The Lower Ouseburn Valley Heritage Economic Regeneration Scheme is a three-year project running from April 2002 to March 2005. It is focused on the Lower Ouseburn Valley Conservation Area located to the east of Newcastle Town Centre.
A heritage group has been set up to undertake work with local community groups and children’s out of school clubs to ensure local community ownership and involvement of all the related projects currently working to conserve and regenerate the Ouseburn Valley area.
The heritage group is working with 24 Hour Museum to highlight some of their work and projects. But first of all they have used our Storymaker software to provide a simple chronology of the Ouseburne Valley area.
The area is well known in Newcastle as a location for heavy industry, including pottery and earthenware, chemicals and iron foundries and engine works, from the 17th century onwards.
Read on to learn more about the Industrial heritage of this famous area of the city…
The Ouseburn Valley...a chronology.
122: The Roman Wall is built. Archaeologists think it went through the Ouseburn Valley.
1738: Documents show that the wagon-way that runs through the valley is being used by around 700 coal wagons to bring coal from pits in Jesmond to the Tyne.
1750s: Crawford’s Bridge, a low stone bridge, is built to support the main pack horse route through the valley.
1760s: Potteries are established between the bridge and a ford further downstream.
1815: The Maling family relocate their pottery business from North Hylton on Wearside to Ouseburn Bridge.
1801: James & Co. establish their white lead works.
1839: The Ouseburn Viaduct is built, as part of the Newcastle-North shields Railway. It has stone pillars and wooden arches.
1830s: Clarke, Plummer & Co. establish a flax mill beside the ford. Potteries, flint mill and a flax mill lie on either side of the river near the proposed Viaduct.
1869: The Viaduct is widened and the superstructure rebuilt in iron. The railway line itself now links Newcastle to Edinburgh.
1871: Ismay & Co. establish the Northumberland Lead Works on the site of the old flax mill by the ford.
1878: Byker Bridge is opened as a toll bridge.
1895: The whole valley is now covered with industry and housing. Across the river from the Northumberland Lead Works is the Ford Corn Mill.
1906: The river is culverted, running through a huge pipe from below the Ouseburn Viaduct to what is now the start of Jesmond Vale. Landfill made up of waste from the city gradually fills valley, creating a high plateau linking Heaton to the city centre and cutting off the route north along the river.
1930s: Slum clearance programmes remove much of the housing along Lime Street and Stepney Bank.
1960s: The remaining housing between Byker Bridge and the Ouseburn Viaduct is cleared, along with many old factory buildings. The ruin of a beam engine house from the old flax mill remains beside the river.
1969: The sides of the valley are landscaped and trees are planted.
1976: The land on the old lead paint works site is decontaminated and City Farm Byker is established.
1981: The last of several fields for the city farm is created on the valley sides.
1982: The Metro Bridge is completed across the valley.
1999: A new building, the Eco Centre, is opened on the Farm.
2002: Following the discovery of contamination in the soil on the farm site a decision is made by the city council to close the farm, decontaminate the land and eventually bring the site back into use as an environmental facility for the city. Stepney Bank Stables, a separate charity established originally through the Farm, continues to use the fields for grazing. The Eco Centre is retained.
2003: Work begins on establishing the new environmental facility.
All photographs © Ouseburn Valley Eco Centre
