IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Delaval Road, NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, NE15 6NL

In Benwell, west of Newcastle. At the bottom of the hill, the Gateshead MetroCentre - the largest shopping centre in the EU - can be seen.

Looking down on the development site of Scotswood and Delaval, recently cleared and levelled before new house building starts.

Ornamental gates installed in 1996 at the south-west entrance to Hodgkin Park on the corner of Milford Road and Armstrong Road. From the word 'Paradise' at the bottom, cut steel outlines of an industrial scene give way to plant life above. Public Monuments and Sculpture Association: http://pmsa.cch.kcl.ac.uk/ Paradise was an old name for an area between Delaval and South Benwell south of the park, and of a coal pit in the area Image

View from inside the park. There is another view of the gates (from outside) here Image The railings have a bust of Thomas Hodgkin, a prominent local banker, who donated the land for the park to the city in 1899, and the words: 'Hodgkin Park / Dream of Paradise'.

'Sapling' stands near some mature trees in the north part of Hodgkin Park. Public Monuments and Sculpture Association: http://www.pmsa.org.uk/pmsa-database/9557/

A 2009 view of Alan Murray-Rust's 1966 photograph Image The buildings to the right are in the process of being demolished.

A trolleybus arrives at was then the terminus of the Elswick Road service at Benwell. Earlier, services continued beyond this point to Denton. This is the junction of Benwell Lane with Delaval Road to the right. The trolleybus will pull forward across the junction and then reverse into Delaval Road before pulling on to the departure stop (behind the lollipop man). The idea of making this sort of manoeuvre in this day and age would be unthinkable, but at that stage it was still a common practice. The presence of the lollipop man shows that this would be school finishing time, but there is nothing like the amount of traffic that there would be today. Postscript: even in 2009, the traffic seems to be quite light; the astonishing thing is how little the scene has changed Image Postscript 2014: The scene has changed beyond recognition http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3905494 For a slide show of British Trolleybuses in the late 60s http://www.geograph.org.uk/search.php?i=1773236&displayclass=slide

Looking through railings with a set of cut metal panels designed and signed by local school children. The dene is managed by Newcastle City Council and improved to benefit wildlife and people by the Wild Places Project and the Northumberland Wildlife Trust. Within the semi-natural woodland of the valley, an old concrete-lined paddling pool, fed by a spring, has been converted into a wildlife pond.

Ornamental gates installed in 1996 at the south-east entrance to Hodgkin Park off Armstrong Road. The cut, painted steel screens bear the inscription: 'From a City to the Park / From a Garden to the Town / An Oasis in a Desert of Street and Stone'. Public Monuments and Sculpture Association: http://www.pmsa.org.uk/pmsa-database/9558/