CCLXV – Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Sunderland

ON THE second day of my March 2026 trip, rain was forecast to arrive around lunchtime and then hang around for most of the afternoon. Now, I’ve squelched, dripped and plodded through many a deluge but I’d just as soon not, if given the choice.

Accordingly, I hatched a cunning plan to be up and about at the crack of dawn, getting most of my walk done before the wet weather arrived. It was a good plan. A sensible plan. And it might even have worked, had I not slept right through my alarm…

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Newcastle Railway Station

It was just before nine o’clock – some three hours later than intended – that I found myself standing in Newcastle’s Neville Street at the front of Newcastle railway station. Not that I wanted to catch a train; the station – opened in 1850 – was just where I’d left off last time, and so an appropriate place to start.

The Father of Railways

If the statue of George Stephenson (1781-1848) had looked down upon me with the sort of indignation that disrespecting one of his children might have brought, well, I guess I sort of had. He was, after all, known as ‘the Father of Railways’ and with good reason.

In 1825, George and his actual son, Robert Stephenson (1803-1859, also not to be disrespected), built the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line, namely Locomotion No. 1 on the Stockton to Darlington Railway. He built the first public locomotive-hauled inter-city line – the Liverpool & Manchester Railway (L&MR) – which opened in 1830. And, in 1829, they had won the Rainhill Trials with their locomotive Rocket (although admittedly that was mostly Robert’s work).

The trials had been a competition to determine who would build the locomotives for the L&MR to use on the line that George was building for them.

George Stephenson Monument

The statue of George, before which I was continuing to rudely shun his life’s work, was erected in 1862 at the behest of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers whose president, by amazing coincidence, just happened to be Robert.  The monument – now Grade II listed – was designed by sculptor John Graham Lough (1798-1876).

In addition to the statue of George himself, its pedestal is flanked by four figures blending classical style and then-modern attributes. They are a plate-layer, a miner, a blacksmith and a locomotive engineer and represent various stages and industries encompassed by his engineering career (you can see the latter two in the photo above; the engineer is leaning on a model locomotive).

Collingwood Street

I turned my back on George, figuring he had more serious things to dwell on than my lack of train usage, such as being dead, for instance. Besides, I’d need a train later in order to come back to my hotel. 

In the meantime, I ambled eastwards from Neville Street to Collingwood Street, where I made a mental note to try to look out for another memorial statue – that of Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood (1748-1810) – if I could spot it across the River Tyne when I reached South Shields.  But that was a long way off yet. So far, I had barely moved; merely a few dozen steps.

Newcastle Cathedral

I knew I could walk the distance, no problem. Unfortunately, I also knew that, so far as getting most of it done before the rain hit was concerned, I no longer had a prayer.

Newcastle Cathedral was built as a parish church in 1350, on the site of a 1091 predecessor that had inconveniently burnt down in 1216. Its spire was added in the 15th century and it underwent considerable restoration work in 1777, at which time it was still not yet a cathedral (although not for want of trying).

The Church of St Nicholas, as it then was, was made a cathedral in 1553 as part of the Edwardian Reformation of Edward VI (1537-1553). The Scottish reformer John Knox (c. 1514-1572), who had been preaching at the church since 1550, was offered the bishopric but, as a committed anti-episcopalian who wanted bishops abolished, he rejected the role as the work of the Antichrist!

Knox would go on to lead the Scottish Reformation, while Edward VI’s death brought Mary I (1516-1558) to the English throne, who promptly reversed Newcastle’s elevation.

If at First You Don’t Succeed…

Its promotion returned in 1882, thanks to the Bishoprics Act 1878, which sought to resolve the fairly ridiculous situation in which huge industrial conurbations had grown up that were still administered within the Church of England as the rural parishes they had been. 

As an up-and-coming industrial powerhouse, Newcastle finally gained its cathedral and city status to go with it.

The New Castle

The original Norman church of St Nicholas was contemporary with the ‘New Castle upon Tyne’ that gave Newcastle its name, said castle having been erected in 1090 by Robert Curthose (c. 1051-1134) on a site that had previously hosted a Roman fort guarding the bridge called Pons Aelius.

Robert was the eldest son of William the Conqueror (c. 1028-1087) but had not inherited the English crown – that went to his brother William II (c.1057-1100), while he got the Duchy of Normandy.

In 1095, William II took the New Castle into royal ownership and it remained crown property for centuries.

Wood & Stone

Robert’s castle was a wooden motte-and-bailey affair but his great-nephew Henry II (1133-1189) rebuilt the keep in stone in 1177. A barbican, later known as the Black Gate, was added by Henry’s grandson Henry III (1207-1272) in 1250.  The latter isn’t coloured black at all, but got that name by being home to a tenant named Patrick Black in the 17th century.

Today, both the New Castle keep and Black Gate still stand and have been owned by the city since 1809. They are but a stone’s throw from the cathedral, so it would have been a crime not to take a look at them.

Heraldry didn’t develop until the mid-12th century and England didn’t gain royal arms until the reign of Henry II’s son, Richard I (1157-1199) so Robert, William II and Henry II never had any. But Richard’s three lions were retained by his successors including Henry III, who was his nephew.

High-Level Bridge

Close to the keep was the northern end of the High-Level Bridge, the world’s first combined road and rail bridge, opened in 1849 and still in use for both traffic types.  Described as ‘one of the finest pieces of architectural ironwork in the world’ by English Heritage, the Grade I-listed structure was designed by Robert Stephenson. Because of course it was.

The bridge is 408 m long and stands 33½ m above high water. It cost £243 k to build initially and has had multiple bouts of strengthening work and repairs, as motor and rail traffic alike kept getting heavier and heavier. The most recent effort concluded in 2008 and cost £42 m, which is 173 times the initial build cost! Although, to be fair, the Bank of England’s inflation calculator says that £243 k in 1849 was equivalent to about £27 m now, so it was really just one and a half times as expensive as building it from scratch.

Taking a Toll

The York, Newcastle & Berwick Railway (YN&BR), which had built the bridge, recouped some of the cost via tolls levied against all pedestrians, livestock and vehicles using the road bridge. This income only raised about £2 k per year, however, so breaking even would take quite a while. Not that the YN&BR would exist that long anyway – an 1854 merger absorbed it into the North East Railway (NER) which itself became part of the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) in 1923.

The tolls persisted under both NER and LNER until they were were discontinued in 1937, thanks to a deal with the County Boroughs of Newcastle and Gateshead.

Pons Aelius

The Swing Bridge occupies the site of the Pons Aelius, the bridge that the fort on what is now the castle site protected.  The bridge was named for the Emperor Publius Aelius Hadrianus (76-138), also known simply as Hadrian, who had it built circa 122, along with his famous wall.

Gateshead

Maccoy Memorial Fountain

I emerged from the southern end of the bridge onto Wellington Street, which meant that I had left Newcastle and entered neighbouring Gateshead.  Wellington street was flanked on one side by shops built into the arches of a railway viaduct carrying one of two lines that forked out from the High-Level Bridge.

Wellington Street was quite short, so I quickly came to its far end where I found this:

The fountain was erected in 1915 by Mayor John Maccoy (1843-1935) in memory of his late wife Rebecca Maccoy née Leeming (1847-1914), who had died in a car accident. He was also injured but survived and went on to serve an unprecedented eight terms as Mayor. He was knighted in 1922.

The memorial fountain wasn’t originally erected where it now stands, but in West Street, about half a mile further south.  Building works saw it displaced slightly from its original position in 1986 and then moved to its current location in 2016.

