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Burn Road, BLAYDON-ON-TYNE, NE21 6EB

A retaining wall that runs for about 250m defining the north side of the central waggonway, It has been built and repaired in numerous phases probably associated with the changing industries of the valley bottom. The substantial ruined brick building to the right is thought to be contemporary with the wall and may have been built for Priestman Colliery between 1900 and 1914. It may have been used for screening coal.

In January 1840, Peregrine Edward Towneley and Joseph Cowen entered into an agreement giving the latter wayleave to build a waggonway down the side of Blaydon Burn. This was the first continuous rail link between the hamlet of Blaydon Burn and the Tyne, and was prompted by the Cowen & Co’s need to transport High Yard fireclay products to the shipment point at the quay. It had to be built ‘so as not to injure the supply of water to the waterwheels on Blaydon Burn’. For much of the C19th the waggonway was a single track with sidings, but after Priestman Collieries acquired Blaydon Burn Colliery, c.1900, addition lines were laid. Over the course of the following fifty years the line continued to expand with the addition of more tracks on the central line and numerous rail spurs for transporting goods around the growing industrial complex. There is no record of locomotives used before 1896, but after that date twelve 0-4-0 engines, all 4’8½" gauge were used on the system and spur lines extended to the south-west and north-east.

These are along Blaydon Burn. They were used to load coal into waggons on the railway which once ran along the burn. This is now the public footpath.

This footpath along a former railway line alongside the burn passes lots of old industrial remains from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The west end of the Nature Reserve, where the burn meets the road, was formerly the railhead of the valley line Image The ruined buildings shown here lie between the upper and lower sections of the railhead. The most notable is a large section of retaining wall showing numerous phases of build and construction types. The wall includes a number of arched openings and cast-iron pipework, of unknown function, but probably associated with adjacent coal screens to the north-east. There is another photo here Image

Once the heart of the industrial revolution in Gateshead, Blaydon Burn is a wonderful example of what happens when industry moves away and nature returns, over one mile long and covering over 50 hectares of woodland, grassland and wetland.

In the C18th, Belt's Corn Mill stood here, disused by 1896, but only finally demolished (for safety reasons) in 1981. With construction of the waggonway c1840 (now surfaced as a cycle way) the area became developed as the western railhead for Cowen's High Yard. Valley House is on the right. The buildings on the left are the site of a former Firebrick Manufactory, run by Forster & Co., which was taken over by Joseph Cowen in the mid C18th. They operated a Gas Retort Works here intended to light their own factory, but in 1853 they extended the facility to the village of Blaydon. Cowen's site was known as the High Yard, or High Works, and closed for production in 1919, though joiners and pattern maker’s workshops remained operational until the 1950s. Tyne and Wear HER (1646): Blaydon Burn, Cowens Upper Brickworks http://www.twsitelines.info

Coal from the Bessie (or Betsey) Drift Mine Image situated directly to the east, on the valley side, was carried on an elevated platform across the valley to the drops where it was loaded into waggons for transport to the Blaydon Tyne staithes. The doorway on the left has a set of steps which provided access to the upper platform. The Betsie Pit was part of Joseph Cowen's Blaydon Burn Colliery in operation in the mid C19th. Around 1900 it was taken over by Priestman Collieries and finally closed in the 1950s by the National Coal Board. http://isee.gateshead.gov.uk/detail.php?t=objects&type=all&f=&s=+GL002203

First shown on the 1858 OS as a single building with enclosures to the south-west, the pit was part of Joseph Cowen’s Blaydon Burn Colliery. The pit was taken over by Priestman Collieries c.1900 and vested with the National Coal Board Northern Division in 1947. It was closed in 1950.