (to my taste) no aesthetic merit whatsoever.

Spanish City

I was now approaching both the end of the Links and the magnificent white building facing onto them – Spanish City.

Opened as a fairground in 1908, it gets its name from the Spanish street scenes that founders Charles Elderton and Henry Fail had had painted on their original temporary structures. Permanent buildings – a theatre and shops – followed in 1910, constructed in reinforced concrete using the techniques of French engineer François Hennebique (1842-1921).

Despite the interruption of WW2, the fairground survived until 1999, while the theatre became  a ballroom in 1920 and a bingo hall in 1961. In 2002, three years after the fairground was demolished, the buildings finally fell empty.  Spanish City was dead.

Grant’s Clock

I had expected that I would want to take full advantage of Spanish City to feed my face with foods. But, after a sandwich and three ice creams, I wasn’t really feeling the need. Instead I pressed onwards to Grant’s Clock.

Continuing something of a theme, Grant’s Clock dates back to the 1930s. It was donated to Whitley Bay in 1933 by councillor James Hamilton Grant. 

It was originally painted white and popularly dubbed a ‘little sister’ to St Mary’s Lighthouse, but was black in the 2000s and 2010s  until a revamp in 2017 turned it ‘Whitley Bay blue,’  a pale blue shade favoured by the town for its railings.

The clock was damaged by Storm Arwen in late 2021 but repaired and back in place by mid-2022.

Table Rocks Pool

From Grant’s Clock, I followed a road called the Promenade around a headland into Brown’s Bay. The inland side of this road was backed by the houses, while the seaward side was lined with railings.

Below the headland was Table Rocks Pool.  This was a natural tidal pool expanded by blasting in 1909 to form a small lido.  Today the pool is officially disused and has been since 1971, which means it retired from use the same year as pre-decimal money.

Brown’s Point

At the other end of Brown’s Bay was Brown’s Point. By reaching that, I had also reached the far boundary of Whitley Bay and was about to enter the Tynemouth suburb of Cullercoats.  I now had only a mile and a half of the day’s walk remaining, which should take about half an hour.

Before setting to complete it, I paused for a moment atop Brown’s Point to look out over Cullercoats Bay, which would be the first part of that distance.

The spire opposite was that of St George’s Church, standing just shy of 55 m. The church was built in 1884 using a French Gothic style.

Tynemouth

Cullercoats Lifeboat Station

Cullercoats Bay contained a harbour, at the northern end of which were two buildings of interest, the first being Cullercoats Lifeboats Station.  This was, you will recall, the station that could not initially launch its lifeboat to assist the stricken Lovely Nelly.

The station opened in 1852 with receipt of its first lifeboat, the Percy involved in that rescue.  Over the following 173 years, its crews have earned seven awards for gallantry.

Today, like Newbiggin, the station operates an Atlantic 85 inshore lifeboat – RNLB Hylton Burdon.

Dove Marine Laboratory

The other building of interest was this:

The building is Dove Marine Laboratory, a teaching and research laboratory belonging to Newcastle University’s School of Natural and Environmental Sciences. A such, it is dedicated to the study of marine biology, oceanography, environmental science, and coastal processes, all of which are (to me, at least) even more reason to find it interesting.

The laboratory was established by the Northumberland Sea Fisheries Committee in 1897 and occupied a wooden hut, which burnt down in 1904 along with its next-door neighbour, Cullercoats Saltwater Baths. The baths were owned by noted geologist Wilfred Hudleston (1828-1909), who donated the site and paid for new labs to be built on it with the proviso that it not be named after him but an ancestress, Eleanor Dove (c. 1715-1746). But then, despite this reluctance to be identified, he had architect Joseph John Lish (c. 1841-1922) put a decorative engraving on the gable of the conjoined arms of Hudleston & Dove.

When Hudleston died in 1909, the lab was bought by Armstrong College, a Newcastle-based college of Durham University. In 1937, Armstrong College merged with the university’s College of Medicine to form King’s College and then, in 1963, King’s College broke away from Durham to become Newcastle University, which still owns the lab today.