I couldn’t find anything that explicitly stated a coat of arms for Sir John Maccoy, but I did find reference to a stained-glass panel titled ‘Navigation’ that he had made and which he had carefully moved south to London in later life. The panel included the arms shown and that seems like a lot of effort to take with someone else’s arms, so they were presumably his. They displayed a gold lion on a red field semé of cross crosslets fitchée (i.e. strewn with crosses, the arms of which are smaller crosses, except the lower one, which is a spike). 

Motor Accident

Beneath the Maccoy arms was the Latin motto nil desperandum (‘never despair’) and the accident that killed the mayoress put that to the test. It was described as follows by the Newcastle Daily Journal:

‘A motor accident occurred on Crawley Bank, Stanhope, on Saturday afternoon, whereby Mr and Mrs Maccoy, Mayor and Mayoress of Gateshead, were injured. The car seemed to gather speed in descending the steep gradient of the treacherous hill and, to prevent more serious accident, was steered on to the bank side. The whole of the occupants were thrown out and a portion of the car was damaged.’

Delving more deeply, it seems that the brakes failed and their chauffeur, Richard Fairlie, realised that there was no way he was going to navigate an upcoming bend while careering downhill and so opted for a deliberate crash that was at least semi-controlled. 

He managed to emerge from the crash unscathed but John Maccoy was knocked unconscious and Rebecca broke her leg. One of their daughters – Rebecca Maccoy (1888-1957) was also a passenger, but escaped without injury.

Despite several articles stating that the elder Maccoys were both recovering well, Rebecca – whom the Daily Journal characterised as ‘generally delicate’ – took a turn for the worse and died eight days later.

Bottle Bank

Turning left at the fountain, I passed beneath the railway line and began to descend a steep bank to the Tyne, parallel to the Tyne Bridge approach.  From this vantage point, I could look out across the river to the north bank from which I had just come. There, the castle and cathedral tried their best to rise above more recent neighbours that had grown up around them like weeds:

The Glasshouse

Most of the way down to the waterline, I crossed the road to join another named Hillgate. This led me beneath the Tyne Bridge and past the Glasshouse, beyond which Hillgate became South Shore Road.

The Glasshouse International Centre for Music is primarily a concert venue, but also functions as a centre for musical education.  It opened in 2004.

Gateshead Millennium Bridge

About 200 m further downstream, I came to the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, the approximate opening year of which ought not to be hard to deduce.

The Baltic

Right next to the Millennium Bridge was the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, more popularly just known as the Baltic.  This is an art gallery, as its name rather suggests, and is housed in a former flour mill that operated from 1950 until 1984.

During its working existence, the flour mill’s various ledges became home to an enormous colony of kittiwakes. A type of small, cliff-nesting gull, kittiwakes had started to move inland up the Tyne in the 1950s and discovered the delights of the Baltic Flour Mill in 1965.  The period immediately the following the mill’s closure was their heyday, and their numbers rose to around 300 nesting pairs.

Kittiwake Tower

A decade or so after the flour mill’s closure the kittiwakes’ peace and quiet was disturbed by urban regeneration plans…

In an effort to mitigate the disruption, an artificial nesting tower was erected in the disused mill’s car park in 1998. Fashioned from a disused communications mast, it could only house about 100 nesting pairs, but those kittiwakes that could, were all too happy to move to it.

When the Baltic reopened as an art gallery, the Kittiwake Tower was moved a mile and a quarter downstream to Gateshead Saltmeadows, where it still stands today.  The original, triangular tower gained a square-headed neighbour in 2023, which is dubbed ‘Kittiwakery’ and was funded by the Dogger Bank South offshore wind farms.

River Tyne Trail

Getting from the Baltic to the Kittiwake Tower had involved a fairly dull trek along South Shore Road, with industrial units and yards separating me from the riverside. This all changed at Gateshead Saltmeadows, however, where a paved foot and cycle path broke free from the roads to run alongside the water’s edge, forming part of the River Tyne Trail.

The polluted mud warnings weren’t actually much of a surprise, as I’d seen similar on the northern bank the day before.  It was a relic of former riverside industries that, though now dead and gone, were still keen to reach from beyond their graves in order to help you to yours.

Rivers Hotel

The riverside path led me downstream for three quarters of a mile from the Kittiwake Tower to the Rivers Hotel.

The latter opened under its current name in 2017, having previously been known as The Vault. In 2016, it was described by Hospitality & Catering News as ‘the UK’s first hotel to be run by young people with autism and learning difficulties.’  Prior to that, it had been the Rivers Edge Hotel and, before that, the Elephant on the Tyne.

To me, however, it was just somewhere the path had to briefly leave the river to go around.  On its far side, the path was initially tree-flanked and leafier but then opened out to pass a lone tethered horse that was doing its absolute best to disguise itself as a cow. I didn’t ask why.

Akzo Nobel Factory

I was now in the suburb of Felling Shore, where I knew the path would be forced to divert away from the riverside again.  The cause this time was the Akzo Nobel paint factory that I had espied from the far bank on my last walk.

Akzo Nobel is a Dutch paint manufacturer, formed in 1994 through a merger of Akzo (est. 1929) and the Swedish company Nobel Industries (est. 1984), which were also born out of mergers. If you follow the merge chain far enough back for the latter you get back to Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) of dynamite and Nobel Prize fame.

International Paint

The site in Felling is the headquarters of Akzo Nobel’s International Paint brand of marine paints (for use on boats). This brand dates back to 1881 but was acquired in 1968 by British chemical and textile manufacturer Courtaulds (est. 1794). That company, in turn, was acquired by Akzo Nobel in 1998.

As expected, the path diverted around it, briefly spitting me out onto nearby roads. But, bore long, I was passing a couple more equine agents totally convincing cows and then back beside the river.

Bill Quay

For the next quarter mile, the path stuck leafily to the riverside and was quite delightful.

At Bill Quay, a new interruption required avoidance, this being Fairfield Industrial Park. Fortunately, this time there was no need to take to any roads as what lay south of it was Bill Quay Community Farm.  The path was thus able to remain leafy and green on the farmward side, while the other was flanked by the walls of the industrial units. These would have been an uncompromising expanse of dull concrete grey but someone (probably several someones) had already taken exception to that.

Mothering Sunday had been about a week and a half earlier, so the ‘Mam / Happy Mother’s Day’ graffiti was pretty fresh. It was also surprisingly wholesome as acts of vandalism go.

In Case They Forget?

The rest of the graffiti comprised a mix of the usual mindless tags – I can’t help but imagine that their creators are rather like Pokémon and able to communicate only by shouting their own names – and a varied bunch of cartoon characters.

I much preferred the latter, which were generally well executed and at least an actual image of something.

Hebburn

Hebburn Riverside Park

After crossing the access road to the industrial park, I found myself in a park of the public green space kind. This was Hebburn Riverside Park, in which the path was higher up the bank and stealing occasional glimpses of the river below through the trees. 

This height was not inappropriate as the etymology of Hebburn – the town in South Tyneside that I had now entered – is thought to derive via Old English heah byrgen, meaning ‘high tomb.’

The riverside park was developed from the 1970s onwards on derelict land reclaimed from former industry. As late as the 1960s, parts of the shoreline had been dotted with staithes and wharves serving the various factories.

Walker Riverside Industrial Park

While the riverside park was not nearly as beneficial to, say, local employment as its predecessors, it was certainly nicer to walk through and I was accordingly glad of it. To properly help hammer the point home, Walker Riverside Industrial Park on the opposite bank gave an insight into the alternative and the path moved back to the river’s edge to give me a better view of it.

Hebburn Riverside Wooden Structure

At the northern end of Hebburn Riverside Park was a promenade of wooden decking punctuated with benches from which to sit and watch the river.  This seems to be variously described by many as a ‘boardwalk’ or ‘jetty’ but was specifically named as ‘Hebburn Riverside Wooden Structure’ by South Tyneside Council when they explained in late 2025 why it they had closed it and fenced it off:

‘For public safety, the wooden structure at Hebburn Riverside is temporarily closed while we await a full structural assessment. Our asset team is working to secure a contractor to evaluate the damage.’

