Tag Archives: Jesmond Vale Terrace

Sir Ove Arup: engineer and philosopher

You could be forgiven for never having spotted the black commemorative plaque high on the wall between the upstairs and downstairs bay windows of 16 Jesmond Vale Terrace, Heaton. The house is in the row of almost white brick terraced houses on the east side of Heaton Road, opposite the park. They have front gardens and, in the case of number 16, a high hedge so you really have to be looking for the plaque.

If you can catch sight of it from the road, you’ll see that it intriguingly reads ‘Ove Arup; 1895-1988; Engineer and Philosopher; Born here on 16 April.’

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Commemorative plaque at 16 Jesmond Vale Terrace

Arup is rarely mentioned among Newcastle’s great engineers. Even those who have heard of him usually assume he is Danish. (More of that later.) But almost everyone will be familiar with at least one example of his work.

Sir Ove Arup (for, although not mentioned on the plaque, he was awarded a knighthood in 1970) was one of the great structural engineers of the 20th century and he was instrumental in the construction of one of the world’s most recognisable buildings: the Sydney Opera House. But we can also see and admire examples of his work much closer to home. First, back to his local roots.

Geordie

Ove’s father, Jens, was Danish and a qualified veterinary surgeon who, in 1889, came to Newcastle to work for the Danish consulate, supervising the health of imported beef cattle. He found a house for the family in Jesmond but, sadly, the following year, before she could come to the UK to live with her husband and three daughters, Jen’s first wife, Johanne, died.

Following her death, Jens appointed a governess, Mathilde Nyquist, to educate his daughters and three years later he married her. Soon, with a child on the way, a larger house was required and so the Arups moved to Heaton, to the substantial 3-storey terraced house at 16 Jesmond Vale Terrace. And here on 16 April 1895, Ove Nyquist Arup was born.

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Members of the Arup family pictured at his birthplace in 1967

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Jesmond Vale Terrace, Heaton

Very soon after, however, with the British government increasingly concerned about the spread of diseases such as foot and mouth, an Act of Parliament was passed which banned the import of live cattle from areas in which listed diseases were found. Jen’s job became redundant and so, with Ove just a few months old, the family relocated to Germany. Ove was educated there and then in Denmark, where he went on to university to study philosophy and engineering, specialising in reinforced concrete.

So Ove’s initial stay in the country of his birth was brief. But he was to return. And the north east was to become especially important to him.

Back to Britain

On completion of his studies Ove took a job with a Danish company, Christiani and Nielsen. But in December 1923, when he was 28 years old,  the company transferred him to their UK office as Chief Designer. He went on to join J L Kier and Co (reinforced concrete specialists) and to meet and work with the famous architect, Berthold Lubetkin, most famously on the Penguin Pool at London Zoo. In 1938, Ove and his cousin, Arne, set up their own company Arup & Arup Ltd.

It was shortly after this, in the early years of WW2, that Ove faced an example of the sort of resistance that was to plague him for much of his life. And it was a formidable north east woman who stood in his way: Ove had designed a bomb shelter in ‘new-fangled concrete’, which he firmly believed would protect London citizens during enemy air raids. Jarrow MP, Ellen Wilkinson, was the parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Home Security and entered into correspondence and talks with Arup about his proposals. While his designs would certainly save lives, Ellen Wilkinson and the government were concerned that the public would lose confidence in the existing brick and trench shelters and that those not able to shelter in the new concrete, underground shelters would be disadvantaged. In the end politics won the day, much to Arup’s disappointment, although his shelters were commissioned privately  by a number of wealthy clients.

After the war, Ove opened his own practice in London, Ove Arup, Consulting Engineers, which in 1949 became Ove Arup and Partners.

Iconic

In 1957, Ove began work on the project which would make his reputation. But little did he know then, how much heartache it would bring nor that it would be seventeen years before it was complete.

Throughout his working life Arup made a point of congratulating architects, who won prestigious prizes for their designs, in the hope that his company would win the contract to help realise their dreams. This is exactly what happened when the Danish architect, Jorn Utzon, won a competition to design an opera house in Sydney. The design was controversial and the engineering challenges immense. Ove had difficulty persuading Utzon to modify his original shell design to make it buildable and to take account of the acoustic requirements of a world class opera house.  Costs spiralled and there were constant personality clashes between client (Australian government), architect (Utzon) and chief engineer (Arup). Utzon eventually resigned in 1966 and the Australian government architect, Ted Farmer, appointed a team to oversee the completion of the building.

