Greenwood's 1828 map of Northumberland shows a quite prominent crossing point of the River Blyth near Kitty Brewster farm in Cowpen. The map is an relatively early example of cartography and not totally accurate or detailed. But was it a prominent crossing point? The only other crossing points of the river are bridges and fords both upstream and downstream at Bedlington and Blyth about one mile away. A crossing at this point would have been desirable.
Ordnance Survey 1895
The 19th century Ordnance Survey maps do show a ford at this place. It does not cross the river in a most direct course though. The path moves North direct across the river then turns NW in a new direction across the channel.
The river is still tidal at this point. The crossing would have only been possible at low tide. But even so, the river bed is covered in thick mud. Was there a structure in place to give a firmer footing? And was the diagonal course a necessity to avoid the staiths built on the North bank of the river in the early 19th century. If the ford was constructed in earlier times than the 19th century did it go in a more direct route across the river channel. The crossing was not shown on Armstrong's map of 1769, but absence of evidence doesn't necessarily indicate it wasn't there.
Aerial Photo from 2009 Showing Linear Features
Aerial photography does seem to indicate that there is a linear feature, or structure, at the fording point. I went to investigate and underneath the seaweed now covering the linear feature was a raised platform made of stones, each the size of a hand. The platform was at most only a couple of feet in width, just enough room for one person to walk across.
OS Plan of 1960
The Ford looking North from Kitty Brewster
The feature is not shown on the 20th century Ordnance Survey mapping, however, once again, absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence, but it clearly fell into disuse especially after the A189 was constructed in the 1950s. The river channel also altered its course slightly with an island developing by the time of the 1960 OS plan. The channel at the point of crossing seems to have become deeper after this date.
The workmen of Blyth Shipyard were on annual leave on the 3rd August 1966 when the editor of the Blyth News was invited to go along to the yard to be briefed on a news item. With all the 1400 workforce away on their holidays what he was actually told was momentous. The shipyard was to close.
Of the 245,000 shares in the Blyth Dock and Shipbuilding Company 242,000 were owned by Moller Trust Ltd of Hong Kong. And the formal redundancy notices the men received soon after, while on annual leave, were postmarked Hong Kong.
Shipyards in 1950s
The loss of heavy industry at that time, which also included some of the town’s coal mines, has often been cited as the start of a demise in Blyth’s fortunes. But were the closures inevitable or was this the product of a foreign management indifferent to the plight of the town?
Eddie Milne was the town’s MP from 1960 to 1974. He spoke on the subject at a House of Commons debate on the 20th Oct 1966 with the Labour Secretary of State for the Board of Trade, Roy Mason:
“The first Ark Royal was built at Blyth, but it is with the present that we are mainly concerned tonight. In the first week in August of this year, the yard was on annual holiday and the editor of the local paper, the Blyth News, on 3rd August, was telephoned and asked to go along to the yard for what was described as an item of news. A receiver had moved in that morning and taken over the running of the yard. Needless to say the town was stunned. Workers on holiday received the news from newspaper reports, and many returned from their holidays to receive the news in envelopes marked Hong Kong.
There is not the time to describe the feeling of desolation that is experienced at a time like this. As anybody in the House will appreciate, it is a matter of great sadness to watch a great industry die. The method of announcing the closure was criminal. No other word could fit the act. Men who had given a lifetime of service to the Blyth Company, in good times and bad, were entitled to treatment better than this.”
Milne accepted that the shipyard was “on a razor’s edge for years” financially. A fleet of ships had recently had their value written down by half and Lloyds Bank had recently loaned the company £539,000. But he asked that the interests of this company be examined by the Board of Trade. The creditors to the Blyth Dock and Shipbuilding Company, he said, were actually companies owned by Moller Ltd. A stormy creditors meeting in September had been chaired by Mr Tucker who had several financial interests in Moller companies. He had savagely criticized the management and workforce despite having only visited the yard on one occasion.
Milne also spoke of the quality of innovative work the yard was producing, diversifying into industrialised house building, factory structures and bridges. The Government had been stressing the further need for shipping to be built. There were mechanisms available to support the industry, for example the new Local Employment Act. He was stating that he thought the Secretary of State should intervene.
