Shiels to Shields
by Dean Jolly
North Shields founded 800 years ago
Built upon the banks of the river Tyne
Wor Peg’s Trip te Tynemouth
The song was written by the music hall singer Joe Wilson in the late 1880s. This was when both the Plaza and the Station were built, so it was a period of peak popularity for the place.
An Order to Deploy the Press Gang in North Shields
via Dan Jackson @Northumbriana
Tynemouth’s First Tripadvisor Review
The Pride of the Tyne
by Catherine Crosby
Cranes loom the skyline
Over the river
In sunsets of orange and flame
Ghosts walk the cobbles
The Cliffs of Old Tynemouth
by David Ross Lietch (1843)
St Mary’s Light on Penbal Crag
“From mountain ridge to forest cave
The scattered flowers of summer smile,
But dark and heavy rolls the wave
That sweeps round Tynemouth’s cloistered pile.”
A lesser known gem of a song from Lindisfarne’s lead singer.
Low Light — A Shanty by Katrina Porteous 🎶
This ballad was inspired by a conversation with Sheila Hirsch at the Old Low Light, North Shields. Sheila is believed to have been the first female trawler skipper in the UK. Fishing remains the most dangerous occupation in the country, and this ballad is dedicated to everyone who has lost someone at sea.
Time and the Shoe Man
Here’s a little story by Tynemouth writer Celia Bryce, about Father Time, a fox and a cobbler travelling through the years in North Shields.
The Black Middens and the Myth of Cor
“The Giant Cor, who claimed the Tyne as his own special property, and who dwelt on its banks where his name is now associated with the village— once took it into his head to shut the tide out of the river. In order to do this effectually, he brought lapfuls of stones from Newbiggin, Hartley, and Whitley points and threw them into the entrance to the Tyne, just within the Bar… “
“And for Canny Shiels We Soon Were Baring” 🎶
‘The Shoals of Herring’ is about a fisherman sailing from port to port along the east coast of England through the summer. It was written in 1960 by Ewan MacColl, but surely the best version is this one by Luke Kelly and the Dubliners. The power in his voice is immense.
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.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
Photograph: 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.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