Sydney Opera House under construction - 5 shells erected

Sydney Opera House under construction (made possible by Heaton-born Ove Arup)

Nevertheless this protracted project and its eventual success cemented (sorry!) the reputations of Ove and his companies. In October 1973, Sydney Opera House was opened by Queen Elizabeth II. Ove and his wife, Li, were at the ceremony. Utzon, the architect, was not invited and was not mentioned at all during the proceedings.

Bridge Over the River Wear

In 1961, Ove was approached to construct a concrete, pedestrian bridge across the River Wear from Dunelm House to Bow Lane, linking the university with the historic centre of Durham. There was a seemingly paltry budget of £35,000.

It was assumed that the financial constraints would mean the bridge would have to be a low one requiring most pedestrians to climb and descend steep banks on either side. But Ove was always ready for a challenge and decided to design and oversee the construction of a high re-enforced concrete bridge himself. To minimize costs, he ingeniously designed it to be constructed on conical pivots, in two halves parallel to the river. When finished in 1964, the two halves were swung manually, through 90 degrees to meet and be connected centrally by a bronze expansion joint.  Kingsgate Bridge is now a Grade 1 listed building.

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Ove Arup inspecting Kingsgate Bridge

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Kingsgate Bridge, Durham, a favourite project of Ove Arup

Of all the projects that Ove worked on this was to give him the greatest satisfaction, so much so that it was his wish that his ashes be scattered from Kingsgate Bridge into the River Wear. And so he was both born in the north east and returned to the region in death.

Brutalist

The adjacent Students Union building, Dunelm House, was also an Arup building. Ove acted as structural engineer and architectural adviser and his bust is mounted on the wall, which faces this bridge. It is built in the so-called ‘Brutalist’ style and excites conflicting emotions: In 1968 it won a Civic Trust Award but has also been called ‘the ugliest building in Durham’ by the university’s students. Although, in 1995, English Heritage said it had once been described as ‘the greatest contribution modern architecture has made to the enjoyment of an English medieval city’. In 2017, Durham University declared that no longer fit for purpose and announced plans for demolition so that it could redevelop the site but there is a well-supported campaign to save and list the building.  A decision is yet to be made.

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Bust of Sir Ove Arup on Dunelm House

 

Sir Ove’s Park?

In 1967 Ove Arup drew up radical proposals in which Newcastle United Football Club would share sporting facilities with the nearby Newcastle University. The ground capacity of the £32.6m complex would have been around 63,000 with 31,000 seated and 32,000 standing.

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Arup proposal to redevelop St James Park

Included in the plans were two gyms, four multi-purpose halls, five-a-side football and rugby fives courts, 13 squash courts, swimming, diving and learner pools plus a supporters’ club and restaurant. The plan for a state of the art stadium to replace the old ground fell through when the club was reluctant to share the facilities with the university.

Byker Viaduct

A local Arup structure which was built, albeit one constructed after Sir Ove’s retirement, and one which is still very much standing, is the elegant Byker Metro bridge.

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Arup-designed Byker Metro Bridge

Again, the design was challenging because it had to be squeezed in between an existing road bridge and a main line rail viaduct; it crossed a steep-sided valley with old mine workings beneath; the valley is crossed by a geographical fault as well as the Ouseburn. The solution, a tall 800m S-shaped viaduct, won the Concrete Society Award for Civil Engineering in 1980 and makes a striking addition to the bridges which cross the valley. It is an appropriate local memorial for the Heaton-born company founder.

Polymath

Ove Arup, besides being a talented structural engineer had many interests. He was an art collector, pianist and the accordianist as well as writer and artist: After his death, his daughter Anja published a book, ‘Doodles and Doggerel,’ of his drawings and verse. He was also a keen and successful chess player, going so far as to set up a company to manufacture chess sets, made to his own innovative designs.

He was often considered eccentric and many stories still circulate among those who knew him. He is, for example, said to have almost always carried a pair of chopsticks in his jacket breast pocket, so that he could sample other peoples’ food while dining with them.

Philosopher

But what of the ‘philosopher’ as mentioned on the plaque on the house of his birth? As already mentioned, Ove studied philosophy, along with engineering, at university and it remained an important influence on his work throughout his life.