Roy Mason replied:
“I assure hon. Members, and my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth in particular, that the Government are not indifferent to the situation created by the closure of the shipyard in Blyth. We appreciate the worry and distress this closure has brought to those employed in the yard and to their families and the importance of ensuring that there should be alternative employment for those put out of work by the closure.
However, I cannot accept the simple proposition that the shipyard should be kept open at all costs. The company appears to have failed because, like many other firms in the industry, it had to take orders at fixed prices at a time when costs, including the cost of labour, were rising. Ships constructed have proved to be unprofitable and the yard had for some time been operating at a loss.
The experience of this yard is not unique in the industry. It was this and similar problems which led us to set up the Geddes Committee.
But things are not as black as this might suggest. The great shipbuilding concentration on the Tyne is not too far away, and skilled shipbuilding labour is scarce there. Alternative employment should be available on the Tyne for many of the Blyth shipbuilding workers. Indeed, of the 470 employees of the Blyth shipyard who have so far been declared redundant, over 80 per cent. have already found alternative employment, and many of them on the Tyne.”
The site is today known as Wimbourne Quay. Shipbuilding had begun on this site in 1811 and various firms owned the yard down the decades. It became the Blyth Shipbuilding and Dock Company Ltd on 2nd March 1883. By 1900 it had taken over the Blyth Dry Dock Company and was able to carry out work on the largest of shipping, including the Ark Royal in 1914. In 1947 the yard was purchased by Mollers (Hong Kong) Ltd. It had four berths and five dry docks.
An eyewitness to the final days of the yard has written about his experiences on bedlington.co.uk website. It is quite a humorous and personal piece. It is worth reading in full. He goes under the handle of Eggy1948. He started the shipyard at age 16 and finished in May 1966 at the same age. He wasn’t hopeful for the yard’s future. There was obviously a feeling among the men that all was not well. He writes:
“No wonder the Japanese could build ships cheaper than us. They did not have to paint the whole town whatever colour the latest ship was being done in. Almost every house in Blyth had a door/shed the same colour as the latest ship… The Japanese blacksmiths did not have to make wrought iron gates for the foreman’s driveways or basketball hoops and fittings for every gable end in Blyth… All charged to the cost of the ship.”
Professor Norman McCord reflected on the findings of the 1992 Royal Commission in the book the “Northern Counties from AD 1000” when he wrote:
“At the beginning of the twentieth century, British shipyards had built 55 per cent of the world’s new tonnage; in 1960 the figure was only 15 per cent and continued to drop. Northern yards did not even hold their share of the shrunken British total, despite some success stories… Shipbuilding expansion overseas would in any event have posed problems for British yards; the catastrophic scale of decline reflected failures by both management and labour.”
Happening right now is a project, based on Blyth’s quayside, to restore a tall ship. This will be adopted as Blyth’s very own vessel. The venture aims to provide skills and a confidence-boosting initiative to young people who would probably otherwise be unemployed and without any training opportunities. It is using Blyth’s heritage to move into the future by recreating the exploits of one of Blyth’s former pioneers, Capt William Smith, by sailing to Antarctica.
You will have no doubt read much about the project, the recent Royal visit and may even have welcomed the boat to her new home at Blyth Port. If not this video captured the event:
John Wallace in his "History of Blyth", which was written within living memory of Capt William Smith in 1862, gives a good account of this adventure. He also gives an even more exciting account of the fate of Smith's Daughter and son-in-law at the hands of African natives. This is it:
"Mr. William Smith had his name brought prominently before the public in 1820, by some naval officers on the coasts of South America reporting home that an Antarctic continent, or long series of Islands, of whose existence an ancient rumour is reported, had been discovered by Captain William Smith, of the brig, William, of Blyth.