Adamson Fountain

About halfway along Cullercoats Bay was another memorial fountain and, for all that I do love art deco, I have to say this one was more elegant than the Coronation Fountain in Whitley Bay:

The Adamson Fountain is a memorial to Lt Brian Adamson RN and, I suppose by extension, his crewmates. Erected by the lieutenant’s grieving friends, it marks the 1887 disappearance of HMS Wasp, a six-gun gunboat launched the previous year.  Still pretty much shiny and new, she departed Singapore, bound for Shanghai and was never seen again.

Wasp is assumed to have foundered in bad weather, and thus lost with all hands, but her wreck was never found and no one knows for sure.

Long Sands

At the far end of Cullercoats Bay – which really wasn’t very far at all – was Tynemouth North Point. There, I never quite reached St George’s Church because I spotted a way to drop down to Long Sands instead. 

Long Sands was the next embayment. It was about three times the length of Cullercoats Bay and, as its name suggests, characterised by a beach.  I was more than happy to descend and stroll along its sands.

Tynemouth Outdoor Pool

The stroll along Long Sands was brief but pleasant and ended with an ascent onto Sharpness Point.  From atop this headland, I looked down upon Tynemouth Outdoor Pool, a tidal lido at Long Sands’ southern end:

Tynemouth Outdoor Pool was originally opened in 1925 and extremely popular in its heyday.

Although currently just as derelict as Table Rocks Pool, Tynemouth Outdoor Pool does have friends – literally a group called Friends of Tynemouth Open Pool – who are trying to raise funds for its restoration.  And I hope they succeed! Much as I love the poignant romance of decaying former infrastructure, seafront pools are better by far when still functional and well-maintained.

King Edward’s Bay

As I walked from Sharpness Point, around the edge of King Edward’s Bay, I was approaching the end point of my walk. Ahead lay the ruins of Tynemouth Priory and Castle, atop the promontory anciently known as Pen Bal Crag.

There is evidence that Pen Bal Crag was settled by the Votadini tribe during the Iron Age, but the priory was founded centuries later, traditionally by King Oswig (c. 612-670) of Bernicia, who had murdered his neighbouring monarch, Oswin of Deira, in 651 and needed somewhere suitably kingly to bury him. As you do.

Tynemouth Priory

Nothing now survives of the priory’s earliest phase because it was repeatedly hit by Viking raids in the 9th century, culminating in total destruction in 875. Obviously, it was rebuilt.

In 1189, the priory received new lands, rights and privileges from Richard I, creating the liberty of Tynemouthshire, a vast estate under its control. The priory was rebuilt again to reflect its new wealth and power and a port was established in North Shields. In 1296, the prior received a licence to crenellate – official permission to fortify the building, making it also a castle.

Despite its local importance, the priory was not fully autonomous for much of its existence but was instead a daughter cell of St Albans Abbey (although Durham Priory had disputed this ownership between 1090 and 1174).  It was finally granted full independence in 1520 with the assistance of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1473-1530) but this was short-lived – in 1539 the priory was dissolved by Henry VIII, who confiscated all its property.

Tynemouth Castle

Following dissolution, the castle’s strategic position saw it remain in royal hands rather than sold off with the rest of the estate.  The castle became a Royalist stronghold in the English Civil War and, following the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, served as a military garrison right up until 1956.

Amongst its many governors  were Henry Percy (c. 1532-1585), 8th Earl of Northumberland, the MPs Sir Henry Widdrington (d. 1623) and Sir William Selby (d. 1612) and Royalist soldier Sir Edward Villiers (1620-1689).

The castle grounds hosted a lighthouse between 1559 and 1898, when it was replaced by St Mary’s Lighthouse and demolished. And, on a related maritime lifesaving theme, they were home to a station of HM Coastguard between 1980 and 2001.

Today, the ruins are managed by English Heritage.

Scott Clock & Fountain

Standing in front of the priory and castle was the Scott Clock & Fountain, more popularly known as the Tynemouth Clock Tower. This civic monument was paid for by a Londoner called William Scott in ‘gratitude for benefit to his health from a stay in Tynemouth’, hence its official name.

Erected in 1861, it was designed by the local architectural partnership of Thomas Oliver (1824-1902) and Robert Lamb and executed in Venetian Gothic style.

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This time: 21½ miles
Total since Gravesend: 4,746½ miles

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