As closure notices go this tells us very little. It doesn’t actually tell us why they closed it, although we can (correctly) infer that it had become structurally unsound. Nor does it say how long for (because they clearly didn’t know). Basically, it’s dangerous enough that they daren’t let anyone on it, but also expensive enough to fix that it’s not remotely a priority.

This was a shame, because I would absolutely have sat and rested on one its benches, had that been possible.

Hebburn Quay

After the wooden structure, the path skirted around the back of an industrial yard and then plunged into some trees. About 250 m of leafy well-made cycle path followed, which a small sign identified as Hebburn Cycleway, opened in 2009. This soon transitioned into a paved riverside promenade at Hebburn Quay, where I found a bench that I could sit and rest on.

Looking out across the River Tyne, I could see Wallsend and the site of the Roman fort of Segedunum, overlooked by its modern viewing tower.

Hebburn Shipyard

I made the most of my chance to sit and gaze upon the river as I knew I was just about to leave it.  The way ahead was blocked by the derelict site of the old Hawthorn Leslie shipyard and I would have to take an urban detour to get round it.

The shipyard was founded by Andrew Leslie (d. 1894) in 1853 and merged with the business of Newcastle locomotive builder R&W Hawthorn in 1885 to form Hawthorn Leslie. The company experienced a boom in the early 20th century but its fortunes crumbled after WW2. It became part of Swan Hunter in 1968 (which also owned the shipyard opposite, next to the fort) and that was then nationalised in 1977.  Hebburn Shipyard closed in 1982 and now lies forlorn and empty, awaiting a regeneration that seems often promised but never to arrive.

Wagonway Road

From Hebburn Quay, I headed up Ellison Street away from the river, then turned left into Lyon Street, which led me to Wagonway Road. 

As its name betrays , this road occupies the alignment of an old industrial wagonway, specifically one that linked Hebburn Colliery’s Pit C to the rest of the coalmine. This was just one of a complex network of wagonways and railway lines that served the works and quaysides of Hebburn and neighbouring Jarrow.

Jarrow

Dougie’s Tavern

I passed over the boundary between the Hebburn and Jarrow beside the site of a former lead works. Directly opposite stood that stalwart companion of Tyne & Wear walks, the disused pub. 

This particular pub had begun as the Royal Hotel in Victorian times – the earliest mention of it that I could find in local papers was from 1873 – but was popularly dubbed ‘The White Lead’ on account of the lead works liberally dusting its surroundings with a layer of the stuff. If you’re going to risk acquiring cumulative brain damage from one neurotoxin (i.e., alcohol) I guess you might as well throw in a second one for funsies!

From 1992, barring few brief interruptions, the pub became known as Dougie’s Tavern and, for most of the 1990s, was a favourite haunt for the players of Newcastle United FC and their then-manager Kevin Keegan.  It had enjoyed an intermittent existence of late, most recently re-opening and then closing again in 2025.

Buried Rails

About 300 m further on from Dougie’s Tavern, in what had now become Blackett Street, I spotted evidence of buried rails at the roadside, a last glimpse of industrial railway sidings that had once served another nearby metal works, having run via what is Potter Street today.

The Bowes-Lyons were formed by a union between the Bowes family of County Durham and the Scottish Clan Lyon. Headed by the Earl of Strathmore & Kinghorne, it was the family of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (1900-2002), queen consort to George VI.  Its heraldry is an excellent example of canting arms (i.e., heraldic punning), displaying a lion for Lyon and three archery bows for Bowes.

Jarrow Civic Hall

Blackett Street became Western Road, which carried me into Jarrow proper. I soon found myself standing at a T-junction where, if I were to continue following the River Tyne Trail, I needed to turn left. But that didn’t mean that I couldn’t turn right and take a little diversion first. I had things to see.

Today, Jarrow Civic Hall houses a restaurant, function rooms and gym but it was originally opened in 1864 as Jarrow Mechanic’s Institute and was extended in 1877. The hall was gifted to the town by Liberal MP and shipyard owner Charles Palmer (1822-1907), who had also been Jarrow’s first mayor.

After WW2, Jarrow’s municipal borough council took over management of the institute building, which is when it was renamed the Civic Hall.

Jarrow Town Hall

As interesting as Jarrow Civic Hall might be, it was not the hall I was looking for. A brisk march round the corner brought me to the right one:

Jarrow Town Hall was the starting point of the famous Jarrow March of 1936, in which 200 unemployed men marched all the way to London, bearing a petition that HM Government re-establish industry in the town following the closure of the Palmer Shipyard – owned by Sir Charles Palmer, who had been made a baronet in 1886 – which had not survived the Great Depression.  One of the banners carried by the marchers is now on display inside the Town Hall.

As is usually the case, the petition was duly received, acknowledged and ignored.

Sir Charles Palmer had opened the Town Hall in 1904, not long after his second stint as Jarrow’s mayor. Designed by local architect Fred Rennoldson as a purpose-built replacement to the previous Corporation Chambers – an unimpressive suite of offices occupying the same site – the Town Hall cost £12 k to build.

Council Business

Jarrow Municipal Borough had been incorporated in 1875 with Charles Palmer as its mayor.  It ceased to exist in 1974, annoyingly shy of a full century, when the borough became part of South Tyneside.

Although headquartered in South Shields, South Tyneside Council still owns Jarrow Town Hall and uses it as a local service centre, handling enquiries about Council Tax, Housing Benefit and the like.  The building is Grade II listed, requiring South Tyneside to maintain it, which probably explains the scaffolding in the photo.

Baronet & Vikings

Outside the Town Hall, keeping a watchful eye on the restoration work, was a statue of Sir Charles Palmer. And well he might, for nearby lurked a pair of Viking raiders, who might otherwise have burnt it down.

The Charles Palmer statue was designed by Albert Toft (1862-1949) in 1903 and originally stood in Jarrow Riverside Park. It was moved to its current location in 2007 as the baronet had been literally standing in the way of building the second Tyne road tunnel.

Charles Palmer was made a baronet in 1886 after he helped settle a dispute between British ship-owners and the Suez Canal Company, of which he was a director.  His arms. as the 1st Palmer baronet of Grinkle Park, featured three crescents in chief above a chevron and lion, all in silver on black. Two jousting lances were placed upon the chevron in proper, i.e. natural, colours.

The Vikings

The Vikings was sculpted by Colin M Davidson and unveiled in 1962 for the Arndale Property Trust.  The trust was the organisation that brought American-style shopping malls to our shores, building 23 of them, most of which were concrete brutalist affairs totally unsympathetic to their surroundings.  Jarrow was their first, in 1961, and The Vikings was commissioned to accompany it.

Unlike many of the others, Jarrow’s Arndale Centre is still there, now known as the Viking Centre.

Jarrow Riverside Park

I acquired a sandwich and other snacks on my way back to and past the T-junction and I carried these to Jarrow Riverside Park, where Sir Charles Palmer’s statue had previously stood. 

There, I sat and enjoyed my lunch to the accompanying entertainment of a despairing and clearly exhausted father chasing his hyperactive toddler up and down the park. Just watching them made me feel tired in a way that walking 8½ miles had not.

Tyne Tunnels

The park sat atop the Tyne Tunnels – two road tunnels, one pedestrian and one for cycles – which were opened variously in 2011, 1967 and 1951 and crossed the River Tyne.  I knew this when I sat there and yet, to my shame, I stared at this building for far too long, trying to guess what it was:

It is, of course, a ventilation tower.  It was designed by architects Gordon Ryder (1919-2000) and Peter Yates (1920-1982) who, like so many architects, were bewitched by the styles of modernism and brutalism in a way not shared by most people who had to look at their creations. 

