Scotswood Road - Paradise & beyond

Image: © Andrew Curtis Taken: 8 Mar 2012

View of the modern Scotswood Road looking east towards the area formerly known as Paradise from a site close to Image At Paradise, beyond the footbridge heading east towards Newcastle centre, the road, roughly on the line of the right hand part of the current dual carriageway, turned sharply left then right to pass under a railway bridge. The road then continued on the north side of the railway line into town. The blue-painted footbridge that brought workers to and from the Vickers Factory can be seen ahead Image The factory is now operated by Rolls Royce. The sad demise of the Scotswood Road from the 1960s is described in an article in the Independent in 1995 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/were-on-a-road-to-nowhere-scotswood-road-newcastle-upon-tyne-1618789.html "The chorus of Newcastle's most famous song have made Scotswood Road its most famous street. The song's outdated, though: there are no lads and lasses there 'aal wi smiling faces', and to get to Blaydon it's quicker to take the bypass. It wasn't always so. Before 1960 Scotswood Road brimmed with life. It acted as a boundary, a tarmac strip between work and home. Armament factories and shipyards were crammed between it and the Tyne for the three miles that it traced the river's path. Across it were the terraced streets that housed the people who made the guns and tanks." A flavour of the former life of the community here can be gleaned from the following collection of photos http://www.amber-online.com/exhibitions/scotswood-road Following the opening of the Scotswood Road Bridge and its approaches at the west end in 1967, the final section of the road from Paradise to Redheugh was updated to dual carriageway in 2006, at a cost of £7.8 million, creating an arterial route between the city centre and Blaydon just as fast as the bypass.

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