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.