The tower dates to 1967, when the first road tunnel was opened and was apparently inspired by Venetian chimney pots.  Not because anything in Jarrow reminded them of Venice, so far as I can tell, but just because they simply liked the shape.

Route Reorientation

My sandwich restored just enough energy to escape the clutches of the Energy Vampire Child, enabling me stumble off in haste. 

I quickly found that the River Tyne Trail had diverted to the riverside and National Cycle Network Route 14, which I had also been semi-following, had branched off due south. I considered both options for a fraction of a second and then headed east. Because, why not?

River Don

The road I was now following – Priory Road – soon turned south beside an oil depot, but I was not yet done with going east. I took a side-road that was clearly an industrial access road, and this led to me to a footpath branching off it.  That, in turn, brought me to the River Don, whose banks arrested my eastward progress.

Rising near Springwell, the Don flows for about 9½ miles, some of it culverted, before it spills out into the Tyne.  Most of the last half mile follows a fairly straight course, rerouted in the early 1980s by land reclamation works.

Jarrow Slake

The land that was reclaimed was previously known as Jarrow Slake and comprised an expanse of tidal mud flats.  This was still largely intact in 1856, when the relevant Ordnance Survey 1st edition map was surveyed, but had lost its eastern third by 1859, when the NER built its Tyne Dock to better facilitate the transfer of coal cargoes from train to ship.

The remaining two thirds of the slake survived until 1972, when the Port of Tyne began to infill it.  Today, it mostly comprises a distribution centre for Nissan.

St Paul’s Church

Having ruled out crossing the Don the damp way, I merrily followed Slake Road upstream. This soon brought me to St  Paul’s Church, which occupies the site of St Paul’s Monastery and still incorporates some of its fabric into its structure.

This was, you may recall, alluded to in Jarrow’s coat of arms.

Wearmouth-Jarrow Abbey

The monastery was part of the twin abbey of Wearmouth-Jarrow, its other half being St Peter’s in what is now Sunderland. 

The latter part was founded in 674 by Benedict Biscop (c. 628-690). A former Northumbrian noble who had learnt Benedictine monasticism in Rome, he was granted land for a new monastery in Wearmouth by King Ecgfrith of Northumbria (c. 645-685).  The new monastery (St Peter’s) was sufficiently successful that an impressed Ecgfrith granted it more land in Jarrow in 681.

Benedict had big ideas about how his monastery should look, importing Frankish masons and glaziers at a time when such things were virtually unprecedented in the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England.  Certainly, it must have been impressive, but that merely served to attract Viking attentions later. They rocked up in 794 and burnt down the abbey.  And then again in 860.

The Venerable Bede

The Venerable Bede (673-735) was sent to St Peter’s at the age of seven. He later moved to St Paul’s and remained a member of the abbey for the rest of his life, never travelling further than 70 miles from Jarrow.

Taking advantage of Wearmouth-Jarrow’s status as a centre of learning – Benedict and his successor, Ceolfrith (c. 642-716), had amassed a substantial library – Bede developed into an accomplished writer and scholar.  His Ecclesiastical History of the English People took five volumes to cover a period between 55 BC and AD 731. The latter year was when he completed it, thus making it then ‘up-to-date.’

Anno Domini

Although he didn’t invent it, Bede popularised the system of dating years Anno Domini – although he actually used the longer terms anno ab incarnatione Domini (in the year from the incarnation of the Lord) and anno incarnationis dominicae (in the year of the incarnation of the Lord) – instead of counting the regnal years of local kings.

I for one am grateful, as it makes it much easier to tell how much time has passed between, say, AD 731 and 2026, as opposed to between the 2nd year of Coelwulf of Northumbria and the 4th year of Charles III of the UK.

Jarrow Bridge

You remember how I was looking for a bridge to cross the Don? Well, I found one, immediately southeast of St Paul’s.

There were probably earlier bridges spanning the Don on the road to St Paul’s, but this particular incarnation of Jarrow Bridge was built in the early 18th century, at about the time that industry began to colonise the shores of Jarrow Slake. 

It was repaired in 1783, widened in 1805 and blown up by the original (‘old’) IRA in 1921! (They only damaged it slightly, although they did rupture a gas main affixed to its parapet).

In 1938, a new road was built, the A185, which bypassed St Paul’s and headed straight for Jarrow. This crossed the Don on its own bridge and, by doing so, took almost all of Jarrow Bridge’s traffic.

Jarrow Bridge was restored in 1999, which was good for preservation – it is Grade II listed – but also comically useless because an industrial site had covered the causeway leading from its southern end, causing it to be fenced off (as shown in the middle photo above).

South Shields

Tyne Dock

I crossed the Don on what had been the A185 bridge but no longer was, the A-road having been rerouted in 1967 to meet up with the newly-built Tyne Tunnel.  This soon connected me with what very much is still the A185 and a fairly tedious walk alongside its partly-dualled carriageway ensued, during which I left Jarrow and entered South Shields.

 After half a mile, the A185 ended but only to be replaced by the A194, so that was much of a muchness.  This led me into the largely industrial suburb of Tyne Dock, named for its proximity to the NER dock that took a large bite from Jarrow Slake.  This meant, I realised, that I’d still not quite reached its pre-1859 far side.

Portrait Bench

I finally reached what had once been the eastern extent of the slake at the next junction and gladly left the A194 behind.  Close to the junction was a bench with an unlikely trio of guardians who resembled the setup for a joke:

This Portrait Bench was erected in 2007 by the cycling charity then called Sustrans but since last year called Walk Wheel Cycle Trust (est. 1977). The three metal cut-outs were fashioned by artists Katy and Nick Hallett and feature local subjects chosen by a public vote.  From left to right, they are comedienne Sarah Millican, cycle-builder Norman Fay (1936-2008) and a generic Roman legionary.

Norman Fay

Norman Fay owned a local cycle shop and was a keen cyclist himself, right up until it killed him.  Except, of course, it wasn’t his bike that killed him but the motor car that ploughed into him while he was on it. 

The car’s driver, Maureen Henderson, was diabetic and suffering from low blood sugar at the time, which caused her to lose control. The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death but Ms Henderson wasn’t entirely off the hook as she’d failed to notify the DVLA of her condition before demonstrating why they make you do that.

Royal Quays Marina

From the junction, I followed a series of roads that ran immediately outside the old wall of Tyne Dock for just under a mile. 

Near the end of the wall, I was able to look out across the Tyne to the North Shields international ferry terminal and Royal Quays Marina.  The cruise ship MV Balmoral, which had loomed over the latter the day before, had now departed.

MS Princess Seaways

Not quite as large but still sizeable was the cruise ferry MS Princess Seaways, which was moored up at the terminal.

Operated and owned by the Danish shipping company DFDS (Det Forenede Dampskibs-Selskab, ‘the United Steamship Company,’ est. 1866), Princess Seaways plies the route between North Shields and IJmuiden in the Netherlands.

At 161 m in length and 31,360 t gross tonnage, she is about three quarters the size of Balmoral yet has only five fewer passenger berths at 1,320. She can also carry 150 cars, and can do so at a maximum speed of 21 kts (24 mph).

Properly International

Much like Balmoral, Princess Seaways’ history involves multiple changes of ownership and name. DFDS acquired her in 2006, initially naming her Princess of Norway, and then Princess Seaways in 2011. DFDS Seaways is the name of the subsidiary that actually operates her, though it uses parent DFDS branding.

