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Low Fell History: Part 2


The history of the Institute has carried this history so far ahead that it is now necessary to go back to 1824, when the new line of the main road from Newcastle to London was still under discussion. Thomas Wilson's "Stanzas" on the proposed new road give the comments of "a squad of queer chaps" who sat drinking their beer one fine evening in June 1824 and talking about all the different plans that were being put forward for the line of the road, - if a road there should be, for the people of Wrekenton were bitterly opposed to it, as it would mean that instead of being on the main road they would be a couple of miles to the east of it. To the people who urged that it was too hard on the horses to have to drag coaches and wagons up a long steep hill and then down another, they replied that horses liked variety of level and throve on up and down roads while they found a more level line exhausting:

"For the very wise heads up at Wrekenton Town
Had labour'd to settle these two simple points,
That the horses' delight is an up and a down,
A hill clears their wind and relaxes their joints."

Wilson called these people the "Old Liners". Then there were the Back Laners, who wanted the new road to go straight up from the south end of Tyne Bridge by the extremely steep Back Lane, as it was called then, now Mirk Lane (sounding even more sinister) and up what is now West Street. This would be an even steeper climb for the horses to begin with than the Old Line, but the traffic would reach fairly level ground much sooner. Then there were the Chain-Bridgers - chain bridges being the latest engineering fashion. This scheme was to build a completely new main road, very much to the west, cutting out Newcastle and Gateshead altogether, crossing the Tyne by a chain bridge at Bensham. The squad of queer chaps however decided that they approved of the decision of the Commissioners for the Durham Road.

"But the road through the fields all the others surpasses
As has been resolv'd by the wiser trustees;
And nothing remains but the horses and asses
To get reconciled to this valley of ease."

"The road through the fields" certainly does not describe the present Durham Road, but in 1824 there was still about a mile of farm land between Gateshead and Low Fell, with farms and cottages scattered about. Dryden's farm was where the modern fire brigade station stands, and gave its name to the modern Dryden road, which within living memory was a rough farm road. The water supply of the farm was obtained by a whim-gin, a large wooden wheel fixed horizontally and worked like a ship's capstan by a horse harnessed to it and walking round and round to wind up the rope and bucket.

Having decided upon the road through the fields, the squad of queer chaps asked one of their number called Dicky to describe it in detail, as he was the best story teller and the stanzas continue in the local dialect. The first house in Low Fell that Dicky mentions is Whinney House, not the present great house but a farm. Opposite to it there was "the sign of the Buck" in Buck Lane going eastward up the hill, which now has the more dignified name of Beaconsfield Road.

[The Buck Inn became the Beaconsfield.]

The new road was then to go past "the Meeting House", not the Wesleyan Meeting-House in Church Road, but a small Methodist meeting-house, about which a note is added that the road did not go past it, but over it. The chapel was swept away, but another was built to replace it on the east side of the road. This in its turn has now become a fishmonger's shop, [now Greggs the Bakers] and the present Methodist chapel is almost on the old south boundary of Gateshead, [Chowdene Chapel, no longer Methodist] on the west side of the road. Wilson says that near the old chapel was Boggins' Dike Neuk, which may have been swept away along with the building, but one may risk a guess that it was about where the top of Belle Vue Bank is now. [Old maps show Boggins Dike Neuk to be on the site of what is now the Belle Vue Public House. A small cottage in Cross Keys Lane is called the Neuk.] Buck Lane now Beaconsfield Road, crosses the main road, and continues steeply down westward as Belle Vue Bank. Up to the beginning of the present century, indeed perhaps as late as the 1920s, the footpath here, on the west side of the road going south went along a ridge with a steep drop downhill in the west, so steep that nothing was built on it. At the foot of the steep slope there were a row of little cottages with small gardens. More recently this has been levelled, but there is still an open space with a little enclosure containing shrubs and a flowering cherry tree. Before the road was made and the cottages built this place might very well have been called a dike neuk. A note tells us that this was a place where the pit-lads used to meet on Sundays to play gambling games such as shake-cap, marbles, trippet and coit and other games. But Wilson adds that this has largely been reformed by the Methodists and their Sunday Schools.

For the next landmark the whole verse must be quoted.

Then reet ower the Fell, and by Carter's famed well,
Wheer the watter like wine ye see a'ways runnin',
And is better by far than the poor blashy yel (ale)
Folks get i' Newcassel or even i' Lunnen.

To this Wilson added a note: "A famous spring, taking its rise in an old pit, and issuing from a hillside on the Low Fell. It affords the inhabitants a healthy and sober beverage, free from the pernicious effects produced by the rotten stuff, often drunk under the name of ale. Of course I except home-brewed and fine old eight-penny."

