When was knotts flats built

North Shields is a surprising place. I wonder if Ian Nairn ever came here? Where Pevsner and his still utterly essential Guides are taxonomical, Nairn was a genius with a broad brush, and his impressionistic descriptions are often a much better introduction to a place.

We should all be grateful to Gillian Darley and others for keeping his flame alive. North Shields is not much known outside the North East. This really is Tyneside profonde. But this tough little town was badly battered in the twentieth century: 2, men from Tynemouth borough were killed in the Great War a disproportionately high number, even for the North East , and it suffered the greatest single civilian loss of life in World War Two after a direct hit on an air raid shelter.

These were arguably the direct result of crude town planning: when the gritty families who lived in the rookeries above the Fish Quay were thoughtlessly scooped up and dropped into new council estates, dissipating the familial networks that had always made the place tick.

A good deal is still shabby, particularly the main shopping drag around Bedford Street and its southern and western fringes, but the well-built streets and handsome public buildings of its northern and eastern parts are worth exploring and give North Shields a dignity that certainly deserves our attention.

The best way to approach the town is to begin uphill, near the broad acres of Preston Cemetery whose funerary urns and weeping angels give a good sense of nineteenth-century prosperity and the rapid expansion of the town northward and away from the Tyne.

Head south first down the proudly-pruned s suburbia of Walton Avenue, towards the ebullient Tynemouth College From the College, head east to see one of the most distinctive urban vistas in the North East.

Were it not for the kink at the junction with Preston Road, Queen Alexandra Road and Trevor Terrace would present a relentless terraced kilometre bristling with two-storey bay windows.

The North East shares much in common with its northern neighbour, but where the Scots built tenements to save space when land was expensive, the Geordies being English preferred the dominion of their own front door. Here again are the ubiquitous bay windows, but grander still with heavy Downing Street-style wooden front doors, fanlights, basements and smartly striped cornices.

Alma Place is worth a stroll too, spacious and comfortable with creamy brickwork, distinctive heavy stone lintels and Tuscan door cases — a motif repeated in almost all the residential buildings put up in Shields between c and Emerging from Alma Place, you are confronted by the sooty basilica of Christ Church.

This replaced the ruined medieval Priory Church on Tynemouth headland and was built in stages from to Christ Church sits on the ridge that formed the natural route of the Newcastle turnpike and once commanded views of the Tyne and the sea.

From here the town gradually, and then steeply, falls away to the river. This is also an opportune moment to repair to the wonderful Keel Row Bookshop , itself a fine early Victorian townhouse. Pevsner thought the square too wide for the scale of its graceful two-storey ashlar houses, but it is undoubtedly an elegant space.

This part of town provides much interest for the church-spotter. But Dobson could converse in several architectural languages, and on the opposite corner he demonstrates his stylistic dexterity yet again. Its scale and stonework reminds me of an Oxford college: Mansfield perhaps, or University College, but more compact. Tynemouth Corporation was notoriously penny-pinching which may explain its modest dimensions — the large, mullioned south facing oriel describes the width of the poky council chamber — but this makes the building all the more humane, and its well-pointed stone compliments the sturdy residential architecture of this hardy Tyneside town.

The Italianate Free Library of picks up the rhythm of Howard Street south of the junction with Saville Street, and introduces a nice stretch of well-mannered former banks done up like palazzi as was the fashion. But Tyne Street offers the most invigorating vistas of all. Or perhaps a scientist lives here and conducts galvanic experiments in its lantern …. Now we must descend to the Fish Quay. This was once a moral, as well as a physical descent into a seedy land of sex and violence.

The authenticity of the place is still striking. The cyclopean Low Light companion to the High Light dominates the scene. This comes as a surprise amid the fish crates and forklift trucks but then Northumberland is the most fortified English county, and North Shields is a kind of counterscarp at its most southeasterly tip. An extensive refurbishment programme will see repairs completed at the site.

Home Group is currently on site undertaking extensive repairs to the flats, which stand on the hill overlooking the River Tyne, and provide secure housing for hundreds of residents, who are mainly pensioners and families on low incomes. Further refurbishment during the two year project timeframe will see the installation of hundreds of new windows and doors while scaffolding is onsite.

Harry Drennan, procurement category manager for Home Group, is overseeing the work, coordinating tenders and sub-contractors to ensure disruption to occupants is kept to a minimum. An investment company, Samares Investments, was formed to further his philanthropic interests. In the Memorial Park at Heddon, Northumberland, was created in memory of his sons. Sir James Knott died in He had married Margaret Annie Anderson in but there were no children from the marriage.

Most of his estate was left to the Trust set up by his father, Samares Investments. Registered Charity Number: Site designed and developed by Michael Ward. Top of page Contact us Privacy policy Terms and conditions Accessibility.