His ‘Total Design’ vision was intended to encourage creative collaboration across all disciplines: not only engineering, building and architecture but other less obvious ones too, including computing, ethics and philosophy. He was a creative and critical thinker, who loved to debate and apply both original thought and what he learnt from other disciplines to his work and to the way his firm was run. Ultimately he wanted to make the world a better place.

Honours

Ove was much-honoured during his lifetime. including:

CBE (1953); RIBA Gold Medal for Architecture (1966) – unusual for a Structural Engineer to receive;Knighthood (1970); The Gold medal of the Institution of Structural Engineers (1973); Queens Award for Export Achievement (1984); Elected Honorary Royal Academician (1986).

Legacy

When Sir Ove Arup died on 5 February 1988, he was the figurehead of one of the largest structural engineering companies in the world. Today his company employs over 14,000 staff in 92 offices across 42 countries and is responsible for many prestigious engineering projects worldwide. The firm is owned by trusts, the beneficiaries of which are past and present employees, each of which receive a share of the firm’s operating profit each year. There is still an Arup office in Newcastle upon Tyne.

The Ove Arup Foundation, a charitable educational trust, was set up in his memory for the advancement of education directed towards the promotion, furtherance and dissemination of knowledge of matters associated with the built environment’.

Can you help?

If you know more about Ove Arup and his work, especially his connections with the north east, we’d love to hear from you.  Please either leave a reply on this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or email   chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Arthur Andrews, Heaton History Group, with additional research by Chris Jackson.

This article is part of Heaton History Group’s project ‘Brains Steam and Speed: 250 years of science, engineering and mathematics in Heaton‘, funded by Heritage Lottery Fund, with additional funding from Heaton History Group and the Joicey Trust

Pupils from local schools will study mathematicians, scientists and engineers associated with Heaton and produce artworks, inspired by what they have learnt, some of which will be exhibited at the People’s Theatre in July 2018.

Key Sources

‘Ove Arup Masterbuilder of the Twentieth Century’; Peter Jones, 2006

‘The Arup Journal 50th Anniversary Issue’

http://www.engineering-timelines.com/who/arup_O/arupOve12.asp

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/feb/12/durham-university-dunelm-house-threat-of-demolition-brutalism

https://www.themag.co.uk/2014/08/newcastle-uniteds-st-james-park-looked/

https://mymagicalattic.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/ove-arup-philosophy-of-total-design-at.html 

 

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Heaton fliers: the Smith family and Newcastle Aero Club

Until its demise in 2004, Newcastle Aero Club was Britain’s oldest flying club.  It was founded in 1925 and for its first 10 years operated from Cramlington Aerodrome, which was situated near Nelson village and had been used for coastal air defence during WWI. In 1935, it moved to a site in Woolsington, which subsequently became Newcastle Airport. Arthur Andrews has been researching its connections with a well known Heaton family.

At an early stage, Ringtons Tea Company owner, Sam Smith, became involved with the club and was even its president for a time. We know from his great grand daughter, Fiona Harrison, that the Heaton entrepreneur loved flying. He was also a founder member of Newcastle Gliding Club. But flying was more than a hobby: he had business interests in aviation too, as a director of Newcastle Air Training Ltd and a founding investor in Dyce Airport, Aberdeen.

He generously bought Newcastle Aero Club two De Havilland Tiger Moths, one of which was called ‘The Ringtonian’.

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Advert for Ringtons in Newcastle Aero Club magazine

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Sam Smith and Ada, his wife, at the hand over of the Tiger Moth to Newcastle Aero Club (Courtesy of Newcastle City Library)

Young Sam Smith

Following in his father’s footsteps, Sam Smith Junior obtained his pilot’s licence on 26 June 1936 at the age of 30.

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Sam Smith Junior’s Pilot’s Licence

 

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Sam Smith Junior

He was the manager of Rington’s subsidiary, Northern Coachworks and lived at 17 Jesmond Vale Terrace, Heaton with his wife, Mary Ann Noddings, the daughter of horse dealer and exporter Edward Noddings and his wife, Catherine, who were now living at 2 Stannington Grove.

