Newcastle
is situated on the north bank of a shallow gorge on the River Tyne.
It is believed that the Romans first built a bridge on this site.
Newcastle was the lowest point downstream at which the River Tyne
could be bridged. Another bridge was built here in 1250.
In the 17th century nearby coal deposits encouraged the development
of the glass industry. There were also local salt deposits and local
people were also involved in the manufacture of soap. Coal, salt,
soap and glass were transported from the town by coastal vessels and
by the beginning of the 18th century Newcastle was the most important
town in the North East.
Engineers such as William Hedley, George
Stephenson and Timothy Hackworth
worked in local collieries experimenting with locomotive transport.
In 1823 Edward Pease joined with George
Stephenson and his son Robert Stephenson,
to form a company to make the locomotives. The Robert Stephenson &
Company, at Forth Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, became the world's
first locomotive builder.
The coming of the railway further increased the importance of the
town. This included the Newcastle & Darlington Railway, Newcastle
& Carlisle Railway and the York & Newcastle Railway. Robert
Stephenson built the high level bridge between Newcastle-upon-Tyne
and Gateshead in 1849. Stephenson's bridge carried both the railway
and a roadway over the River Tyne.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne was a commercial as well as an industrial centre.
The population grew steadily throughout the 19th century, going from
33,000 in 1801 to 109,000 in 1861. The prosperity of 19th century
Newcastle is reflected in the architecture of John Dobson (1787-1865)
and John Green (1787-1852).
James
Wilson Carmichael, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
(1848)
(1)
Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole
Island of Great Britain (1724)
Newcastle
is a spacious, extended, infinitely populous place. It is seated upon
the River Tyne, which is here a noble, large and deep river, and ships
of any reasonable size may come safely up to the very town. as the
town lies on both sides of the river, the parts are joined by a very
strong and stately stone bridge of seven very great arches, rather
larger than the arches of London Bridge; and the bridge is built into
a street of houses also, as London Bridge is. They build ships here
to perfection, I mean as to strength and firmness, and to bear the
sea; and as the coal trade occasions a demand for such strong ships,
a great many are built here. In Newcastle there is considerable manufacture
of wrought iron.
(2) Samuel
Smiles, Life of George Stephenson (1875)
From a walled medieval town of monks and merchants,
Newcastle has been converted into a busy centre of commerce and manufactures
inhabited by nearly 100,000 people. Newcastle is in many respects
a town of singular and curious interest, especially in its older parts,
which are full of crooked lanes and narrow streets.
As you pass through the country at night, the earth looks as if were
bursting with fire at many points; the blaze of coke-ovens, iron-furnaces,
and coal heaps reddening the sky to such a distance that the horizon
seems to be a glowing belt of fire. From the necessity which existed
for facilitating the transport of coals from the pits to the shipping
places, it is easy to understand how the railway and the locomotive
should have first found their home in such a district.
(3)
Shirley Brooks, The Morning Chronicle
(October 1849)
In the north-eastern corner of
England lies the great carboniferous deposit which supplied in 1845
eleven-twelths of the entire mass of coal burned in the grates and
furnaces of the kingdom. Between the Coquet and the Tees run the Tyne
and the Wear, draining the broadest and richest portions of the coalfield,
and on their banks lie scattered the oldest, deepest and the most
extensive pits. Like almost all coal deposits, the strata forming
the Newcastle field "dip" to a common bottom, somewhat in
the manner of a basin, and of this basin, the centre, and therefore
the deepest point, lies the sea coast hard by Sunderland.
The houses of the pit village may, be divided into three classes.
Those of the lowest class usually contain only one room; those of
the second contain a large room and an attic. The best houses consist
of two rooms on the ground floor, with generally an attic over one
of them. In all cases, the sitting room door is the street door.
More than one half of the pit population virtually live - each family
- in a single room. Here is bedroom and kitchen - here the men and
the boys, on their return from the pit, wash their almost naked bodies,
too often in the presence of growing-up daughters and sisters and
here too the women dress and undress. The men say they cannot wash
upstairs, as the water would plash through the frequently warped flooring
down upon the furniture, and perhaps the bed below.
When a young couple get married they generally go to a furniture broker
in Newcastle or Sunderland, with perhaps £10 of ready money,
obtaining a considerable part of their purchases upon credit, and
paying for it by installments.
(4) Sir
John Walsham, Report on the Sanitary Condition of Newcastle
(1839)
There is a considerable number of lodging-houses in Newcastle, some
of the rooms of which are frequently occupied by from 15 to 20 persons
each. In these houses the most deplorable scenes of profligacy and
depravity are met with, both sexes being crowded together in a manner
injurious to both health and morals. A medical gentleman told me that
in the common lodging-houses where travelling vagrants are often attacked
with fever, etc., and in many cases die, the beds are the very next
night occupied by fresh inmates, who of course are infected with the
same disorder.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1875
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