Prior to her acquisition by DFDS, she was owned by Norwegian company Fjord Line (est. 1993), which ran her for four years as the ferry to Denmark under the name Fjord Norway.  They had bought her from Spirit of Tasmania (est. 1985), the Tasmanian government-owned operator of the Bass Strait Ferry between Tasmania and mainland Australia, in which role she served from 1993 to 2002. Spirit of Tasmania showed little imagination but admirable consistency when they named her – she was also called Spirit of Tasmania during that period.

The ship that is now MS Princess Seaways was originally launched in 1986 in Bremerhaven, Germany for the German shipping company TT-Line (est. 1962). In the seven years she served them, her name was Peter Pan.

Town Centre

My return to within sight of the river was disappointingly brief as my journey north was arrested by a set of old graving docks – dry docks for cleaning a vessel’s hull – around which new houses had sprung up.  These forced me onto Commercial Road for just over a third of a mile, until I reached the southern jetty of the temporarily-suspended Shields Ferry. 

There, I had planned to simply continue, but a glance to my right prompted a new diversion as I went to investigate South Shields’ Market Place and King Street, which formed its pedestrianised town centre.

St Hilda’s Church

 Top left in the photo above is St Hilda’s Church, a Grade II-listed building rebuilt in 1812 and then partly again in 1881. And again in 1949, thanks to a little architectural criticism by the Luftwaffe.

Its predecessor was built by the Normans circa 1100. It was then restored in 1675 and extended twice in the 18th century (1753 and 1784).  But that too was a replacement for an even earlier chapel, said to have been founded circa 647 by St Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne (d. 651) and placed in the charge of St Hilda, Abbess of Whitby (c. 614-680), to whom it is dedicated.

An 1802 model of a lifeboat by William Wouldhave – one of two rival claimants to its invention – hangs from its ceiling.

The Word

Top right in the photo is the pretentiously-named The Word, National Centre for the Written Word or, as we mortals would call it, a library.  It was opened in 2026 as part of a plan by South Tyneside Council to regenerate South Shields Town Centre which is an admirable intention, even if the name they gave it is risible.

The Word was designed by FaulknerBrowns, an architectural practice co-founded in 1962 by Harry Faulkner-Brown (1920-2008) and known for its work on the Tyne & Wear Metro. They intended it to resemble an open book with its pages fanned, which I suppose it sort of does, a bit, but only if you know to look for that already.

Old Town Hall

Bottom left is the building that initially lured me from the riverside with its intriguing arches – South Shields’ Old Town Hall.  The building was built by the Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral in 1768 as the centrepiece of the new market square they had just laid out and to house the manorial court. In 1855, they sold it to the municipal borough of South Shields, which had been incorporated five years prior.

The Old Town Hall was replaced by a New Town Hall in 1910, which is now home to South Tyneside Council. The vacated Old Town Hall was restored in 1977.

Today, it partly serves as the market’s superintendent’s office but, a fortnight before I laid eyes on it, South Tyneside had surveyed local residents and businesses for their opinions on what it should be used as, should they bring it back into regular use.

Museum & Art Gallery

The bottom right photo is the South Shields Museum & Art Gallery and not, as it says on its façade, a ‘Free Library Reading Room.’

The building was erected in 1860 as South Shields Literary, Mechanical and Scientific Institution and became a library thirteen years later.  Three years after that, in 1876, the museum opened, so they’ve had to time to change their signage if they want to.

In addition to housing a museum and art gallery, the building also has a café, which offered a welcome opportunity to get out of the long-anticipated rain, which arrived in King Street at the exact same moment I did.

Golden Lion

Sadly, the rain was not going anywhere and that meant that, if I was, I was going to have to get soaked by it.  I decided to be brave and face my soggy fate with the heart of a lion.

That stone lion may be hard-hearted but he used to appear more likely to have a heart of gold.  Mainly because he was painted, nose to tail, in gold paint.

The lion was a decorative detail for the Golden Lion, a coaching house turned hotel that stood in King Street until 1973, when it was demolished.  The lion was kept though – he’s far too magnificent to dispose of – and was sited outside the museum in 1988, when the town centre was pedestrianised.

The Man with the Donkey

The statue on the right in the image above stood not far from the lion in Ocean Road. It depicts John Simpson Kirkpatrick (1892-1915), a local man who emigrated to Australia and served as a stretcher-bearer in the Australian Army Medical Corps during WW1.

Equipped with a donkey to serve as an ambulance – he actually used five different donkeys – he carried over 300 wounded comrades to safety and treatment at Gallipoli. Unfortunately, as his death year rather gives away, his own luck didn’t hold out and he was killed in action, cut down by machine gun fire in the middle of another rescue.

The statue was fashioned from bronze by sculptor Robert Olley and erected in 1988, again after pedestrianisation.

Smith’s Dock

I could have continued past The Man with the Donkey down Ocean Road and cut across to the coast, but I chose not to. Instead, I backtracked past the Golden Lion to the Tyne, where I gazed across to Smith’s Dock and its associated developments, The Plateau and Smokehouses.

Pilot Jetty

As I continued towards the mouth of the Tyne, buildings inserted themselves between me and the riverside again. For the most part, these were industrial, though they became residential towards the end.

Before long, though, I passed beyond them and was able to stand at the shoreline again beside a small embayment unlabelled on modern OS maps but named as the Southern Wave Trap on older editions.

Marked on both maps, old and new, was this jetty:

This pilot jetty was built circa 1890 for use by the pilots who would guide ships through the mouth of the Tyne. And still do. They haven’t used that particular jetty since the 1970s, though, which is why it’s now in a perilous state with multiple signs warning not to go on it. I duly heeded the warning.

Foyboatmen’s Rota Hut

Overlooking the jetty and the Tyne was a building that looked like it ought to be a pilots’ lookout, but was actually something related as revealed by the sign on its side.

A foyboat, it turns out, is a small boat that goes out to assist a larger vessel in docking and mooring.  I was already aware of pilots, who guide the ships round local hazards, and tugs, which help manoeuvre larger vessels into place. Well, I have since learnt that foyboats are a third type of assistance, assisting with mooring and the handling of lines between ship and shore, tugs or buoys.

They’ve been at work on the rivers Tyne, Wear and Tees for over 300 years, liaising closely with the pilots.  In the past, the foyboatmen competed against each other for business, but these days they cooperate and have a rota system.

The Rota Hut, as this building is called, was erected in the 1930s to replace a wooden predecessor and remains in daily use today. In fact, it is even the official address of the Tyne Foyboatmen Association.

Herd Groyne Lighthouse

Immediately on the far side of the Southern Wave Trap was the South Groyne; both were constructed in 1882, the latter to direct river flow and prevent the estuary from silting up.  South Groyne is alternatively known as Herd Groyne on account of being adjacent to Herd Sand, and the lighthouse on its end is therefore Herd Groyne Lighthouse. Short (13 m), red and mounted on legs, the lighthouse resembles some sort of steampunk lunar lander:

Herd Groyne Lighthouse underwent a £250 k restoration in 2024, £100 k of which was donated by the Barbour Foundation, a charity founded in 1988 by Dame Margaret Barbour, chairwoman since 1972 of the Barbour clothing brand (est. 1894).  Barbour is headquartered in South Shields and has long had an association with Herd Groyne Lighthouse, featuring it on labels and logos since 1908.

The lighthouse has been in continuous use since its construction, remaining operational today.  It was fitted with a directional light in 1999, which shows white, red, or green depending on the direction it is seen from.  This enabled it to take over the functions of the New High and Low Lighthouses on the opposite shore (built in 1810), which were then decommissioned.

Sights Already Seen

I paused for a moment on South Groyne to peer at Tynemouth through the worsening rain.  Amongst the various things I’d seen closer yesterday were the Sir James Knott Memorial Flats, the Black Middens, the Collingwood Monument, the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade Watch House and Tynemouth Priory & Castle.