On 30 June 1936, just four days after getting his pilot’s licence, Sam was flying in the Derwent Valley. According to a newspaper report, he lost his bearings due to mist and rain and while he was trying to find a field safe enough to land in, the plane’s engine stalled and it crashed into the farmyard of Glebe Farm. Sam was thrown from the cockpit, hitting the farmer’s wife, Mrs Elizabeth Armstrong and ended up in a pool of water or slurry. Sam was uninjured but Mrs Armstrong was badly bruised and shocked. The headline was ‘Falling ‘Plane Strikes Woman – Pushed in Pool with Craft on Top – Amazing Escapes’.

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Crash site at Glebe Farm, Medomsley, Co Durham (Courtesy of Newcastle City Library)

Nine months later, on 6 March 1937, another mishap took place at Woolsington, this time involving ‘The Ringtonian’ . It was not reported whether Sam was injured or how badly the aircraft was damaged.

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Sam Smith with the ‘Ringtonian’ Gypsy Moth (Smith family archives)

Triple tragedy

A third accident took place on 14 May 1938, while Sam was piloting a Percival Vega Gull on a flight from Newcastle to Liverpool.

The weather was apparently fair in Northumberland but, by the time the aircraft had reached the Lake District, conditions had markedly deteriorated: a heavy mist gave little or no visibility and the plane crashed into a hillside near Skiddaw. Sam was killed along with his two passengers, Robert Radcliffe (26) and Norman Ayton (30). The coroner’s verdict was ‘accidental death’.

Sam’s younger brother, Malcolm, should have been on board too but fortunately for him,  a business commitment prevented him from boarding.

There had been other flying related deaths at Newcastle Aero Club, but this was the worst in its short history. The loss of  Sam Smith Junior was a great shock to his family and the local area. A large funeral took place with many local dignitaries attending. The City Council passed a vote of condolence by standing in silence.

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Sam Smith Junior’s grave

The 1939 Register shows that Sam Smith Junior’s young widow, Mary Ann, moved back to live with her parents in Stannington Grove.

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Arthur Andrews, Heaton History Group;

Thank you to Fiona Harrison for help with the history of the Smith family and Ringtons;

Thank you to Newcastle City Library for permission to use photographs;

Sources

In addition to original research:

70 years of flying 1925-1975 by John Sleight ISBN 0952690802 (A history of Newcastle Aero Club)

Can you help?

If you know more about Heaton’s connections with aviation, please either post a message direct to this site by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or email chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Coquet Villa 2015

Coquet Villa – house of romance

Take a stroll through Jesmond Old Cemetery and you’ll come across this imposing headstone.

Headstone of George Thompson, Coquet Villa

Headstone of George Thompson, Coquet Villa

Inscription on Thompson family vault (detail)

Inscription on Thompson family vault (detail)

It marks the grave of George Thompson, who, the inscription tells us, ‘died at Coquet Villa, Heaton on May 2nd 1905’. It’s quite unusual for a gravestone to pinpoint where its incumbent passed away so it suggests that Coquet Villa was a special place for the deceased and his family.

The name ‘Coquet Villa’ may not be familiar to you – the gatepost on which its name was carved was replaced decades ago – but, a hundred and ten years later, the house is still much admired, one of only two private residences to have been nominated in Heaton History Group’s 2013 bid to find Heaton’s favourite buildings. Coquet Villa was the original name for 246 Heaton Road, which you probably call ‘the turret house’.

Coquet Villa 2015

Coquet Villa 2015

Lifting the spirits

The land on which the house stands was sold by William Watson-Armstrong, Lord Armstrong’s nephew and heir, on 31 December 1900 just 3 days after his uncle’s death. The agreement stipulated that two semi-detached residences be constructed within nine months of the contract being signed. George Thompson paid £574 11s 1d, a substantial sum then. However, it was some 21 months earlier, in March 1899, that he had first commissioned the well-known local firm of architects, Hope and Maxwell, to draw up designs for a pair of semi-detached houses to fit the site. This suggests that plans for the sale of land were in train well before Lord Armstrong became ill.

Hope and Maxwell's plans for Coquet Villa and Redthorpe next door

Hope and Maxwell’s plans for Coquet Villa and Redthorpe next door

The two houses were of similar specification, apart from the distinguishing feature of that on the right – the one which Thompson chose to be his own home and called ‘Coquet Villa’. It’s only this one that has the famous attic turret. Like you, we wondered why.

