Across Tyneside in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, swathes of worn-out Victorian-era back-to-back terraced housing were systematically torn down.
Built in large numbers from the middle of the 19th century onwards to house the region's rapidly growing industrial workforce, 100 years later these basic, functional properties were often no longer fit for purpose, with many deemed as slums and condemned to demolition. Our gritty video clip, courtesy of the North East Film Archive, takes us back to an area of Gateshead in the early 1980s where the crumbling housing stock was awaiting the imminent arrival of the bulldozers.
Taken from a film uncompromisingly titled Unfit For Human Habitation , it shows run-down streets of Tyneside flats where generations of folk had lived but were now set to be pulled down. The silent colour film was shot in the Old Durham Road area of the town between 1982 and 1984 by Stephen Gray who was Gateshead Council's Environmental Health Officer.