It had always been the custom for our trading vessels to keep as near as possible to Cape Horn, in passing into the Pacific. Mr. Smith, in a voyage from Monte Video to Valparaiso, rounded the Horn in a high southern latitude, and fell in with a line of coast, which he followed for two or three hundred miles, and which he named New South Shetland; he landed and took possession of it in the name of His Britannic Majesty. The extent of this group is from 54 to 65 west longitude, and from 61 to 64 south latitude. It consists of numerous islands without a vestige of vegetation, except a species of moss, and in a few solitary spots something resembling grass. The interior is mountainous, and covered with eternal snow. A species of coal was found which burnt well. He passed large bays, which abounded in spermaceti whales ; seals were extremely plentiful, and shrimps and penguins were numerous beyond description. The large islands are five in number. Some of the harbours are very good ; vessels in them being land-locked. After landing at Valparaiso, he made his discovery known to the British naval authorities there, and a party of naval officers accompanied him in his vessel to verify and certify to his discovery, and New South Shetland has since appeared on the maps of the world.
Mr. Smith was master of the Lady Ridley of Blyth, in 1801; he continued in her for some years, and in 1815 became part owner of the William; in this vessel he proceeded to South America. The Spanish possessions in South America had just thrown off the yoke of the mother country, and the ports of those extensive countries were opened to British ships and commerce. Smith engaged in this trade, and it was in one of his voyages into the Pacific that he made this discovery. No profit arose to him from his discovery, and after spending some years in trading to the ports of South America, he returned to Blyth a poorer man than when he left it. He afterwards became a North Sea pilot, and resided in London.
I cannot conclude this account of Smith without noticing the strange circumstances under which a daughter of his met her death. She was the wife of Mr. Christopher Short. Having no family, Mrs. S. went to sea with her husband for many years, and had thus visited most parts of the world. Short was master of the Mary Florence, and was taking a cargo of coals to Aden; they had nearly reached their port, when the ship grounded two miles south of Graurdifu, on the African side of the entrance to the Red Sea. The chief officer's account of the affair is as follows : —
We remained by the wreck three days, during which time the natives appeared friendly ; Capt. Short, fearing the ship might go to pieces, sent me on shore to receive his wife; after Mrs. S. came on shore, I left her with the second officer, the steward, and three seamen, and went on board and had some conversation with Capt. S. I returned on shore with one of the chronometers ; in about half an hour I tried again to go on board, but the natives cut the line, and let me into the surf. I was making all haste towards the beach, when I met Mrs. S. wading up to the knees in the water, crying, and telling me that the natives had taken the rings off her fingers, and had chased her into the sea. I then swam out to wards the wreck, and hailed for them to send a boat, which they did, but without any one in her and without oars, however, we put Mrs. S. into her, and tried to pull off with the loose thwarts and the keel planks. After getting pretty well through the surf, the boat unfortunately swamped; I then got hold of Mrs. S. and tried to swim to land with her, but a heavy sea parted us; as soon as I could I turned round to see what had become of her, but it now being dark I saw nothing more of her; I then did my utmost to reach the shore, which I was enabled to do, thank God. I now found that the steward and one seaman were all that were saved, Mrs. S. and the others having met a watery grave.
On the day after this Mr. Short left the wreck in the long boat with that portion of the crew that had remained on board, without seeking any intercourse with those on shore, and, of course, ignorant of what had become of Mrs. S. and the people that were with her. He directed his course to Aden, where the chief officer joined him a month afterwards, and told him of the fate of his wife. Christopher Short was a native of Blyth, and belonged to a branch of the family of the Shorts of the Link-end. After the above mishap he gave up the sea, and became an examiner in the Local Marine Board at Newcastle."
On the 26th March 1943 the Morpeth Herald printed a short piece stating that land Blyth Council had purchased for the purpose of constructing a town hall, would now be sold to the United Automobile Company who would build a bus station on the site. The site had been used as an "ornamental space for many years". The money from the sale would be used to fund a new town hall.
The sale obviously went ahead as the site, in Post Office Square and Bridge Street, was turned into a bus station and still has that function today.
There is an artist's impression of a proposal for the town hall which appeared in the Blyth UD Council Brochure of 1912. The view is looking from the junction of Union Street and Bridge Street with the corner shop newsagents at your back and is a very ornate building.
