| Killingworth | |
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Killingworth
Killingworth shown within Tyne and Wear |
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| Population | 9,251 (not including surroundings) (Jan. 2006)[1] |
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| OS grid reference | NZ2777 |
| Metropolitan borough | North Tyneside |
| Metropolitan county | Tyne and Wear |
| Region | North East |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE |
| Postcode district | NE12 |
| Dialling code | 0191 |
| Police | Northumbria |
| Fire | Tyne and Wear |
| Ambulance | North East |
| EU Parliament | North East England |
| UK Parliament | North Tyneside |
| List of places: UK • England • Tyne and Wear | |
Killingworth, formerly Killingworth Township, is a town north of Newcastle Upon Tyne, in North Tyneside, United Kingdom.
Built as a planned town in the 1960s, most of Killingworth's residents commute to Newcastle, or the city's surrounding area. However, Killingworth itself has a sizeable commercial centre, strong bus links to the rest of Tyne and Wear. Killingworth is not on the Tyne and Wear Metro network but the nearest metro station is Palmersville.
Nearby towns/villages include Killingworth Village (which existed for centuries before the Township was built), Forest Hall, West Moor and Backworth.
Killingworth in Australia is named after Killingworth in England on account of its extensive history of coal-mining; it lies to the west of Newcastle, New South Wales, so-named for the same reason.
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Killingworth Township was part of Longbenton parish. It was held as part of the barony of Merlay (Morpeth). Land within the township was held and tenemented by many individuals and institutions, the main ones being the Killingworth family.
1373 - A detailed survey was made of Killingworth in this year. The township was divided into fields (more than twenty named) and within each field the various landholders farmed strips, or selions, of land. Fifteen landholders are mentioned as holding tenements in Killingworth and strips of land scattered among the fields. One of the fields mentioned is Dimisdale (Dymmyngesdale). This name survived until the 18th century and can be identified with the lands abutting Burradon township.
1704 - The last male heirs of the Killingworth family, Oliver and Luke, were by this date dead and the lands that they had held in Killingworth were divided out between their sisters: Mehitabel, Deborah, Blandina and Bethseba. Dimisdale was assigned to Mehitabel Killingworth, wife of Thomas Partis.
c. 1737 - Dimisdale farm and other lands in Killingworth were sold to John Williams of the Close Gate glass house.
1763 - John Williams died leaving his Killingworth property to his son, John Williams, who rebuilt Killingworth Hall.
1767 - John Williams sold his land and property in Killingworth to George Colpitts. Colpitts was to pay a land tax of £8 4s. 9d. in this year and again in 1779. This is just short of the figure for Burradon township. We can therefore calculate that he held about 500 acres.
1790 - Elizabeth Harrison, the niece and heiress of George Colpitts, married Henry Utrick Reay of Co. Durham and brought ownership of the lands by marriage to him.
1793 - The common lands of Killingworth Township were enclosed by a parliamentary act. It is possible that some enclosure had taken place previous to this date - Dimisdale Farm could be almost coterminous with Hill Head farm which survived until the 1960s. Each landholder was allocated a tract of land within the township to enclose, where before they would have had scattered strips and closes throughout the township. This land would become an individual farm, each one adjoining the village of Killingworth. Henry Utrick Reay was allocated Hill Head farm, although part of this may have been sold shortly afterwards to the Ogle family of Burradon. Thomas Pugh was allocated West House farm which ran to the line where Moor View now occupies. He was also allocated White House farm which covered the west side of Camperdown where the industrial estate now occupies. See the Ownership Map of Killingworth Farms. www.burradon-camperdown.co.uk/resources/FieldsKillingworth.jpgh
1828 Mar.13 - Henry Utrick Reay died in London. His eldest daughter Elizabeth Anne inherited his lands. She married Matthew Bell of Woolsington. They were to live in Killingworth Hall. He served as a Member of Parliament.
1841 Census Killingworth Township Population 112; Dwellings 14.
Construction of Killingworth, a new town, began in 1963. Intended for 20,000 people, it was a former mining community, and was formed on 760 acres (3.1 km2) of derelict colliery land near Killingworth Village, which had existed since the 18th century and earlier. The building of Killingworth Township was undertaken by Northumberland County Council, and was not sponsored by the Government. It was assigned "New Town" status in the 1960s in a similar fashion to the nearby town of Cramlington.