Herd Sand

When the South Pier was constructed in 1910, to shelter the mouth of the Tyne, it cut Herd Sand in two. 

The part between South Groyne and South Pier is now Littlehaven Beach, while the larger part outside the pier is Sandhaven Beach.  Both these beaches face out onto the North Sea which meant, as I wandered wetly along their edges my walk was back to being coastal.

Assorted Artworks

On the way, I encountered a number of artworks, and missed about as many others. The first, and by the far the weirdest, of these was Conversation Piece, created by Juan Muñoz in 1999. This was a sculpture comprising 22 bronze figures, apparently wearing stuffed sacks that made them look like Weebles dehydrating in the sun.  Not that there was any sun.

The Sail and The Eye (which I had missed and looks like, well, an eye) were both created in 2014 by Stephen Broadbent, having been commissioned by South Tyneside Council to enhance the seafront.  The sail takes its inspiration from the cobles – a type of traditional fishing boat – that once plied this coast. The circular cut-out is intended to be looked through. Which I didn’t.

The dolphin bin was installed in 2024 and is a continuation of an idea that began with Feed the Fish, which I’d come to soon enough. Basically, it’s a bin for plastic bottles and the dolphin is there to emphasise the ‘reduce marine plastic pollution’ message. And you don’t want to argue with dolphins; they’re smart enough to not eat people unless there are definitely no witnesses and no chance at all of being caught.

Sand Dancer

I was starting to feel cold as well as damp and I realised that, with the turn in the weather, I was going to need more sustenance than that sandwich I ate in Jarrow. Thus, rather than feeding the fish, whatever that was going to be about, I needed to be feeding me.  I resolved to look out for somewhere that might just do that.

Sand Dancer provided me with food and drink, my choices for which were deliberately calorific; watching my weight was definitely a secondary consideration to staying warm.  This decision proved to be entirely justified when I ventured back out into the chilling rain and found myself fortified against it.

Feed the Fish

The Feed the Fish sculpture was installed in 2023 as an unusual encouragement for beach visitors to keep the coastline tidy.  It’s just a novelty-shaped bin for single-use plastic bottles, but it certainly looks more interesting and decorative than the usual recycling bank.

Trow Point

Although South Shields’ outer suburbs continued to be pretty densely urban, there was little sign of this from the coast path as I headed south, there being a green swathe between the houses and the sea.

The difference between this and Sandhaven’s promenade was at its starkest approaching Trow Point, where the low cliffs of Trow Quarry helped hide the houses from view.

Trow Quarry

Trow Quarry was a magnesian limestone quarry which provided the stone from which South Groyne and South Pier were constructed. Later, in the 1960s, ’70s and mid-’80s, it was partially backfilled with landfill.

Unfortunately, little thought was given to what was buried and this proved to a be problem as sea erosion caused cliffs to crumble, liberating the landfill, which turned out to be shockingly toxic. In particular, environmental investigators found both asbestos and cyanide.

A £1.8 m scheme was executed to mitigate this in 2009, involving a revetment of Norwegian granite to guard against further erosion. The coastal slope was then capped and landscaped.  This should prevent the sea from creating any new breaches, but does nothing to neutralise what’s still buried.

Disappearing Gun

The stubby rock on the left, in that photo, makes up Trow Point. Not visible from that angle – or indeed any angle I attempted to take photos from – is an unusual artillery piece mounted atop it.  Installed in 1987, it’s a replica experimental Disappearing Gun.

This is not, sadly, a death-ray weapon that disintegrates, but the early Victorian invention of Col Sir Alexander Moncrieff (1829-1906) who, as a lieutenant in the Forfarshire Artillery Militia during the Crimean War (1853-1856) observed that artillery gunners were exposed to danger while reloading.  His cunning solution was a gun that would use the power of its own recoil to retract it into a recess to be reloaded under cover. A counterweight system theoretically enabled the crew to raise it back up to the firing position without difficulty.

Trow Point Original

His idea was initially embraced with enthusiasm and installed in many forts and batteries, including an experimental variant at Trow Point in 1877. Brilliant as it was, however, the Disappearing Gun was expensive, slow to fire and had restricted barrel elevation, which drawbacks saw it replaced by more conventional guns protected instead by armoured casemates.

The Trow Point gun was particularly disadvantaged as it failed an initial two-day test by taking eight hours to return to firing position and was never used again.

The Wrong Moncrieff

Incidentally, I found quite a number of online sources citing a different military Moncrieff – Sir Colin Campbell Scott-Moncrieff (1836-1916) – as the inventor, but this seems to be name confusion. Contemporary accounts, including articles in the journal Scientific American, were pretty clear it was Alexander.

Frenchman’s Bay

From Trow Quarry, the coast path climbed an incline to the cliff tops and rounded Frenchman’s Bay.  The name of this embayment is said to reference a French ship that foundered there at some point, but what ship, when, I failed to find out. As it’s already named that on OS 1st ed maps, it must have been before 1855, when that area was surveyed.

Marsden & Whitburn

Marsden Cliff

I followed the coast around a blunt headland and past the curiously-named tidal islet of Velvet Beds – so-called because of a soft, springy mat of grass and thrift that once grew upon it – and this brought me to one end of Marsden Bay.

There, as I continued onto Marsden Cliff, I got an excellent view (for the rainy conditions) of what lay ahead:

Marsden Rock

Marsden Rock is a stack that used to incorporate a natural arch. This was a favourite location for tourist photos at low tide, so its collapse in 1996 was a bit of a blow to Marsden.  The collapse left two stacks, the one in my photo and a second, slenderer one, which was demolished the following year due to fears about its stability.

As one might expect, the 1996 collapse was not the rock’s first; any rocky stack exposed to the North Sea is going to experience erosion. A rockfall in 1911 enlarged the arch by making it taller, for instance.

Allen’s Steps

In 1830, Peter Allen (1799-1849) – the landlord of Marsden Grotto – spent a fortnight with two assistants cutting steps into the upper half of Marsden Rock. The weathered remains of these steps can still be seen today.  To access the steps, he also erected wooden ladders and charged visitors a fee to scale the rock and reach a refreshment tent he set up at the top! The first such customer was a Miss Julia Collinson of Gateshead.

In 1903, the stairs were used by several choirs in order to give a massed choral performance from atop the rock.

I’m not sure when the ladders were removed, but the rock had become a bird sanctuary by the 1930s and remains so today, with its roof the sole province of gulls and cormorants.

Marsden Grotto

Marsden Grotto is a pub and restaurant, sited mostly inside a cave carved out of Marsden Cliff, but fronted with a fairly typical seaside building façade.

The initial excavation was made in 1782 by lead miner Jack Bates, who used dynamite to blast himself a cave home. He also cut 130 steps from cliff top to beach, without which he’d have been trapped at high tide. After his death in 1792, the cave sat empty until it caught the eye of the previously mentioned Peter Allen, a gamekeeper-turned-publican.  He significantly extended the cave complex, turning it into the Grotto.

Vaux Brewery bought it in 1938, at which time they constructed a lift to complement the steps.

The modern iteration of those steps closed at the end of 2025, having been found to be structurally unsound. This currently forces the Grotto to close at high tide as the only egress would be by lift, which is not usable in an emergency.

Marsden Quarry

South of Marsden Grotto, the path left Marsden and its conurbation behind. Now I could see only a verdant green bank inland of me, although some of that it was actually hiding Marsden Quarry.

There had been some small-scale quarrying at Marsden prior to the 1870s, when Whitburn Coal Company (WCC) bought up five local quarries and Marsden Quarry expanded, linked to the colliery and South Shields’ docks by the South Shields, Marsden & Whitburn Colliery Railway. The latter, owned and built by the WCC, was more popularly known as the ‘Marsden Rattler’ on account of noise made by its laden wagons. The line ran from 1879 until the colliery closed.

