Jackson, Ian. Northumberland Rocks — 50 extraordinary rocky places that tell the story of the Northumberland landscape. Newcastle upon Tyne : Northern Heritage, 2021.
The richly illustrated and accessible book series of Northumberland, Cumbria and Durham Rocks are available to purchase from Northern Heritage.
Theme: Heritage and mining
The centre of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne
The stones used in the buildings of every town give us a chance to see an amazing variety of rocks and we don’t have to travel very far. The city of Newcastle upon Tyne is no exception.
The stones vary from sedimentary, to metamorphic, to igneous and from very old to geologically young. The sources of stone are equally diverse, from quarries as near as Kenton, to as far away as Norway.
The building stones of the Civic Centre have a huge range; from the 460 million year old metamorphic rocks (schists from Otta in Norway) behind the River God Tyne, to the 150 million year old white, fossiliferous Jurassic limestones, from Portland on the south coast, which face the tower.
Granite features often; the plinth of the fantastic 1914 war memorial, The Response, at Barras Bridge is granite from Shap in Cumbria, as are the entrances to Metro stations. But the most famous streets and buildings in Newcastle, and the most architecturally outstanding, Grey Street and the rest of Grainger Town, are all constructed of local Carboniferous sandstones from places, like Denwick, Heddon, Springwell, Fourstones and Kenton.
Stone has long been the preferred choice for building in the north of Britain, where there are many local sources of suitable rocks. 1900 years ago Hadrian built his Wall of local sandstone. The 19th century architects and developers, like Dobson and Grainger, chose local sandstone too for their neo-classical rebuilding of the city centre