Tynemouth Guide

First Tynemouth Station

The railway between Newcastle and Tynemouth is the oldest commuter line in the world and it is still used as one. However, the jewel in the crown that is Tynemouth Station, which we covered at the start of this guide, was not Tynemouth’s first station. The original, around the corner on Oxford Street, was smaller but featured an elegant and proportioned sandstone frontage with an oriel window and the crests of Newcastle and Tynemouth above its triple-arched entrance. The station was opened in 1847 and today this Grade II Listed frontage serves as a retirement home.

36. Benjamin Green

As with all the main stations between Newcastle and Berwick, it was designed by Benjamin Green in the Tudor-Jacobean style. Green designed many signature buildings including the Theatre Royal in Newcastle. He was arguably the formemost archiect of his time in the North East and his work was often favoured by the Duke.

37. North Eastern Railway

In the 1850s, shortly after this early period of railway expansion, the various independent lines in the region were aquired by the North Eastern Railway, with the exception of its rival for the Tyneside coastal tourism trade, the Blyth & Tyne Railway.

If you look at the cermaic tiles map on the wall of Tynemouth Station you can see all of the lines that belonged to the NER. They were a formidable corporation and they pioneered the design of stations as showcases of their prestige.

As such, after the new Tynemouth Station came into being, the First Tynemouth Station primarily functioned as a goods terminus. It was completely closed in 1959 and in the 1980s the space was infilled for housing.

38. Roman Road?

It may be speculated that the oldest road into Tynemouth is not the Broadway or King Edward Road, but the route along Tynemouth Road, as this follows the direct line west out of Wallsend following the Tyne. This would have ran through a site called Adrian’s Mound which stood below the site of the milestone in Northumberland Park today.

The Romans almost certainly did have a road to the Coast and it probably ran along the ridge on which Tynemouth Village is built. However, rather than running down the main aveneue of Front Street, it likely took a straighter line along today’s Bath Terrace.

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.