Sea Banks

Tynemouth Guide

12. The Short Sands

More commonly known as King Edward’s Bay, this beach could well have been named after King Edward I, the Hammer of the Scots, also known as Longshanks and made famous in the movie Braveheart. King Edward was the first King of England to base himself at Tynemouth, to invade Scotland from Tynemouth, to muster his ships there and his wife would stay at the Castle while he was on campaign in Scotland. He was the first person to have a wall built around the castle, much of which is still intact and is almost 1000 yards in length.

There is a famous painting by William Bell Scott, of the Vikings attacking this beach and marauding up its banks to sack the Priory in 793. Imagine what a terrifying scene that was, and these invaders kept coming back through the 9th century and staying for longer each time. So there’s been a lot of history in this place. It’s seen shipwrecks and smugglers and Vikings and armies. Just imagine the camps, the rows of tents and ships at anchor out there with all kinds of different forces on the move over the centuries.

Today, King Edward’s Bay is a Blue Flag beach, but it hasn’t always had lots of sand on it. When the Pier that you can see popping out from behind the cliff, was built, a lot more sand accumulated and around the same period the river was dredged of 800 acres of sandbanks. Both of these feats were achieved by the newly-formed Tyne Improvement Commission and the spoil ground for the dredgers that frequent the river is still just off the bay. So both regular dredging and the construction of the piers changed the nature of the way the sea moved around here, so that now King Edward’s Bay is one of our most beautiful beaches.

13. Landslip

On these grass banks thatr create this cove there have been a number of landslips, especially in 1914 when the entire roadway between Sea Banks and East Street was swept down the cliff. It took 10 years to rebuild the bankside and erect the massive arches that you can see supporting the road. Another little piece of Tynemouth folklore is that this landslip was triggered by a postman knocking on the door of one of the cottages on East Street, and the Post Office did occupy No. 1 East Street back then, so who knows? Maybe there was a disturbance caused by the posties that led to the bankside tumbling away…

Sea Banks is still a problematic road and the landslip of 1914 was ultimately caused by an old well beneath it called the Bank Well. It was the continual seepage from this well that weakened the ground. So today, the road is still very susceptible to breaking up and needs a lot of attention from the Council.

When the landslip occurred in 1914, people said at the time that it briefly exposed some of the smugglers’ tunnels. I believe there was a smuggler’s tunnel that went directly into the Gibraltar Rock at No. 2 East Street. We may wonder, why is the pub overlooking the bay called the Gibraltar Rock? It’s a very old pub and the Rock of Gibraltar itself has hundreds of limestone tunnels, many of which are unexplored. They are very mysterious and intriguing tunnels that were used by pirates, while fittingly the Gib was always known in the past as a smugglers’ pub…

14. Percy Gardens

This is really Tynemouth’s grandest street and was built to rival some of the great crescents that we have across the country, such as in Bath, Edinburgh and London. So Percy Gardens is really our showcase street. There’s also a very curious WW1 lookout tower behind it.

These originally three storey houses were built in the 1860s to accommodate people who for the first time were able to commute and live at the Coast in this pleasant and clean environment while working in overcrowded and polluted Newcastle. This was made possible by the first commuter railway in the world, which arrived in the late 1840s. So by the 1860s, lots of wealthy industrialists and wealthy merchants were able to get such houses built and and live in them to enjoy the fruits of a townhouse at the Coast.

This period of technological advancement is when leisure became a concept for the first time in mainstream society. You could say that Tynemouth was quite a poor village prior to the railway arriving, cut off from everything but the sea. So these Victorian people really built something new.

15. Jingling Geordie

If you look across the bay towards the Castle, you can see a doorway that’s cut into the cliff. That is what remains of an old edifice called Whitley Tower which was built by a man called Guy de Whitley. It was ordered by Edward I, whom I mentioned above. Longshanks needed the tower to be built in order to watch for Scottish invasions, which is why the whole Castle was fortified in stone by Edward.

This Whitley Tower became a notorious smugglers’ den called Jingling Geordie’s Hole. Jingling Geordie was rumoured to be a shipwrecker who would go out onto the treacherous Black Middens rocks and have lanterns posted together that would lure ships onto the reef and he would steal the cargo and hide it in this secret and inaccessible hole.

For 200 years it has almost been a rite of passage for Tynemouth children to go down there, although I’m not sure kids these days would attempt it nor should allowed to. It’s a dangerous spot and a 19th century landslip took off the roof of the inner section of it.

There are said to be a tunnel that goes under the Castle and inside it from that hole and that was blocked off by the Works Department in the 1940s. The tunnel was built so that Tynemouth Castle could receive supplies and weapons in the event of a siege. There were sieges is at various points in Tynemouth Castle’s history and there was a notable one during the Civil War.

Jingling Geordie’s Cave is probably the ultimate piece of Tynemouth folklore. He’s said to have a ghost that wanders the rocks at night and the reason they called him Jingling Geordie was because he still had the chains from his imprisonment stuck around his ankle, and that’s where the noise came from, so you could hear him coming a mile away.

There’s been lots written about it, I’ve written a lot of about him here. There are lots of theories about who he really was (probably Cpt Thomas Armstrong from Cullercoats). But also, it was maybe just a spot for gambling and drinking for the youth of Tynemouth, and so in some ways things don’t really change that much in all the centuries here.

Tynemouth Guide

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Penbal 1 – Lee Stoneman

No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.