Tynemouth Guide

The Longsands

8. Lost Features

This mile long stretch is one of the UK’s best beaches. Before the railway arrived, Prior’s Haven was the main bathing spot, but the massive influx of visitors meant the Longsands was the only place that could accommodate such crowds.

This beach has four famous features that are no longer there.

The first is the Plaza, which was built in 1878 and was burned down in 1996. It was a huge dance hall and it was very imposing as an icon and landmark of Tynemouth.
The outdoor swimming pool at the bottom of the beach is hopefully is going to be restored. That again in the 1990s was lost owing to a general pessimism at the time that caused it to be left to rot. Built in 1926, the pool was meant to promote exercise but at the same time keep people safe from the dangers of open sea swimming.
The third thing that once defined this beach were the Victorian bathing machines. These were donkey-pulled carts that were moved into the water and towards the water so that people could undress in private, which was very important to Victorian people who had a taboo about revealing any part of the body. This was a lucrative business promoted by the Linkleter and Fry families on the Longsands and Haven respectively.
Fourthly is the chalybeate spring that made Tynemouth famous. These iron-rich springs were favoured for two reasons: the distinctive taste and their health-giving properties in a time of mineral deficiency in people’s diets. An ornate fountain with a lion’s head spout was built around the Tynemouth spring and today we only see its outlet trickling into the sea. The spring was deemed undrinkable when the water was tested in the late 1960s, owing to nearby mine workings or because of its natural metal content. It was then left to be buried by sand and forgotten.

So these are the things that have gone, but this also makes the Longsands today a very natural beach in a very urban setting.

9. St George’s Church

This great church is Grade 1 Listed, which puts it in the top 2 percent of listed buildings in the country. It was built by the architect Loughborough Pearson and commissioned by Algernon Percy, 6th Duke of Northumberland.

St George’s was completed in 1898, the same year that St Mary’s Lighthouse was built and shortly after the two Piers were finally finished. Just like these lighthouses, the spire of St George’s was built to serve as a navigational beacon, as you can see it from far out at sea.

10. Marconi Point

Also known as Brown’s Point, in 1906 this was the site of one of the earliest radio stations, as long wave radio was only invented around 1900. The station was used to broadcast morse code between Britain and Denmark and during World War One it was used to intercept German naval traffic.

11. Grand Hotel

On Grand Parade we can’t miss the Grand Hotel with its mansard roofs as per the great Parisian buildings including the original Grande Hotel which inspired it. It was built in 1872 as a house for the 6th Duke’s wife. The Duke was a keen yachtsman and it’s said that while anchored in the bay he would communicate with his wife and would raise a red flag to show he was coming ashore, which she would reciprocate from her window on the top floor. The house was converted to a hotel 1877.

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.