Gateshead

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Gateshead is a town in Tyne and Wear in north-east England on the south side of the River Tyne opposite Newcastle upon Tyne which covers the North Bank. It is the main settlement in the metropolitan borough of Gateshead. Gateshead and Newcastle are linked by ten bridges which are shared by the two places.

Gateshead is within the traditional county of County Durham.

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History

In 1068 William the Conqueror defeated Malcolm III of Scotland and his allies on Gateshead Fell.

In 1553, in the reign of Edward VI Newcastle briefly annexed Gateshead, and made another attempt in 1574.

Ambrose Crowley a Quaker nail-manufacturer moved in 1691 to Winlaton, where he set up furnaces and forges on the River Derwent. The river was ideally suitable for tempering steel as the sword-makers of Shotley Bridge also found. Crowley not only produced high-quality nails, but also iron goods such as pots, hinges, wheel-hubs, hatchets and edged tools. He could also make heavy forgings like chains, pumps, cannon carriages and anchors up to four tons in weight. The Crowley works were a tourist attraction and regarded as the largest manufactory of the kind in Europe.

Crowley founded two model settlements near his works, where his employees and their families lived in socialist fashion, with welfare services provided - a forerunner of Robert Owen’s better-known community at New Lanark in Scotland a century later. There were arbitration courts, sickness insurance, and a resident clergyman, teacher and doctor were employed. North of the bridge at Swalwell are fragments of the Crowley works.

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William Hawks, originally a blacksmith, started business in Gateshead in 1747, working with the iron brought to the Tyne as ballast by the Tyne colliers. Hawks and Co. eventually became one of the biggest iron businesses in the North, producing anchors, chains and so on to meet a growing demand. There was keen contemporary rivalry between 'Hawks' Blacks' and 'Crowley's Crew'. The famous 'Hawk's men' including Ned White, went on to be celebrated in Geordie song and story.

In 1854, a catastrophic explosion on the quayside destroyed most of Gateshead's mediaeval heritage, and caused widespread damage on the Newcastle side of the river.

Robert Stirling Newall took out a patent on the manufacture of wire ropes in 1840 and in partnership with Messrs. Liddell and Gordon, set up his headquarters at Gateshead. A world-wide industry of wire-drawing resulted. The submarine telegraph cable received its definitive form through Newall's initiative, involving the use of gutta percha surrounded by strong wires. The first successful Dover-Calais cable on 25 September 1851, was made in Newall's works. In 1853, he invented the brake-drum and cone for laying cable in deep seas. Half of the first Atlantic cable was manufactured in Gateshead.

Newall was interested in astronomy, and his giant 25 inch telescope was set up in the garden at Ferndene, his Gateshead residence in 1871.

In 1831 a locomotive works was built by the Newcastle and Darlington railway, later part of the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway. In 1854 the works moved to a new site and became the manufacturing headquarters of North Eastern Railway. In 1910, locomotive construction was moved to Darlington.

Gateshead is the location of the MetroCentre, which regained its place as the biggest shopping centre in Europe when the new red mall opened in October 2004. Gateshead is also the location of the Team Valley Trading Estate, initially the largest and still one of the largest purpose built commercial estates in the UK.

Gateshead, for many years overshadowed, culturally and in repute, by its near neighbour Newcastle upon Tyne has taken enterprising steps to change matters. The MetroCentre and the International Stadium were a start, and more recently riverside redevelopments include the exquisite Gateshead Millennium Bridge, erected in 2001. It is a 'winking eye' bridge, unique in the world. As well as being a triumph of engineering skill, its great elegance won it the James Stirling prize for architecture in 2002. Close by, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art has been established in a converted flour mill. The Sage Gateshead, a Norman Foster-designed venue for music and the performing arts opened on 17 December 2004.

Gateshead is also home to a large number of public art works, including the The Angel of the North, Britain's largest sculpture with a height of 20 metres and a 54 metre wing span. This was a bold step for the council and has succeeded in drawing national attention to Gateshead. It was erected in 1998, and designed by Antony Gormley. It is visible from the A1 road immediately south of Gateshead, as well as from the East Coast Main Line.

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Gateshead International Stadium regularly holds international athletics meetings over the summer months. It is also host to rugby league fixtures, and the home ground of both Gateshead Thunder Rugby League Football Club and Gateshead Football Club. Both clubs have had their problems: Gateshead FC were controversially elected out of the Football League to make way for Peterborough United in the 1960s, whilst Gateshead Thunder lost their place in Super League as a result of a takeover (officially termed a merger) by Hull FC. Both Gateshead clubs continue to ply their trade at lower levels in their respective sports, thanks mainly to the efforts of their supporters.

The car park located above the indoor market in the town centre is featured in the 1971 film Get Carter.

Gateshead is served by the Tyne and Wear Metro. There are stations at Gateshead Interchange, Gateshead International Stadium, Felling, Pelaw and Heworth. Heworth is also served by main-line train services as are Blaydon, Dunston and MetroCentre stations.

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Industry

Dunston, an area of Gateshead was the home of one of the most advanced power stations in the world in the 1930s. An extension was built after the Second World War and the power station ran until the 1970's when the site was used for the MetroCentre, the largest shopping centre in Europe.

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Gateshead Jewry

The Gateshead Jewish community was established at the end of the 19th century when Eastern European Jewish refugees rejected the religious laxity of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne congregation, and crossed the river to set up their new synagogue.

The then Chief Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz failed to thwart their attempts to establish a yeshiva in opposition to Jews' College, which was under his control in London. During the Nazi era, Gateshead benefited from the arrival of orthodox Jewish refugee businessmen. They funded the expansion of the yeshiva and the addition of a women's seminary, a teacher-training institute and a kollel, or centre for postgraduate rabbinical studies. Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, originally from Lithuania, was one of the main scholars to establish Gateshead as a center of Talmudic scholarship and in 1948 Rabbi Leib Gurwicz arrived, serving as the Rosh Yeshiva for decades. With the destruction of the centres of Orthodox Jewish scholarship on the European mainland, Gateshead became the largest such centre outside the United States and Israel, and the largest Orthodox Jewish education complex in postwar Europe. It became a powerhouse of Torah orthodoxy.

Rabbi Bezalel Rakow (1928-2005), communal rabbi from 1964, found himself at the centre of debate between Jewish orthodoxy and the features of modernity that he perceived as threatening orthodox values. When Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his book The Dignity of Difference (2002), expressed the notion that Judaism might learn from other faiths, Rakow publicly demanded that Sacks repudiate the thesis of the book and withdraw it from circulation. Gateshead Jews have never recognised Sacks' office as having any authority over them in any case. Sacks reissued the volume, removing the passages that Rakow had found so offensive. Never before had the power and primacy of the communal rabbi of Gateshead been so starkly demonstrated.

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Famous Gateshead Residents

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