The Tyne Bridge is a through arch bridge over the River Tyne in North East England, linking Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead. The bridge was designed by the engineering firm Mott, Hay and Anderson, who later designed the Forth Road Bridge, and was built by Dorman Long and Co. of Middlesbrough. The bridge was officially opened on 10 October 1928 by King George V and has since become a defining symbol of Tyneside. It is ranked as the tenth tallest structure in Newcastle.
The earliest bridge across the Tyne, Pons Aelius, was built by the Romans on the site of the present Swing Bridge around 122.
A series of wooden bridges were lost to fire or flood, and plans for a stone bridge were begun in about 1250 with support from local landowners, and the Bishops of Durham, York and Caithness. The stone bridge was constructed but then damaged by flood in 1339. Repairs proved costly and took place in sections: it was not fully repaired, as a part stone and part wooden bridge, until the 16th century and was part destroyed by a great flood in November 1771.
Following this, a new stone bridge was begun after the city council petitioned Parliament. The foundation stone on the north side was laid by Sir Matthew White Ridley on 25 April 1775, with the south side foundation stone laid in 1776. Works were completed by 13 September 1779, at an estimated cost of between £30,000 and £60,000.
Work on a modern bridge started in August 1925, with Dorman Long acting as the building contractors. Despite the dangers of the building work, only one worker, Nathaniel Collins, a father of four and a local scaffolder from South Shields, died in the building of this structure.
The Tyne Bridge was designed by Mott, Hay and Anderson, comparable to their Sydney Harbour Bridge version. These bridges derived their design from the Hell Gate Bridge in New York City. The Dorman Long team was also notable for including Dorothy Buchanan, the first female member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, joining in 1927; in addition to her contribution to the Tyne Bridge, she served as part of the team for the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Lambeth Bridge in London.
The bridge was completed on 25 February 1928, and officially opened on 10 October that year by King George V and Queen Mary, who were the first to use the roadway, travelling in their Ascot Landau. The opening ceremony was attended by 20,000 schoolchildren who had been given the day off. Movietone News recorded the speech given by the King.
The Tyne Bridge's towers were built of Cornish granite and were designed by local architect Robert Burns Dick as warehouses with five storeys. But, the inner floors of the warehouses in the bridge's towers were not completed and, as a result, the storage areas were never used. A lift for passengers and goods was built in the North tower to provide access to the Quayside; it is no longer in use. Although a lift shaft was also included in the South tower no lift was ever installed.
The bridge's design uses a parabolic arch.
The bridge was originally painted green with special paint made by J. Dampney, Tonbridge, Tingate Co. of Gateshead. The same colours were used to paint the bridge in 2000.
Gateshead is a town in the Gateshead Metropolitan Borough of Tyne and Wear, England. It is on the River Tyne's southern bank. The town's attractions include the twenty metre tall Angel of the North sculpture on the town's southern outskirts, The Glasshouse International Centre for Music and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. The town shares the Millennium Bridge, Tyne Bridge and multiple other bridges with Newcastle upon Tyne.
Historically part of County Durham, under the Local Government Act 1888 the town was made a county borough, meaning it was administered independently of the county council.
In the 2011 Census, the town had a population of 120,046 while the wider borough had 200,214.
Gateshead is first mentioned in Latin translation in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People as ad caput caprae ("at the goat's head"). This interpretation is consistent with the later English attestations of the name, among them Gatesheued (c. 1190), literally "goat's head" but in the context of a place-name meaning 'headland or hill frequented by (wild) goats'. Although other derivations have been mooted, it is this that is given by the standard authorities.
A Brittonic predecessor, named with the element *gabro-, 'goat' (c.f. Welsh gafr), may underlie the name. Gateshead might have been the Roman-British fort of Gabrosentum.
There has been a settlement on the Gateshead side of the River Tyne, around the old river crossing where the Swing Bridge now stands, since Roman times.
The first recorded mention of Gateshead is in the writings of the Venerable Bede who referred to an Abbot of Gateshead called Utta in 623. In 1068 William the Conqueror defeated the forces of Edgar the Ætheling and Malcolm king of Scotland (Shakespeare's Malcolm) on Gateshead Fell (now Low Fell and Sheriff Hill).
During medieval times Gateshead was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Durham. At this time the area was largely forest with some agricultural land. The forest was the subject of Gateshead's first charter, granted in the 12th century by Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham. An alternative spelling may be "Gatishevede", as seen in a legal record, dated 1430.
Throughout the Industrial Revolution the population of Gateshead expanded rapidly; between 1801 and 1901 the increase was over 100,000. This expansion resulted in the spread southwards of the town.
In 1854, a catastrophic explosion on the quayside destroyed most of Gateshead's medieval heritage, and caused widespread damage on the Newcastle side of the river.
Sir Joseph Swan lived at Underhill, Low Fell, Gateshead from 1869 to 1883, where his experiments led to the invention of the electric light bulb. The house was the first in the world to be wired for domestic electric light.
In the 1889 one of the largest employers (Hawks, Crawshay and Company) closed down and unemployment has since been a burden. Up to the Second World War there were repeated newspaper reports of the unemployed sending deputations to the council to provide work. The depression years of the 1920s and 1930s created even more joblessness and the Team Valley Trading Estate was built in the mid-1930s to alleviate the situation.
In the late noughties, Gateshead Council started to regenerate the town, with the long-term aim of making Gateshead a city. The most extensive transformation occurred in the Quayside, with almost all the structures there being constructed or refurbished in this time.
In the early 2010s, regeneration refocused on the town centre. The £150 million Trinity Square development opened in May 2013, it incorporates student accommodation, a cinema, health centre and shops. It was nominated for the Carbuncle Cup in September 2014. The cup was however awarded to another development which involved Tesco, Woolwich Central.