North shields which county

Erected by public subscription it is a memorial to fishermen who lost their lives at sea. Dockwray Square up bank to the west of the Fish Quay is centred upon a small park and was constructed in by Thomas Dockwray of Stamfordham in Northumberland. Wealthy ship owners given the opportunity to live away from the crowded riverside town were amongst the residents.

The houses were poorly supplied with water however and over time they became run down with better residential options in other new parts of the town. The houses in the square were eventually demolished in and replaced in with typically grim s flats that surrounded the square.

The park is of course named from the famous comedian Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy fame whose statue stands at the centre of the park. The creation of Dockwray Square in was one of the first hints that the old riverside town and port of North Shields could be replaced by a new town on the spacious open country up the bank from the river.

In the later s this new town developed giving an opportunity for the middle classes who had made their wealth from the port to move away from the crowded riverside. One of the first new developments was however on the riverside itself. In , the Market Place or New Quay at the west end of the little town was developed by the architect David Stephenson and his row of fine Georgian ashlar houses near the ferry landing can still be seen today. There are many other Georgian houses of this kind in the upper part of the present town away from the river bank.

Here the new town emerged and rapidly expanded on the previously undeveloped gorse and grass land to the north. Most of the extensive developments took place between the late s and and probably inspired the famed North East architect, John Dobson who was born in the town at the Pineapple Inn in as he lived here during his formative years as the town began to grow. A series of new thoroughfares led up from the riverside into the new town with a notable example being Howard Street.

Here there are still many Georgian houses interspersed with some modern ones that stay in keeping with the general feel of the street. Howard Street culminates in the extensive Northumberland Square. This square, centred upon a tree-lined park is slightly smaller than Dockwray Square but was a more successful development.

A fourth side is partly bordered, but not intrusively so, by a more modern library-cum-council services building and the neighbouring very subtle entrance to the Beacon Shopping Centre. A little to the north of the square is the attractive church of Christ Church with its square tower. In the street opposite the church is the wondrous Keel Row Books, bookstore selling used books.

Ships can still occasionally be seen coming and going from Tyne Dock to the south and smaller craft from the Royal Quays Marina. So named in and developed from thereon, here the focus is mostly on leisure as it is the site of the Royal Quays Outlet Centre hosting shops, a hotel, a bowling centre, gym and the Wet and Wild Water Park. This area known as Coble Dene was once a mass of dockside railways and sidings leading to the Albert Edward Dock of It was here that the busy port activities of North Shields and the Port of Tyne were focused from the late nineteenth century and into much of the twentieth century.

The dock itself is now the Royal Quays Marina with its mass of masts representing a more sedate era in the history of North Shields. Here many visitors from foreign parts first set foot in North East England for the first time. The development is being built around the existing three docks of the former shipbuilding and ship repair yards of the Smiths Dock Company which were long associated with the industrial history of North Shields. As part of its expansion a dock was leased downstream at North Shields and the firm opened a ballast quay here in at Limekiln Shore.

Records show that over ships were built by the firm at North Shields from when a ship called Kestrel was launched up to the s when the firm changed its name to the Smiths Dock Company Ltd.

The peak era of output soon followed in the first decade of the twentieth century when the firm launched over ships at North Shields between and However shipbuilding came to an abrupt end in when the North Shields yards switched to ship repair rather than shipbuilding.

Merging in with Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson to form what would later become the Swan Hunter Group, Smiths Dock at North Shields continued to carry out ship repairs up until its closure in and although it was occasionally used as a yard by the offshore oil industry it remained derelict for many years.

Modern housing developments were approved for this prime site in and the development is currently progressing for what will surely prove to be a very appealing residential riverside area.

A crescent of tall modern town house developments with panoramic views will overlook the site from a plateau above while other buildings focused in and around the dock area will include terraces inspired by the Georgian and Victorian houses of Tynemouth and waterfront apartments located in modern buildings with architecture inspired by the traditional smoke houses of the North Shields Fish Quay. Before leaving North Shields and its rich maritime heritage it seems fitting to recall some of the songs of the sea associated with the seafarers of the Tyne in times since past.

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