Whitburn Colliery

The WCC was absorbed into its parent Harton Coal Company (HCC) in 1891 under which, forty years later in 1931, Whitburn Colliery set a world record producing 18,000 tons of coal per week. The colliery was nationalised as part of the National Coal Board in 1947 and closed in 1968, after which it and its pit village were demolished and wiped off the map.

Although that killed the mine, the quarry somehow survived and remains operational today.  Its current owner is O’Brien Aggregate Marsden Ltd (est. 2017).

Lime Kilns

In addition to its colliery and quarries, WCC also constructed a massive battery of fifteen lime kilns.  These used coal from the colliery to burn limestone from the quarry, creating lime for use in agriculture and the steel & chemical industries.

The lime-burning business was so successful that the HCC added two new kilns in 1895, albeit of a different construction, so that they could make more of it to meet demand.

The kilns were extinguished during WW2, so that the Luftwaffe could not use their light to navigate, and returned to operation only intermittently post-war. They were finally extinguished for good in 1968, when the colliery closed down. They were left to moulder thereafter, until preservation works took place in 2016.

Souter Lighthouse

Immediately south of the site of the pit village, and contemporary with it, was Souter Lighthouse, which I’d earlier spied from afar at Frenchman’s Bay.  Built in 1871, it was a technological marvel in its day, being one of the first purpose-built electric lighthouses in the world.  It was erected by Trinity House (est. 1514), the general lighthouse authority for England and Wales, and was designed by the corporation’s chief engineer, James Douglass (1826-1898).

Given its early adoption of electric lighting, it’s particularly ironic that in 1914 they converted it from electricity to oil. The new lamp was also advanced, being the very latest in incandescent paraffin lamps, but still, that seems like a leap backwards. It was reconverted back to electric power in 1952.

Unusually, the lighthouse was never automated but remained manned by a keeper right up until 1988, when the light was decommissioned. As is usually the fate of disused lighthouses, its keeper’s cottage is now holiday accommodation.

Souter Hole

A quarter mile south of Souter Lighthouse, I found myself passing Souter Hole, an ever-widening limestone sinkhole that first appeared in 2003 and is now 12 m across and has eaten the path closest to the cliff edge.

A short fence and warning signs kept me away from Souter Hole’s rim, lest I be tempted to leap in, perhaps in search of a dramatic encounter with the secret beach at the bottom of it.

Whitburn Coastal Park

South of Souter Hole, I found myself ambling along the edge of Whitburn Coastal Park, which is basically the site of Whitburn Colliery repurposed as a nature reserve.

The southernmost part of this was also Whitburn Point Nature Reserve, which was declared in 2003.  Popular with bird-watchers, this included a couple of hides, one looking out over the sea and another watching two ponds, which were added in 2012.

I peered out to sea from close to the hide and saw nothing. Once again, the birds had more sense than I did regarding what weather to be out in.

Whitburn

As I approached Souter Point – which, confusingly, is not where Souter Lighthouse is; that’s on Lizard Point – I was aware of Whitburn separated from the shoreline by another grassy swathe.

The village of Whitburn is first mentioned (as ‘Whitberne’) in the Boldon Book of 1183, that being a survey conducted by the Bishop of Durham in similar manner to the Domesday Book of 1086 (which had not included County Durham). For most of its history, Whitburn was a fishing and farming village but later became more industrial and now is essentially a dormitory town.

As such, most of Whitburn looked to me like any other northeast English settlement, but one building in particular did stand out.

Windmill Mortality

Windmills, by their very nature, are not particularly inclined to survive intact. When in use, they were full of flour, which is explosively flammable if stirred up into the air. And they need wind to work, which means they were built in exposed places, which is just asking for flour to be blown everywhere. 

They are tall, so more likely to be struck by lightning than, say, a bungalow, which is a problem at the best of times. And if the mill is full of flour, it won’t be the best of times. 

And then, if it survived long enough for wind power to become obsolete, well, that probably saw it abandoned to collapse into ruin, or repurposed as something else (often a dovecote).

Whitburn Windmill

Whitburn Windmill was built in 1790 to replace a 1779 predecessor that failed to survive after being destroyed by, ironically, wind (it blew down in a gale).

In keeping with the last point above, it was stripped of its sails, top and millstones in 1896, when steam mills were all the rage. So technically, I guess, it didn’t survive except as a shell.

It was also briefly repurposed – it was used as a lookout tower during WW2.

Acquired by South Tyneside Council in 1960, it continued to moulder for three more decades before being restored in 1992.  It is now Grade II listed and is one of two surviving windmills in South Tyneside.

Whitburn Sands

South of Whitburn was South Bents, which was originally a farm and some fisherman’s cottages but later became a small, detached residential settlement that still falls under Whitburn.  It was fronted by a broad and pleasant promenade that promised to be joy to stroll upon…

I thoroughly enjoyed my striding along Whitburn Sands, it was lovely. Though not quite so lovely as to tempt me to paddle in the sea, given the weather conditions.

From my position at the water’s edge, I barely glimpsed South Bents at all as I strode my way towards Seaburn.

Sunderland

Seaburn

Seaburn is a residential suburb of Sunderland, the city straddling the mouth of the River Wear. On reaching it, I was forced back onto the promenade on account of Parson’s Rocks interrupting the beach. From this position, still close to the water’s edge, I paid little attention to Seaburn’s houses and hotels.

Grand Hotel

One of those hotels is now the Grand Hotel but was the Seaburn Hotel in the 1960s and early ’70s, when it was a favourite holiday haunt of the artist Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976), who always booked room 104.  The hotel was built in 1937 on the site of a 19th century predecessor, and belonged to Vaux Brewery.  In 1999, Vaux sold it to Marriott Hotels (est. 1957), who ran it until 2018, when they sold it to Britannia Hotels (est. 1976).

Unlike the last time I encountered one of LS Lowry’s favourite hotels, on which occasion I stayed in it, this time I strode past with barely a glance.  Much like the artist, I was more taken by looking at the sea.

Meik’s Lighthouse

By marching past the Grand Hotel, I soon came to the neighbouring suburb of Roker. The first part of this that I reached was Roker Cliff Park, directly adjacent to Parson’s Rocks, where I saw imposing structures of a different kind:

The nearer lighthouse was Meik’s Lighthouse, also known locally as ‘the White Lighthouse.’  The reason for the latter name is pretty obvious, while the former comes from Thomas Meik (1812-1896) who, as engineer to the River Wear Commission (RWC) in 1856, built it as a navigation light on the Old South Pier at the river mouth.

The pier was in use from 1836 until 1973.  When it was demolished, ten years after closure, Meik’s Lighthouse was saved and moved to its current position.

Meik’s Lighthouse was made from cast iron and is one of only a few such lighthouses surviving in the UK. It is Grade II* listed.

Roker Pier Lighthouse

The distant, stripy lighthouse is Roker Pier Lighthouse and still occupies its original position on Roker Pier.  Both pier and lighthouse were completed in 1903 and were designed by Henry Hay Wake (1844-1911), who was Thomas Meik’s successor as RWC engineer.

Prior to automation in 1972, keepers would have to periodically attend the light.  While they could do so by walking atop the pier in good weather, they generally used a tunnel inside it, provided specifically to protect them from the elements.

My favourite thing about Roker Pier Lighthouse is that its stripes are not painted on.  Having determined that stripes were required for visibility, he designed them into its structure by using two different colours of stone. This not only answered the requirement, but made regular repainting unnecessary.

Bede Memorial Cross

At the southern end of Roker Cliff Park, I was given a choice of dropping down onto Roker Beach or climbing to a higher level of promenade as it ran alongside Cliffe Park. I chose the latter, which perfectly placed me to admire the Bede Memorial Cross as I passed it.