The site had once been a small tributary of the River Blyth often called The Gote. A bridge crossed the stream at this point, hence the name Bridge Street. A marine construction site, known as a raft yard, and a saw mill operated on this site as shown on the early Ordnance Survey mapping, and some sketches, of the 1860s and 70s.
The stream was filled in piecemeal to accommodate new building from the 1880s. The sinking of the nearby Mill Pit in 1885 providing a great deal of the infill material. Gordon Smith in his book "Blyth: Through Time" states: "Wright's timber yard moved from here to the new Import Dock between 1905 and 1907 and the area has been used as a bus station from about 1923." The Ordnance Survey mapping of c1937 shows the area to have already been developed into an ornamental area. Several photographs which pre-date the announcement of the sale of Post Office, or Town Hall, Square to United Buses in 1943 show buses lined up collecting passengers on the West side of the square. Clearly the site had been used as a de-facto bus station for some time. The wooden building was also shown on the 1937 map and would probably have been connected with the bus company.
Photographs and maps after 1943 show a canopy for shelter to have been built on the West side of the square but it was not until the late 1960s early 1970s that the bus station was developed into something like the site we know today with offices and rest rooms.
Blyth Urban Disrict Council already had premises in Seaforth Street in 1912 and continued to use them after 1943. The "Blyth Official Handbook" of 1952 lists the Borough Engineer, Borough Treasurer and Housing Officer working from these premises, but the Town Clerk was operating from the newly-acquired Dinsdale House on Marine Terrace.
Location Satellite Image (Google Earth)
The rather grand, six-bedroom, Dinsdale House was originally the private residence of the Thompson Family of Red Stamp Stores fame, and was first occupied by them in 1899. It remained as a private residence for many decades.
The United Bus Company was founded in Lowestoft in 1912 and expanded operations into Northumberland during the 1920s. The Corporation buses ran out of Newcastle and extended their services with a bus to Seaton Sluice on 16th May 1921. On the 1st July 1936 the red United buses took over operations of the blue Corporation buses out of Newcastle. United was nationalised in 1948. In 1986 prior to de-regulation and privatisation the company was divided into three with the northern division being called Northumbria Motor Services Ltd.
A bus depot and workshops was built on land previously occupied by 19th century housing on Bridge Street which was demolished in the 1960s. A depot had been sited on Plessey Road in former times. Blyth Valley Borough Council in 2008 presented a planning document which set out the re-siting of the bus station in favour of developing an office and retail complex. It can be viewed at this link... Bus Depot Plan 2008
I often walk along the southern banks of the River Blyth from the site of the old Bates colliery to Furnace Bridge at Bebside. At low tide on the other side of bank are the visible, but incomplete, remains of wooden poles sticking out of the mud. One set is near the mouth of the Sleekburn, the other near the A189 road bridge. The anaerobic conditions, being submerged for long periods, have no doubt aided their preservation.
Remains of a Linear Wooden Structure at Mouth of Sleekburn
Wooden Structure River Blyth North Bank Opposite Kitty Brewster
A first guess would be that they supported some kind of jetty. But what was their exact purpose? During which period were they used? And what did they look like when operational?
I looked first at the Ordnance Survey mapping of the 1850-60s which indicated the lines of wagonways terminating at the wooden structures. Clearly the structures were jetties, or staithes, for the unloading of cargo onto boats. The wagonways were already labelled as disused on the 1st edition mapping.
1st Ed OS Map c1860 Showing Old Wagonways Marked in Yellow (click to enlarge)
The line of the two wagonways lead to what is labelled as Bedlington Colliery. The wagonway then extends from Bedlington Pit first North and then West towards Netherton.
The wagonway that terminates near the A189 (Spine Road) road bridge heads in north-westerly direction, for a few hundred metres, before turning sharply northwards at the terraced housing of Puddlers Row, which no longer exists.