Unlike that town, Killingworth's planners adopted a radical approach to town centre design, resulting in a development of relatively high-rise buildings in an avant-garde and brutalist style, and won awards for architecture, dynamic industry and attractive environment.
This new town centre consisted of pre-cast concrete houses, with millions of small shells unusually embedded into their external walls, 5 to 10 storey flats, offices, industrial units and service buildings, which often consisted of artistic non-functional characteristics, shops and residential multi-storey car parks, interconnected by ramps and walkways. These made up a deck system of access to shopping and other facilities, constructed on the Swedish Skarne method of construction [1].
Originally named Killingworth Township, the latter part of the name was quickly dropped through lack of colloquial use. Killingworth is often referred to as 'Killy' by a large portion of residents of the town and residents of the surrounding areas.
Around 1964, during the reclamation of the derelict pit sites, a 15-acre (61,000 m2) lake south of the town centre was created; spoil heaps were levelled, seeded and planted with semi-mature trees. Today, swans, ducks and local wildlife live around the two lakes which span the main road into Killingworth. The lake is kept well stocked with fish and an angling club and model boating club use the lakes regularly.
Killingworth was home to a number of pits including the world-famous Killingworth Colliery. It was here in 1814 that George Stephenson, enginewright at the colliery, built his first locomotive Blücher with the help and encouragement of his manager at Killingworth, Nicholas Wood, in the colliery workshop behind his house "Dial Cottage" on Lime Road. This locomotive could haul 30 tons of coal up a hill at 4 mph (6.4 km/h), and was the first successful flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive; its traction depended only on the contact between its flanged wheels and the rail. It was used to tow wagons of coal along the wagonway from Killingworth to the Wallsend coal staithes. Although Blücher did not survive long it provided Stephenson with the knowledge and experience to build better locomotives at Killingworth. Later he would build the famous Rocket in his locomotive works in Newcastle.[2]
At the same time Stephenson was also developing his own version of the miner's safety lamp, which he demonstrated underground in Killingworth pit a month before Sir Humphry Davy presented his design to the Royal Society in London in 1815. Known as the "Geordie lamp" it was to be widely used in the North-east in place of the Davy lamp.[3]
Killingworth originally consisted of local authority houses. The first houses at Angus Close, owned by the local authority, were built to house key workers for the British Gas Research Centre. The rest of Killingworth's estates were cul-de-sacs named "Garths" - all numbered, although Garths 1-3 never existed. The actual numbering of the Garths was;4,6,7,9,11,12,13,etc. In the 1990s the Garths located in West Bailey changed their names to street names with estates taking certain trends such as garth 11 is named after trees, Laburnum Court, Willow Gardens etc. and garth 12 after birds e.g. Dove Close, Chaffinch Way.
The houses in most of the Garths in West Bailey (the west of Killingworth) were built of concrete and had flat roofs, but around 1995 the Local Housing Association modernised these houses by adding pitched roofs to the flat-roofed homes, renewed fencing, built new brick sheds, and relocated roads and pathways. Along with this they changed several Garths' names and replaced them with names of lakes, birds and trees.
The lowest remaining numbered Garth is Garth Four (the highest is Garth Thirty-Three in East Bailey aka Hadrian court). The housing estate formally known as garth 21 was not built as Local Housing but as a private estate, the houses are detached and semi detached 3 and 4 bed room. The street names are Crumstone Court, Longstone, Megstone etc.
Many of the Local Authority Homes have been purchased by the tenants, some of whom still reside in the houses that were built new in the 1960s.
Killingworth has grown since the early 1960s, with the addition of new privately-owned homes, Highfields Estate was built in the 1970s and was named after battles e.g. Flodden, Agincourt, Stamford, Culloden, Sedgemoor, etc.
Killingworth Towers 1986 Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUmcQIdLT6w
The most eye-catching and radical aspect of the township was the 3-tier housing estate called the Killingworth Towers - apartment blocks built in the early 1970s. Tenanted by the local authority, they were made of dark grey concrete blocks, and were named Bamburgh, Kielder and Ford Tower etc., after castles. They consisted of a combination of 1, 2 and 3 storey homes built on top of each other rising to 10 storeys high in some towers, with tremendous views.
The estate was originally designed to mimic a medieval castle with an outer wall and inner keep all interconnected to elevators and garbage chutes by ramps and a two-tier walkway (see gallery). This design could be realized on maps of the Towers which existed on the cast-iron drain covers within the estate. The walkways all led to a ¼ mile long elevated walkway leading straight through the, mostly covered, Killingworth Citadel Shopping Centre. This communal configuration was experimental and somewhat typical of the time.
