North East Heritage Library

First time I’ve seen this smashing photo on the Quayside, perhaps from the 1890s or 1900s.

The grain warehouse was once the biggest brick building in the world and designed by John & Benjamin Green - a family partnership as influential as Dobson in designing Tyneside.

The room can be seen in the shot below in 1972 (shared by the Heddon History Group but first featured in Newcastle Life, Sept. 1972).

The blacksmiths continued operating until sometime after the 50s, when Scottish & Newcastle merged the two buildings with stonework to feature a room full of old horseshoes and ironwear created by the Amos family who ran it.

This is curious as the pub appears much much older, but the copious quarries nearby may have proved greater financial incentive for these traditional resources. It may have also been as aesthetic choice.

This changed in the late 1890s when the plot was bought by the Newcastle Breweries after the death of the lands previous owner, and shortly after the blacksmiths shop adjoining was constructed.

The old Swan beer house featured a parlour, two bedrooms, kitchen, scullery, pantries and a cellar. There was a small front garden with a stable, byre, piggery, freshwater spring and coal house.

These beer houses weren't really pubs - they had a limited license and will simply have sold ale as a merchant rather than as a proper sit down establishment. It was not known as The Swan until at least the mid 1890s, but I guess simply as an ale shop.

From the west, you're greeted with the beauty of a proper rural pub but this structure is much newer than first imagined. The site was home to an old cottage, which operated as a brew house from around 1842.

Back to some regular programming, at Heddon-on-the-Wall. The Swan proves to be a mystery. I try to start all my research from scratch without any consideration for what's out there, and it's left a fair few questions for how long this place has been operating. Here's my attempt at figuring it out.

I feel a little bit under qualified to talk about Amsterdam, but I think like they had quite an active culture shift in the 70s/80s towards public & active transport?

Feel like there’s only pockets of political will to get that kind of change in this country!

Sorry about the radio silence, but I’m back and will ease in over the end of this week. What an amazing city Amsterdam is though - I feel like our urban planners who take a ton of tips from their transport network. They’re gifted with a much more trusting social contract though.

Oh how my heart aches I can’t go to the railway museum in Utrecht. Their first locomotive was built at Bedlington!

My first time in Amsterdam - holy double decker!!!!

There’s not too many about now - there’s one at Haggerston which survives and you’ll find some in private country estates.

The ice could last well through to the summer or even full year if the conditions were decent enough meaning meats, desserts and fresh goods could be packed in here for banquets and daily sustenance.

A lot of them were excavated hollows in hillsides, or mounds, and were packed full of ice from water sources nearby. This one probably grabbed ice from the pond next to the country house.

Every estate had one of these little grottos through the 18th and 19th centuries. They’re called icehouses and featured prominently before the invention of refrigeration.

Just a quick one this evening, as I really wanted to share this little ice house on the grounds of Close House - now a golf resort but once the estate of the Bewicke family who featured fairly high ranking politicians of the county and nearby town of Newcastle.

A shot from the same angle in 1932. Unknown source.

It's had a decent level of limewash to protect it for years to come, and some further restoration over the years, but it's still a beautiful little cottage which forms the pilgrimage site for one of the North East's greatest sons.

This is seen below waiting to depart from Forth Banks, and included such locomotives as Locomotion and Killingworth Billy.

The house was a principal landmark of Stephenson's centenary celebrations in 1881, when a long procession of early locomotives trundled to Streethouse in homage to their forefather.

It is clear the great influence he had on his son, whose tinkering and knowledge of machines clearly rubbed off.

His father Robert was the mechanic for a Newcomen pumping engine on the edge of the river. There were two in Wylam owned by Blackett at this time - both around the site of the Jubilee Field today where the waggonway terminated.

We can presume he walked from here or hitched a waggon over to Newburn where he worked at the Water Row Pit when he was 17, uneducated but by all accounts well loved.

Now it was built in the 18th century, though there's little indication as to whether there was a previous occupant to Robert & Mabel who were George's parents. He was the 2nd child born in 1781, birthed into a pit family with only a pittance.

This is High Streethouse, a cottage on the fringes of Wylam which stood on the Wylam Waggonway and later the formal railway from North Wylam to Newcastle.

The North East was the Silicon Valley of the early 19th century. Innovation and invention accelerated the world into coal-powered smog, and much of it was down to a man born here - George Stephenson.

Ha, the first time satanists, golfers and coal miners have all featured in one Venn diagram! I'd be interested to know more!

My pleasure - up via Close House to Heddon next. Lots of little hidden gems.