William Hope and Joseph Charlton Maxwell are particularly remembered for their design of theatres, not only locally in Blyth and Newcastle, but as far afield as Glasgow, Margate and Southampton. Sadly the Hope and Maxwell theatres have all been demolished or destroyed by fire, but another of their public buildings does still stand – almost next door to Coquet Villa: it’s Heaton Methodist Church – and it too had a single turret until very recently.

Churches and theatres have to be more than functional buildings, of course: they’re designed to raise the spirits. If that was the aim of Hope and Maxwell and their client, Coquet Villa, still much enjoyed by passers-by as well as those lucky enough to live there, can be considered a huge success.

Echoes of childhood

George Thompson, the son of a Warkworth grocer, described himself as a ‘commercial traveller’. He and his Scottish wife, Margaret, moved to Newcastle, living first in Malvern Street, Elswick, and then at 22 Simonside Terrace before they were eventually able to afford their long term family home, which they nostalgically named after the river that flows through George’s boyhood village.

After the delay to the start of the build, things moved apace and George and Margaret soon moved in with their teenage sons, 17 year old Lonsdale Copeland and 14 year old Norman Malvern (who, again rather romantically, seems to have been named after the Elswick street in which his parents began their married life).

Perhaps Warkworth is a clue to the turret too. George grew up in the shadow of the famous castle and perhaps wanted to recreate some of its grandeur in his own dream home. Margaret too grew up close to a magnificent castle not short of turrets: she was from Edinburgh.

But a visit to Tyne and Wear Archives to view the original plans showed that internally the turret served a more practical purpose. As you can see from the image below, the front room in the attic was designed to be a billiards room. It was the ideal place for the two boys to hang out without disturbing their parents or perhaps George enjoyed the company of his sons over a game. We don’t know. But it is clear that the room was designed to accommodate the table with just enough room for the players to move around it comfortably. So where would onlookers and the player awaiting a turn at the table sit without being in the way? On a recessed window seat of course, with lovely views over Heaton Park towards Newcastle. In a turret. Genius!

Hope and Maxwell's plans showing the attic billiard room at Coquet Villa

Hope and Maxwell’s plans showing the attic billiard room at Coquet Villa

Family home

The house is a large one for a family of just four but the additional space was used. The Thompsons were joined by a niece of George’s, Christiana ‘Cissie’ Robson and the 1901 census shows them having a live-in servant, 18 year old Agnes Chandler.

Sadly George did not enjoy Coquet Villa for long. As we have seen, he died there just a few years later at the age of 52. But what happened to his bereaved family?

Margaret, Cissie and the boys remained in the family home until, in 1910, Lonsdale married Frances Maud Holland, daughter of Sir Thomas Henry Holland, an eminent geologist. (In 1939 Thomas was awarded the Royal Society’s prestigious Albert Medal, an honour earlier bestowed on at least two other men with Heaton connections, Lord Armstrong in 1878 and Charles Parsons in 1911). Frances had been born in India where her father was working at the time. Her mother was also born in India). The newlyweds started married life in Gosforth with Lonsdale making his living first as a woollen merchant and then a tailor, with his own business. At the time of his death, in 1957, he was living in Great Malvern in Worcestershire.

In 1916, Norman married Jeanne Julie Maude Rodenhurst, the youngest of six children of Harry, a wholesale millinery merchant, and his French wife, Jeanne, who lived in Deneholme on Jesmond Park East. The wedding was at St Gabriel’s Church. Norman set up as a market gardener in Ponteland, where he was eventually succeeded by his and Jeanne’s son Derrick. Jeanne’s brother, also called Norman, described himself as a tomato grower, so it’s possible that the brothers in law set up in business together. Norman died in 1968 and is buried in the family vault in Jesmond Old Cemetery with his wife Jeanne, his father and his mother, who died in 1935 at the age of 79.

Cissie died on 25 October 1914. Three days later, her funeral cortège processed from Coquet Villa to Heaton Station to meet the 8.05 train to Rothbury, where she was interred.

But with the war over, Cissie having passed away and her sons flown the nest, Margaret sold the family home, now clearly too big for her. The purchaser was a man called Frank Fleming, who stayed only three years.

