The story of the 1936 Jarrow Crusade, and the widespread unemployment and subsequent poverty and hardship that sparked the famous protest march to London, understandably paints a somewhat grim picture of the town at the time.
The inter-war years weren't all doom and gloom however, and here - as elsewhere around the country - a massive programme of housebuilding was underway. To the south of Jarrow, a huge new municipal estate called Primrose was built on former fields. The functional but comfortable semis, complete with 1920s mod cons and front and back gardens, were a far cry from the dingy old terraces of the town centre.
Meanwhile, a residential road that remains one of South Tyneside’s premier thoroughfares was given a royal opening by the father and mother of the late Queen Elizabeth II in 1928. Our archive photograph, courtesy of local historian and photographer Paul Perry, shows newly-completed York Avenue two years earlier, stretching across former farmland as the town of Jarrow expanded.