The cross was erected in 1904 and then twice again after both world wars, having been removed in the meantime for safe-keeping.  It was created by sculptor George Walker Millburn (1844-1941) and architect Charles Clement Hodges (1852-1932) and is dedicated to the Venerable Bede, as its name rather gives away.  And also St Eadfrith of Lindisfarne (d. 721), which its name doesn’t.

The cross is Grade II listed.

Harbour View

Not long after, I came to Roker Pier, which I briefly considered wandering out onto in order to see its lighthouse up close. Had it been less rainy, I probably would have, but I was thoroughly cold and damp and wanted to be somewhere that was neither of those things.  Instead, I turned inland and headed along Harbour View.

The part of Harbour View I was in didn’t actually have that great a view of Sunderland Harbour, but it did afford me many tantalising glimpses of Sunderland Marina below. This was enough to convince me that I should have probably stayed by the waterside, and I resolved to drop back down to it as soon as I was able.

The marina was created in 1996 in the old North Dock, which was built in 1837 by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859). 

Wear Ferries

I joined the riverside at Sand Point where, historically, a ferry used to cross the Wear. 

This seems to have been of later origin than the next two closest Wear ferries, as it did not appear on OS maps until the 1898 2nd ed, while its neighbours were on the 1862 1st ed and dated from much earlier (the Low Ferry from 1661 and the High Ferry from 1710). All three met their demise in 1957, abolished by the Sunderland Corporation Act of that year.

A fourth ferry, slightly further upstream – Panns Ferry – had operated until 1796, when the first Wearmouth Bridge replaced it at the same site. This makes Panns Ferry much too early for OS maps, but it was shown on John Rain’s 1790 Eye Plan of Sunderland.

My plans for the day involved staying north of the Wear, so the ferries’ discontinuation was never going to affect me.

Sunderland Harbour

The estuary just inside the river mouth was transformed into an industrial harbour by the efforts of the RWC between its founding in 1717 and its replacement by the Port of Sunderland Authority in 1972.  The latter still operates Sunderland as a commercial port, as was attested by a large cargo ship moored at Corporation Quay:

The ship shown is Elim Bounce, a Liberian-flagged bulk carrier. She is 200 m long and her gross tonnage is 33,922 t.  I don’t know her top speed but there are internet sites that track that sort of thing and the fastest they have logged her doing recently was 15 kts.

Elim Bounce was launched in 2012 as Virgo Colossus and operated as such until a change of name and ownership saw her become Dolce Vita in 2022.  She was bought by Hong Kong-based Synecofield Ltd in 2024, which contracts out her day-to-day management and operation to Elim Spring Marine Hongkong. The latter chose her current name.

St Peter’s Church

I followed the shore of the River Wear upstream to the sites of the former Low and High Ferries. They were inheritors of a much earlier tradition, with a ferry having been operated in this reach of the Wear since at least the late 12th century, operated by the clergy of St Peter’s Church. This church occupies the site of St Peter’s Monastery, the other half of Wearmouth-Jarrow Abbey.

The current church is a bit of a Frankenstein building, incorporating parts from the 7th, 10th, 14th and 19th centuries.

The exact location of the mediaeval ferry is uncertain but may well have been where the High Ferry later ran, as a tidal ford existed there until scoured away by flooding in 1400. Its direct continuation was the Low Ferry, the rights to which were let to Walter Ettrick by the Bishop of Durham in 1661.

University of Sunderland

St Peter’s also gives its name to the St Peter’s Campus of the University of Sunderland, which is what physically stood between me and the church.

The university was founded in 1901 as Sunderland Technical College and became Sunderland Polytechnic in 1969, enabling it to offer degrees awarded by the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA). In 1992, it was granted university status, enabling it to award degrees in its own right.

Its St Peter’s campus was opened in 1994 on land that had, between 1846 and 1979, been Thompson’s Shipyard.  This was a development that suited me just fine – the university had a riverside promenade running past it, while a working shipyard would have presented an obstacle to detour round.

The university’s coat of arms display a golden sun in splendour (i.e., with rays) over a blue and gold gyronny pattern, above which is a blue chief bearing crossed keys and two bishops’ mitres in gold, presumably referencing St Peter.

Sculpture Trail

As I continued upstream, I began to see sculptures dotted irregularly along the riverside.  These comprised the Sculpture Trail, which was originally created piecemeal between 1991 and 2001 by sculptors Colin Wilbourn and Karl Fisher, blacksmith Craig Knowles, and writer Chaz Brenchley.

Faced with these artworks, I found the non-functioning state of my phone a little frustrating but made sure to pop back before the start of the next day’s walk in order to snap the ones I liked best.

Launch Day

A late addition to the trail is a pair of sculptures by Ray Lonsdale, created in 2025 using his usual corten steel with its orange rust patina.  One of these is Launch Day, depicting an elderly man sitting on a bench with an ice-cream-eating girl, regaling her with memories of the river.

An accompanying poem is inscribed on a plaque affixed to the work:

I wish you could have seen it lass,
Standing at the side of a huge ship as they knock the blocks away,
For a moment it seems like the ship is still and the world is moving.
The drag chains squeal down the slipway in a cloud of smoke and ferrous dust.
A vain attempt to check its speed as the stern enters the river,
A huge wave pushed to the opposite bank
And we all stood in wonder,
Every single time.

Days of wonder then petty insecurities,
Followed by swagger and poise and missed opportunities
Then down the other side on polished runner,
Faster and further from invincible summer,
Crashing through the brief autumn blaze,
As you scream from salad to vegetable days.

I feel that the sculpting is considerably better than the poetry, but these things are admittedly subjective.

Dead and Gone

Lonsdale’s other contribution is Dead and Gone, comprising two shipyard workers who are also sitting on a bench. On the newspaper that one of them is reading is another poem, which references the demise of Sunderland’s shipyards:

It says here, at the bottom of page one,
That the days of the yards are dead and gone.
No more baits and throwing crusts for a gull,
No more dancing round sparks in the depth of a hull.
Loved the banter, the noise, the dirty old town,
Always loved the river we were well and truly sold down.
But that was then and the river rolls on,
It’s the same old tune but a brand new song.
So head up people and shoulders to the wheel,
’Cos it wasn’t just our ships that were Sunderland Steel.

Wearmouth Bridge

My journey up the River Wear ended when I got to Wearmouth Bridge.

The original Wearmouth Bridge was erected in 1796, killing off Panns Ferry in the process. It was designed by local architect Thomas Wilson, who basically reused a bridge design by American Founding Father Thomas Paine (1737-1809).  Possibly, he shouldn’t have, because it required repairs in 1805 and extensive reconstruction by Robert Stephenson in 1859.

The current bridge dates from 1929 and was designed by civil engineering consultancy Mott, Hay and Anderson (1902-1989). It was built around the previous bridge, in order to keep the latter open to traffic, and cost approximately £232 k – equivalent to about £13 m today – of which £12 k was spent on dismantling the old bridge.

St Peter’s Metro Station

I left the riverside a short distance before Wearmouth Bridge and ascended a steepish incline to attain the level of its approach.  Before me, on the opposite side of that road, was St Peter’s Metro Station. Unlike many in the network, this is not an old heavy rail station repurposed, but was an entirely new build for the Metro’s Wearmouth extension in 2002.

I’d enjoyed my day’s walk, even if some of it wetly, but I was also glad to have reached its end point. Anticipatory visions of warmth, dryness and abundant food and drink drifted enticingly before my mind’s eye.

Soon, ticket in hand, I was whizzing back to Newcastle Station, not far from which I would find all of those things…

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This time: 23½ miles
Total since Gravesend: 4,783 miles

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