Tynemouth Guide

Queen Victoria Park (The Green)

3. King’s School Doorway

This is perhaps the most interesting doorway in tynemout and it’s very old, with 1760 written on the pediment and beautiful ionic columns and a balustrade around the portico.

Originally the porch belonged to a Dutch trader who lived around the corner on Percy Park Road and built an octagonal lookout house so he could observe ships entering hte harbour. This doorway was felt too large and grand for that street so it was moved here, brick by brick, to a more prominent position in the centre of the village. It features Flemish bond brickwork and it’s a really fabulous piece of one of the finest doorways on this wonderful stretch of housing surrounding the Green.

4. Garibaldi

Next to the King’s School entrance we have the plaque honouring Garibaldi’s stay in Tynemouth.

Giuseppe Garibaldi was the father of Italian nationhood. Italy has only been a nation state for about 150 years and Garibaldi was the man who galvanised the country and brought the regions and the people together.

He came to Tynemouth to gather support from industrialists around the North East who were like making a lot of money and advancing technology on the railways and in shipbuilding. He needed them to invest in the modern nation of Italy.

He was also connected with the Chartist movement, who were a very important labour movement of the 19th century and were precursors to the Labour party, instituting a lot of reforms in politics and society.

There are a few stories about this visit. One is the the ‘Geordie Netty’. During their stay, Garibaldi’s entourage were continually asking the cleaning lady Dov’è gabinetti? — “Where’s the toilet?” Eventually she cottoned on to the meaning would reply, “The netty’s doon there!” in answering the men.

5. Boer War Memorial

The Boer War was fought in South Africa and the Transvaal from 1899-1902. Monuments commemorating this conflict are quite rare and the Tynemouth memorial is quite badly aged and weathed. Fortunately, money has recently been secured to have it fully restored, as the wording and names have faded while its finial has long been lost.

6. Queen Victoria Statue

Almost every sizeable town in the Commonwealth has or had a Queen Victoria statue and we have our own life-size bronze statue in Tynemouth. She has recently been cleaned and given a new coating. She actually had a number of parts stolen many years ago, including her crown, sceptre and two figurine representing justice and peace on either side of her throne.

The statue was built by public subscription to the tune of £1,000 and was the second cast from the mould of the statue that was destined for Delhi, and which still sits in a corner of Delhi Art College today. The sturdy portland stone plinth is inscribed with the words:

VICTORIA.DEI.GRATIA
BRITANNIARUMREGINA
INDIAEIMPERATRIX

7. Charles I

Queen Victoria faces the entrance to the village, Front Street. It’s often said that because Tynemouth is so old. There are meant to be a lot of tunnels and underground workings around here.

Marsden House, No.9 Front Street, is a Grade II listed building. The aboive ground structure is 18th century, but it is built on top of an older house.

In fact, it is rumoured that in 1646 after King Charles I escaped to Newcastle, he was meant to have hidden in the basement of 9 Front Street, although the present house we see was built in the early 18th century. The King’s hideout was part of a putative network of tunnels that supplied the castle during the Civil War siege and later formed smugglers’ passages into the alehouses of Tynemouth. At least, that is what the Village folklore attests.

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.