The idea was to create community interaction, with large parks in the grasslands around the towers and social clubs for the adults. However, despite this vision of an integrated society, the design did not live up to expectations. The estate started to look, and feel, like a prison rather than a castle with the introduction of measures to stop anti-social behaviour from youths (would-be ASBOs) congregating within the high rise instead of in the parks.
Grating was retrofitted to prevent risk takers sliding down the 100 ft high girders holding up the walkways. Cast iron grills were erected to stop thoroughfare by over-exuberant youths racing their bikes and skateboards along the perfectly smooth walkway racetrack. Dogs fouling the limited ecosystem walkways, blocked garbage chutes, vandalism and fires set in the communal bins, stairwells, lifts and multi-storey residential car parks also added to the ever growing list of problems. The residents' fight to have pride in their homes was never easy due to their design. The Towers were not widely popular and were consequently demolished in 1987.
The last remaining eyesore, the walkway to the shops, was eventually demolished as it served no further practical interconnecting or visually pleasing purpose after the Towers' demise, but it stood alone for 10 years until funds were found to bring it down. Although happy to see the end of them, some local people still look upon the Towers with the nostalgia of a failed new age of architecture with lessons learned.
The land is now occupied by two new estates of privately-owned homes which were built by Cussins Homes and Barratt Homes.
The first two shops built in Killingworth in the 1960s were Moore's and a small confectionery shop, situated between Garth Six and Angus Close and next door to the West House pub, but these shops were demolished in the 1970s.
The original town centre was built in the 1960s. The boxer Henry Cooper declared the shopping centre open while standing on the steps of the Puffing Billy pub. The centre included a large department store, Woolco, which sold groceries and car parts, and even incorporated a tyre service bay. The shopping centre also included Dewhurst butchers, Greggs bakery, and newsagents, but it was demolished in the 1980s.
Puffing Billy Pub / Mr Brown's Video Fire 1990 can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0e6SLzVXEY
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Morrisons shopping complex (containing the Morrisons supermarket) was the commercial centre of Killingworth, while the former Woolco site stood as wasteland for more than a decade. Then, in the early 2000s, the Killingworth Centre, a modern shopping mall, was built on the former Woolco site. Morrisons moved into a new purpose-built store. The premises vacated by Morrisons are now occupied by Matalan.
In 2010, a new KFC and public house ('The Shire Horse') was constructed next to McDonald's in the grounds of Killingworth Centre.
The Hello Eco Living website designed by Killingworth based 21 Inspired [4] was chosen as a showcase site for the 1.2 release of the BuddyPress social network.
The Killingworth Centre also incorporates a covered Killingworth bus station which is served by Stagecoach, Arriva, Go-North East, Northumbria Coaches and Classic Buses.
This is a large white building in the town centre.
Originally, a building owned by Merz & McLellan, built in the 1960s, stood here. This office block contained 100,000 square feet (10,000 m2) of office space and employed 600 professional and clerical people. Constructed by Northumberland County Council, the building towered over Killingworth and could be seen for miles around.
Over the years, the office space became vacant and, like the former Woolco site, it was disused through the 1990s. Then the building was reduced in height, remodernised, reopened and renamed the White Swan Centre. The name White Swan was chosen from suggestions provided by local school children and reflects the swans found on the local lake. The White Swan Centre was built to house many of the local services previously provided in the demolished buildings which had been attached to the high-level shopping precinct. For example the doctors' surgery and library, a small gym was also housed in the White Swan centre as the swimming pool and sports centre had also been demolished. The new Lakeside swimming pool and sports centre has since been built alongside the lake (next to the High School).
Killingworth is also home to four primary schools (Westmoor, Bailey Green, Moor Edge and Amberley) and a high school, George Stephenson High School. In recent years Killingworth has moved from a three-tier education system consisting of, First, Middle and High schools, to the current two-tier system.
Killingworth has four public houses (and there are two more in Killingworth Village).
The two public houses in Killingworth Village are:
5. http://www.burradon-camperdown.co.uk/23.html
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUmcQIdLT6w - KILLINGWORTH TOWERS 1986 Video
7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0e6SLzVXEY - KILLINGWORTH MR BROWN'S / PUFFING BILLY FIRE 1990 Video
Facebook Killingworth Photos and videos
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