Bill Quay

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View of Bill Quay - June 13, 2004

Bill Quay is on the Easternmost fringe of Gateshead , sandwiched between Hebburn to the East and Pelaw to the West. It lies on the South bank of the River Tyne facing Walker-on-Tyne.

During the 19th century it was an industrial area catering for chemical works, bottle works, Robson's Paint and shipbuilding. The area saw an economic upturn at the end of the 19th century when the CWS or Co-Operative Wholesale Society opened its vast and extensive string of factories along its main thoroughfare, Shields Road. Boutlands, Harrisons and Wood-Skinner were shipbuilders at Bill Quay with Harrisons remaining the last shipbuilders on the Tyne's South bank until its closure recently.

Bill Quay is also home to a well supported local cricket club(Bill Quay Albion). The legendary George Forshaw and Charles Basham have played at Bill Quay CC for many years and can still be found delighting the Bill Quay Barmy Army on sunday afternoons with a masterful array of strokes.

More importantly, Bill Quay is home to Bill Quay Community Farm, an important urban farm and one of only 17 nationally recognised rare breeds farms in the UK.

[edit] Bill Quay in fiction

The novel Schoolfrenz by Ray Crowther (ISBN 0-9541110-3-6) is set mainly on Tyneside. Bill Quay is mentioned several times and is the location for a murder scene in the book. The author's website (Ray Crowther) contains an extract from Schoolfrenz about Bill Quay, and has photographs of Bill Quay and the surrounding area.