The wanderer

Next came Charles and Mary Kirk, whose family was to be associated with Coquet Villa for another 14 years. Charles, like his father Samuel before him, was a slate merchant. Samuel Kirk was born and grew up in Boston, Lincolnshire but by 1871 had moved to Newcastle, no doubt to take advantage of the building boom in the industrial North East. He set up on his own in 1883 in Ridley Villas, following the dissolution in 1883 of a partnership, Kirk and Dickinson. The firm eventually passed to his son, Charles, who in 1911 was living at 14 Rothbury Terrace with Mary, his wife, five children (May 8, Annie 7, Samuel 6, Mary 4 and Charles 2) and two servants, Annie Wood and Florence McIntoch.

By 1917, the family had moved round the corner to 18 Jesmond Vale Terrace. In that year, with World War One raging, we know that Charles sailed from Sydney to San Francisco on the SS Ventura, that ship’s final voyage before it was commissioned by the Australian government to transport troops. In January 1918 he sailed from New York to Liverpool on the SS St Louis. His occupation is given as ‘exporter’. The ship’s Wikipedia entry illustrates just how hazardous these journeys were:

‘On 17 March 1917, she [SS St Louis] was furnished an armed guard of 26 United States Navy sailors and armed with three 6-inch guns, to protect her from enemy attack as she continued her New York-to-Liverpool service. On 30 May, while proceeding up the Irish Sea and skirting the coast of England, she responded rapidly to the orders, “Hard Starboard,” at the sighting of a periscope, and succeeded in dodging a torpedo while apparently striking the submarine which fired it. Later dry-dock examination revealed that 18 feet of her keel rubbing strake had been torn away. On 25 July, her gunners exchanged fire with a surfaced U-boat, some three miles away, and sighted many near misses.’

A book (‘Missouri at Sea’ by Richard E Schroeder) refers to the ‘bitter North Atlantic storms of 1917-18′. It would be fascinating to know more about what took Charles around the world at such a dangerous time. Another so far unanswered question is whether Kirk’s slates were used on the roof of Coquet Villa – and its locally famous turret.

Like George Thompson though, Charles and Mary didn’t enjoy Coquet Villa for long. Charles died in 1925, aged only 59, and Mary in 1927, after which the house was let to a number of tenants including Joseph Hilliam, a wallpaper manufacturer, and Joseph H Hood, a musician. Eventually, in 1936 it was sold to Harriet May Morton, wife of John Hugh Morton, a cashier.

Like many of the other owners, the Mortons moved only a matter of yards – from what would then have been a new house on Crompton Road almost opposite Coquet Villa. Later occupiers included Martha Ellen and Allan Frankland Holmes; Ronald George Smart, a commercial traveller; Alexander Reed Morrison, a medical practitioner; Torleif Egeland Eriksen, a Norwegian dental surgeon and his wife, June Margaret; George and Thora Brown of Thetford in Norfolk and Dr M M Ahmed. We hope you’ll help us uncover more about some of them in due course.

Full circle

Like the Thompsons, the current owners, Helen Law, a fine artist originally from Leicester (where, incidentally, her great grandfather set up a football boot manufacturing company – the firm made the retro boots used in the 1982 film ‘A Captain’s Tale’ about West Auckland Town winning the first World Cup) and Richard Marriott, a teacher, saw the house as the ideal family home. Although separated from the original owners by a century or more, they clearly share the romanticism which led George Thompson to name the house after the River Coquet, on the banks of which he played as a boy and to commission an architect to echo the magnificent castles so familiar to him and his Edinburgh-born wife. On their first night in their new home, Richard donned a suit, went down on one knee and proposed to Helen in the turret. Later, they lovingly restored the attic, which had long been an unloved dumping ground, to its former glory. They renovated the turret, building a magnificent new window seat, which they enjoyed with their children and still love to sit in today.

Interior of Coquet Villa's turret, 2015

Interior of Coquet Villa’s turret, 2015

You feel sure that George and Margaret would approve.

Footnote

You may have noticed (June 2015) that 246 Heaton Road is up for sale. As with Margaret Thompson, almost 100 years ago, the house is too big for the current owners now that their children have flown the nest.

Can you help?

If you can add to the story of Coquet Villa and those who have lived there – or you would like us to look into the history of YOUR house, either leave a reply on this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or email chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

200 Heaton Road

200 Heaton Road

In 1898 there seem to have been just two (unnumbered and unnamed) houses on Heaton Road north of Heaton Baptist Church (apart, that is, from the separately listed Jesmond Vale Terrace): one was occupied by John Henry Brown, a cycle manufacturer, and the other by a builder named John Wilson.