Carter's Well, or Carters' Well (people were not particular about the place of the apostrophe) was the chief drinking-water supply for Low Fell until near the end of the 19th century. My father used to say that when he was a lad one of his duties was to take the buckets from the house where I am now writing this down to the well and bring them back full of the water used for drinking and cooking. There were rain-water tanks in the garden from which came the water for washing and cleaning the floors.

According to one local writer Carter's Well was originally on the east side of the road, where the Southern Memorial Hall attached to the Wesleyan chapel now stands. If that is right, when the road was built the water from the well must have been piped under the road to a much lower level on the west side, where both my father and I remember it. The well was a drinking trough with a stone arch over it. A cobbled road just wide enough for a horse and cart led down a steep hill from the main road to the well and past it up to the road again. This track has long been closed, and the steep hillside is covered with trees and bushes, but in the wall on the west side of the footpath there is a pump and nowadays never used.

[Carters' Well pump has recently been restored by Gateshead Council. The well is directly below the pump under the footpath, facing West.]

The next place mentioned is Chow Dene which may mean Jackdaw Dene, but the denes must be discussed later on, as they were once such a feature of the neighbourhood, and are now fast disappearing. Chow Dene is on the border between Gateshead and Lamesley. Dicky carries on his story of the road much further, but as Low Fell is the present subject I will not follow him, except for one more place:

They neist reach Wilkins' Well ayont Chowden Ha'
Where wor Bet gets her drop o' tea watter,
Which she says dis se well in her black tea-pot draw,
Whether tea's in't or not's little matter."

Wilkin's Well disappeared before my time, but I have always heard that the water from Carter's Well was so good that when you boiled it and poured it into a black earthenware tea-pot you needn't put in any tea. Perhaps there were rival supporters and each told this tale of her own favourite.

When Dicky had finished his itinerary, his friends gave him three cheers; and promised that when they heard the guard blowing his horn on the first stage-coach to travel along the new road, they would oil Dicky's wig for him, that is they would have a good old orgy.

The mail coach first went along the present road on 17th June 1826, and Wilson continued his stanzas.

"How 'way, Dicky, how 'way, hinny,
There's the tootin o' the horn!
If it cost a gowden guinney
Thou's be soaked wi' barley corn."

Accordingly they went first to the Buck, then to the Keys, which gave its name to Cross Keys Lane, then to the Black Horse, which still flourishes in what was Lamesley Lane, but is now Kells Lane. Everybody was having a holiday, the horses and the donkeys, rejoicing that they would no longer have to toil up steep hills, the carriers, the smiths, the tailors, the cobblers, the school children and their masters. Dicky burst into a song of triumph. The Fell will be a new Garden of Eden, better than Adam's. The "jay-legg'd bodies frae the toon", in other words, the citizens of Newcastle, would no longer be able to look down their noses on the Low Fellers. We would grow grapes and peaches, there would be peacocks instead of cocks and hens, and all the mice would be white! Best of all the magistrates had granted licences for four new inns! The Ship, which is now no more, the Cannon, otherwise the New Cannon, right on the new road at the foot of Buck Lane, named after the Old Cannon on Sheriff Hill, the Engine, and "the Sovereign", which I take to be the present George IV.

At this glorious prospect Dicky's tongue failed him.

Dicky was a well known local character, Dick Fenwick of Sheriff Hill Hall, who was the manager of a small colliery on the west side of the new road, on the steep hillside behind the present Co-operative Stores, Capitol Cinema and Central Garage. [The Co-operative Stores are now a car showroom. The Capitol Cinema and Central Garage are being demolished to be replaced by flats.] He used to gallop down Church Road from his house at the top to his colliery at the foot at breakneck speed. The red brick chimney of the colliery was still standing at the beginning of this century. Cedar Crescent is built over the site. Dicky's Dene lay immediately to the south of it.

The engine house of Dicky's colliery was on the east side of the main road and gave its name to Engine Lane which goes abruptly up east to cross Lamesley Lane (now Kells Lane); after the crossing Engine Lane becomes Church Road. Home House, now numbered 231 Kells Lane, stands in the south-east angle of the crossing. [Home House was the author's home and is now a residential care home for old people.] The Engine Inn had lost its license before my time, but I remember the building, a stone house with a red tiled roof, not facing south onto the lane, but west over the Team Valley; there was an open space in front of it, and over the door there was a metal bracket from which the sign must once have hung. At the foot of Engine Lane, where the Gas Stove firm are now, I faintly remember a yard full of rusty machinery, which I suppose was the remains of the colliery engine house, and that seems to fit Wilson's statement that the water of Carter's Well was piped from an old pit. [The Engine and Gas Stove firm has now gone to be replaced by the Fell Tower Medical Centre.]

It is strange that Wilson never mentions that the new road would pass over or close by a pit. Perhaps pits were so common that he did not think it worth a stanza.







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