The sun was setting over the River Tyne and the High Level and Swing bridges when this striking photograph was taken 85 years ago.
It was a time when the river and wider North East was defined by its heavy industry - but that industry had suffered in the wake of World War I and the subsequent Great Depression. And if our scene, captured in January 1938, exudes a certain tranquillity, it was, in fact, a calm before the storm. A little more then a year and a half later, Britain would be engulfed in yet another global conflict, the firestorm of World War II.
The famous bridges that linked Newcastle and Gateshead were fewer in number in 1938 than they are today. The Millennium Bridge and Queen Elizabeth II Metro Bridge would be constructed much later in some unimagined future. The old Redheugh Bridge which stood then would be replaced by a newer version in 1983, while the Tyne Bridge had been standing for only a decade, and the King Edward VII railway bridge was still in young adulthood at the age of just 32.
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The two bridges in our photograph were products of Victorian engineering prowess from a time when our region, in the mid-19th century, was asserting itself as one of Britain's great industrial powerhouses.
Designed by Robert Stephenson, the High Level Bridge across the Tyne gorge was completed in 1849. It became just the second crossing between the two towns at this important point on the river, immediately dwarfing the low-level Georgian Tyne Bridge.
The bridge - a double-deck construction with a road on one level and a rail deck with three tracks above - was built and opened more or less in tandem with Newcastle Central Station, for the first time enabling passengers and goods to travel between London and Edinburgh as the railway network spread rapidly across Britain. The High Level Bridge was officially opened on September 27, 1849 by Queen Victoria, her train stopping on the new bridge as the monarch made her way from Balmoral to London.
The Swing Bridge opened in 1876, replacing the low-level Georgian Tyne Bridge which had become a major barrier to shopping and trade as 19th century Tyneside rapidly industrialised. The new hydraulically-powered bridge was designed in such a way as to swing open around a central pivot to create two unobstructed waterways on either side of its main central pier, to allow ships to move freely up and downriver. The fact it could “swing” open allowed large ships to sail upriver for the first time, enabling them to reach the likes of Armstrong’s giant Elswick works and, by the turn of the century, Dunston Staiths.
In 1924, the Swing Bridge opened 6,000 times, but by the 1970s, it “swung” around 700 times a year. The closure of Dunston Staiths in 1980 saw the importance of the bridge decline, and in 2009 there were a mere 13 swings. In recent times the bridge has been plagued by maintenance issues, and last month the Chronicle reported how it was still unable to swing and had not opened in more than three years. The Swing Bridge remains nevertheless an important Tyne road crossing and also one the many industrial-age wonders of North East England.
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