Greenwood's Map of Northumberland 1828
Greenwood's 1828 map of Northumberland does not indicate that there was a wagonway from Bedlington Pit to the mouth of the Sleekburn. In fact, the Bedlington pit labelled on the 1st edition Odnance Survey map of c.1860 was Bedlington A Pit, which according to the Durham Mining Museum website was opened in 1838. The Sleekburn wagonway must therefore post-date 1838. It was clearly a short-lived utility only finding useful service during the 1840-50s. Wagonways were the early railways that carried horse-drawn wagons. The rails were constructed from wood.
A major mineral railway line is shown on the 1860 mapping running roughly North to South and passing the Bedlington A Pit. The line is still in use today. The construction of this line would have made the transport of coal easier, quicker and less expensive than shipping via the River Blyth. The Sleekburn wagonway would have been quickly rendered obsolete.
The wagonway near the Spine Road bridge was presumably also rendered obsolete by the new railway. But it had a longer history. So when was this wagonway constructed and why?
The Sites and Monuments record, as published on the www.KeystothePast.info website, indicates that the wagonway was shown on a map dating from 1787 running from a pit called Bedlington to the north bank of the River Blyth. It also appears on a map of the Hirst Head Estate dated 1837.
Not having been able to see the map I do not know where the pit would be. Presumably though it was somewhere on the wagonway route as indicated on Greenwood's 1828 map and a small-scale primitive venture. Possibly it was at the site of what was to become Bedlington A pit.
The River Blyth is where the wagonway terminates at this point. At the lowest point of the tide the river is reduced to no more than a trickle. Greenwoods map indicates that in 1828 this location was actually a fording point on the river. Mapping also indicated that the wagonway ran through a small tunnel before emerging out onto the river bank. The Sites and Monuments record also indicated that the tunnel still exists and was recently consolidated.
A site visit revealed that an interpretation display board had been erected by the local authority at the mouth of the boarded up tunnel, which is also inaccessible due to the overgrown vegetation. This is what it revealed:
The tunnel in front of you is part of a wagonway that linked the Engine Pit (at Choppington) to coal staithes on the River Blyth. A branch line ran from here to the nearby Bedlington Ironworks (by Furnace Bridge). The wagonway was the first in the world to be built with Bedlington-made malleable iron rails... Malleable iron rails were used all over Britain notably on the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825.
Overlooking the Tunnel onto the line of the Wagonway looking towards the River
Even at high tide the larger sea-worthy vessels would have been unable to navigate this far upstream to the jetties. We can speculate that the reason the owners of Bedlington A pit went to the expense of constructing a wagonway to the mouth of the Sleekburn, further downstream, was that the water was deeper for longer periods, allowing for longer operation times. A nearby block of terraced housing named Keelman's Row is shown on the 1st Edition OS mapping and could be a clue as to how the transport system worked. There was also a Keelman's Row much further downstream in Blyth.
Keelmen formed a large and well-known section of the population of Newcastle in the 18th century. This is from Wikipedia:
They were known as a close-knit group of aggressive, hard-drinking men. John Wesley, after visiting Newcastle, described them as much given to drunkenness and swearing [Wikipedia].
The keels were vessels of narrow draught that were loaded with coal and then taken downstream to the larger collier boats where the cargo was offloaded to be transported by sea: a skilled operation. The colliers were unable to travel upstream as far as the Newcastle collieries: the river at this time was too shallow. According to the Keelman article on Wikipedia: "By 1700 there were 1,600 keelmen working on the Tyne in 400 keels".
John Wallace, in his 19th century "History of Blyth" only gives the briefest of a mention to the use of keels on the River Blyth:
In 1598 keels were used in the river Blyth, as by the inventory of the effects of Robert Widdrington in that year it is stated that he owned half a coal keel at Cowpen.
The use of keel boats on the Blyth is not well documented elsewhere either. Clearly there was only a small fraction of the amount of keelmen working on the Blyth as compared to the Tyne. The harbour at Blyth was not developed until the 1850s. Prior to this time the amount of ships able to use the harbour was limited.
A closer study of the jetty, or staithes, structure indicates some remains of a feature, attached to the main structure by way of a swivel, which indicates a more sophisticated mechanism than is obvious at first glance. It is possible that the staithes may have been improved and expanded when it also began to be used by the nearby ironworks.
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