The Falmouth Hotel

But two years later this part of Heaton Road looked very different. Building in the neighbourhood had continued apace and progressed northwards onto what had until very recently been farmland and the same John Wilson is listed in the trade directories as the first resident of 200 Heaton Road, the southernmost address in the block between Meldon Terrace and King John Street, the shop which, in 2013, is The Butterfly Cabinet cafe.

Originally though, as you can see from the photograph below, the block was primarily residential. John’s immediate neighbours were J Davidson, a tinsmith, and A W Penny, a ‘gentleman ‘. John himself though is more difficult to fathom. He had been born in Milton, Cumberland (not far from Brampton on the Newcastle – Carlisle Railway) and was by this time 45 years old. He was married to Elizabeth, a Scot. There were no children living with them in 1901 but the couple was affluent enough to employ a live-in housemaid and kitchen maid.

John had lived in Heaton for a good few years by this time. In 1887, he was already described as a builder with an office address in Heaton Park Road. By 1892, he was still a builder, living in Heaton Grove.

But in the early 1900s, although his primary occupation is still given as a builder, he’s also described as a wine and spirit merchant and it’s clear from directories, newspaper reports of brewster sessions and the photograph below that in the early days, an off licence operated at number 200, together with the adjoining 1 and 3 King John Street and that John Wilson owned the business premises and lived above or next to the shop. It’s called the Falmouth Hotel in unsuccessful applications for a ‘full’ licence to sell alcohol in 1899 and in this photograph but that name doesn’t appear in the trade directories.

200 Heaton Road

The building itself is interesting. Visitors to the Butterfly Cabinet will testify that it’s a fair size. It incorporates what were originally numbers 1 and 3 King John Street and there have been various alterations over the years both to turn the three houses into one address or convert them back into separate flats.

The business lives on

John Wilson only lived and operated a business on Heaton Road for a couple of years. By 1903, a Thomas Blackett had succeeded him. Thomas had been born and bred locally. In 1887, he ran a stationer’s shop at 117 Shields Road. In his early forties, he was living at 31 North View and his shop had moved to 73 Shields Road. By 1895, he was still running the same shop although he had moved house again to 6 Guildford Place. But by 1901, his line of business had changed completely. Thomas was now a wine and spirit manufacturer and, as well as the now converted shop on Shields Road, he had shops in Heaton Hall Road (21), Jesmond, Sandyford and the west end. He was living at 23 Heaton Hall Road with his wife, Jane, six sons and daughters and a servant. Thomas Blackett died in 1912, leaving what was a fair sized estate of almost £15,000. The business he has built up lived on though. 200 Heaton Road didn’t change hands for another 20 years.

Sweets and buns

In the early 1930s, new flats were created at 200A and B and the shop became a confectioner’s, called firstly Burton’s and then Steel’s. Steel’s survived through the Second World War although, possibly in response to sugar rationing, by the end of the war it had been turned into a baker’s, part of a small chain which also had shops in Jesmond and Sandyford. Some older residents might even remember it?

A long time dyeing

In 1950 the shop changed character again. John Bradburn, originally from Ipswich, had started a business in the centre of Newcastle way back in 1831. At that time, he described himself as a ‘velvet, silk and woollen dyer’. By 1881, when he was 71 years old, he employed 6 men, 5 boys and 7 women. He died in 1890 but, as with Blackett’s, his business continued to thrive and 60 years later it expanded into Heaton. By this time, the firm was described as ‘dyers and cleaners’ and had branches in the west end and in Gosforth. Later a shop was opened at 265 Chillingham Road. The company’s office was at 55 Shields Road. In the early 1970s, however, after 140 years, the company seems to have closed completely.

Can you help?

Here the trail goes cold until recent years when first Belle and Herb and then The Butterfly Cabinet made the corner of Heaton Road and King John Street one of Heaton’s favourite haunts. Can you help us fill the gaps in our knowledge ? If you have any information, memories or photographs of 200 Heaton Road, please get in touch. You can either post a comment above this article: click on ‘Leave a reply’ just below the title. Or alternatively, email Chris Jackson.