The Second World War saw great destruction in many of the urban areas of Britain. After the war there was a need for the rebuilding of many towns and city centres. However that was not all. There was also a desire to move on to a brave new world, which would include many new buildings and new ways of building.
Although not as heavily bombed as some cities in Britain, such as Coventry, Newcastle had been targeted by the Luftwaffe and was certainly at the forefront of the movement to build new city centres for the second-half of the 20th century. So it was that at the end of the 1950s, Newcastle City Council under the leadership of T. Dan Smith, brought in Wilfred Burns as chief planner. Burns had previously overseen the remarkable rebuilding of Coventry, after a lot of it had been destroyed by German bombing in the war, including much of the cathedral.
With Smith’s support, Burns came up with the 1961 plan for the centre of Newcastle and the 1963 Development Plan Review. Much of these involved the knocking down of old housing on the old shopping streets to be replaced by a modern shopping centre which is now Eldon Square shopping centre and by modern flats in areas such as Cruddas Park. There was also to be an education quarter where Newcastle University and Northumbria University are now found, while much of the city centre was to be linked up with walkways in the sky.
The reason for this was partly to keep pedestrians and road users apart and this was to be very important as Newcastle was planned to be a motorway city. So, how many motorways were planned and where were they to be?
The Central Motorway East
The obvious starting point is with the motorway that actually got built and it’s still there today. Skirting round the east side of Newcastle city centre, this road has traditionally been called the central motorway east. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of this road.
The motorway runs from beneath the Pilgrim St roundabout at the north End of the Tyne Bridge to the dual carriageway which runs parallel to Claremont Road up towards Cowgate, Kenton Bar, and the airport. When it opened in 1975, it was given the number A1(M), as it still carried the A1. Since then it has been the A1627(M) and now the A167(M), as the A1 has shifted over the years, from going through Newcastle, to through the Tyne Tunnel and now to the west of Newcastle.
The building of the motorway was criticised at the time, especially as it saw the destruction of beautiful housing on the old Jesmond Road and also created a large barrier between the city centre and areas such as Shieldfield just outside of it to the east.
However, on a positive note, it did take traffic off Northumberland St and anyone who remembers Newcastle in the early 1970s, will remember just how difficult it was to go shopping on what was then as now, the main shopping street in the city. You would be assailed by the noise and exhaust fumes of traffic as you walked along the pavement, while the only crossing point was a bridge near the south end of Northumberland Street. The building of the Central Motorway East, enabled all but buses to be taken off Northumberland St, and it wasn’t long before it was fully pedestrianised and became the street we know today.
The Central Motorway West
Now, the question s too why the motorway that was built was known as the Central Motorway East, the answer is of course very simple. It was to be complemented by a Central Motorway West. This was to run from the North End of a new Redheugh Bridge, up to Gallowgate, swinging north east, just south of St James’s Park, before running up what is Percy St. and then meeting the central motorway east at the large junction that was built just north of the Haymarket.
In order to avoid too many city centre buildings been knocked down much of the motorway on Percy Street was to be on two levels, one going north and one going south.
This motorway was of course never built, although a new Redheugh Bridge was opened in 1983 and over ten years later St James’s Boulevard was built along the route that some of the Central Motorway West would have taken.
An underground motorway!
Smith and Burns were not content to leave it there. These two north-south central motorways were to be linked by an underground motorway, running roughly underneath of where New Bridge Street is today. This short motorway barely a mile long would have cost £9 million at 1969 prices, which would amount to about £130 million at today’s prices. It is therefore small wonder that this motorway was never built.
However, there is one legacy from the underground motorway. If you have ever wondered why the New Bridge St roundabout on the central motorway east is so huge it is because it was built that way with the intention of it being a junction between the underground motorway and the Central Motorway East.
The Coast Road Motorway
I have already mentioned that some of the old Jesmond Road was knocked down to make way for the Central Motorway East. More of Jesmond Road was intended to go, as there was to be a motorway standard road between the turn off from the central motorway east near Jesmond Road to the beginning of the dual carriage way crossroad in Heaton.
Again of course this was never built, but some of it was modified to produce the Cradlewell bypass and the new bridge over Jesmond Dene in the 1990s. Some readers may also remember that the sign at the beginning of the A1058 saying that it was eight miles to Tynemouth, originally stated that the road was part of the A1058(M).
The Shields Road motorway
Another of the major changes to Newcastle that took place in the 1970s was of course the demolition and rebuilding of Byker Estate, including the famous Byker Wall. The reason why the Byker Wall was originally built in the mid-1970s, was to protect the new estate from the sound of traffic on what was to be a motorway bypass for Shields Road.
This motorway was to begin where the underground motorway met the Central Motorway East and then travel just to the north of the new Byker estate, bypassing the old Shields Rd shopping street, before dramatically swinging south and crossing the Tyne over a new bridge at Friars Goose. It would then link up with the Felling Bypass.
The motorway that would bypass a motorway!
So keen were Smith and Burns on motorways for Newcastle, that the Central Motorway East was itself to have its own motorway bypass! If you drive along the Central Motorway East, today you might notice that there are some stumpy bits of road which don’t seem to go anywhere, shooting out eastwards from the motorway. These were intended to lead traffic onto a bypass for the Central Motorway East, which was to go over the Tyne at a new bridge slightly downstream from the Tyne Bridge.
This motorway was then to carry on through Gateshead on the flyover which was built and of course is now closed, before coming to a shuddering halt somewhere near the Shipley Art Gallery.
The oil crisis and the metro
What became the Central Motorway Wast was to be only the first part of a huge motorway scheme for Newcastle city centre and the east side of the city. Work began on the central motorway east in 1972, but the following year the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent oil crisis caused petrol prices to rise sharply. That coupled with high inflation at the time, meant that extravagant schemes like the underground motorway and ultimately the rest of the plan, apart from the Central Motorway East, would never be built.
At the same time a large protest movement called SOCEM was giving the council food for thought and in the later1970s, the emphasis moved away from motorways to a rapid transport system and underground which in 1980 was completed as the first part of the Tyne and Wear Metro, which we still have today.
Most people reading this are no doubt be very relieved that apart from the Central Motorway East, none of these motorway plans came to fruition and I would echo those sentiments. However, I would also say that it was a different time and a time when local government had more power than it does today and local democratic accountability did count for something in the end as the motorway scheme was abandoned in favour of public transport.
It does seem a pity that there seems to be so little vision in the North East today. However, it must also be said planning in the future must not follow the mistakes of the 1960s and 1970s in planning for people, but rather be concerned with planning with local people and listening to their needs.
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