Roy Text
RAILWAY STATIONS FOR MONKSEATON 1860 - 1915
PRESENTATION TEXT
TIMELINE
In the late 1700s and early 1800s there were many wagon-ways in the region. Their function was to carry coal from the many pits in south east Northumberland to the river Tyne for onward ship-ment to London and Europe. I don’t want to speak today much more about these wagon-ways as they will be the subject of a future guest speaker. However all I want to say is that the Whitley Wagon-way opened in 1811 linking pits in the south Whitley Bay area and Marden Limestone Quarry to North Shields, a few yards west of the current Tynemouth Station and eventually for off-loading coal to waiting ships at the Low Light staithes. [SLIDE]
In the late 1840s and early 1850s, the wagon-way network in South East Northumberland was starting to carry passengers on a few trains from Blyth, Hartley, Backworth, Prospect Hill, to Percy Main. Here people could then transfer to the newly constructed commuter line that ran from North Shields to Carliol Square, Newcastle that had opened on 18 June 1839. This North Shields - New-castle line was arguably the first purposely built commuter line in the world and is still in operation today. But that can be a story for another day. Today we are concentrating on Monkseaton.
1860 - The Blyth and Tyne Railway company opened up a passenger route between its existing wagon-way at Dairy House just south of Hartley linking its network to the Whitley wagon-way and onwards to a newly constructed station in Tynemouth, at a site which can still be seen today, near Mariner’s Lane. This is when the first station for Monkseaton passengers was built. The station was called Whitley and was located at the bottom of Hillheads Road near its current junction with Lovaine Avenue. [SLIDES]
1864 - Railway passenger services were proving financially successful. On the 22 June 1864, the Blyth and Tyne Railway opened up a newly constructed purposely built passenger line westwards from its station at Backworth to Benton, running via Jesmond and terminating at Picton House, New Bridge Street, Newcastle; at the same time, it also constructed an eastwards running line from Backworth to Monkseaton joining its existing Avenue line running from Blyth to Tynemouth.
At this time, it created a new station for Monkseaton at the junction where the Newcastle and “Av-enue” line met. It called this station Whitley Junction and closed its existing Whitley stop that was at the bottom of Hillheads Road. It also created a new station at Cullercoats located near the pre-sent Sedburgh Road, west of Broadway/Mast Lane. This Blyth and Tyne line to Newcastle was an-other immediate success, carrying an estimated 17,000 passengers (mainly 3rd class and there-fore regular workers) in its first week.
The newly constructed station at Monkseaton was called Whitley Junction until about 1882. It re-mained at this location on Marine Avenue for 50 years until 1915. [SLIDES]
For those that are interested, there is an amazing website available that describes all disused rail-way stations in the UK and it has a special inter-active section on the Blyth and Tyne network - it contains a wealth of information and I can’t deny that the majority of the information and photo-graphs for this talk comes from that website. http://disused-stations.org.uk/fea-tures/blythandtyne/index.shtml
1882 - The Tyneside “loop” was created when a new Tynemouth station was built directly joining the original North Shields - Newcastle line to the Blyth and Tyne line that went via Monkseaton, Benton, and Jesmond into Newcastle. At the same time, new stations were built nearer the sea at the current day Cullercoats Station and at Whitley Bay, Station Road - although this station was re-built in 1910 a few yards away when the track was re-aligned.
1904 - The introduction of electric trams in the 1890s - 1900s severely reduced passenger num-bers on the Tyneside railway. So to combat this loss, the “loop” was progressively electrified be-tween February and July 1904. This was an amazing development using a third line for electrical power. It halved operating costs of the former steam powered trains, reduced travel times, im-proved reliability and by 1913 over 10 million passengers a year were being carried on the line.
1909 - Prior to this date, the “loop” had not really been completed. Trains travelling to Newcastle via Benton and Jesmond still ended at the old terminus at New Bridge Street. But in 1909, the New Bridge Street station was closed and the line extended those extra few yards to a new station at Manors North where the line merged with the line from North Shields on its way into Newcastle. However, for unknown reasons, it was not until 1917, that passengers coming from the Benton Jesmond direction could actually travel onwards from Manors and alight in Newcastle Central sta-tion.
1915 - The old Monkseaton Railway station on Marine Avenue that had stood since 1864 was fi-nally closed after 50 years of service - the tracks were re-aligned to their present position and a new station and rail bridge built a short distance away to the west. This new station has now be-come the current Monkseaton metro station and the site of the old 1864 station is now the location of a Medical Centre and tennis courts. The history of the new Monkseaton Railway Station and Metro stop is also an interesting story, but again, that’s for another day.
Roy Kilborn 14 January 2022