Tyne Bridges (Newcastle) > Reviews > And Then There Were Seven

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In September this year The Millennium Footbridge linking the Newcastle Quayside with the Baltic Flour Mill Arts Centre and Music Centre will open making the seventh bridge to span the Tyne between Gateshead and Newcastle.

The Tyne Bridge, also known as the coat hanger bridge is by far the most famous, and in 1969 The Nice were commissioned to write a piece of music which became the “Five Bridges Suite” for some arts event in Newcastle at the time. The piece was scored by Keith Emerson later of Emerson, Lake & Palmer fame, who produced a halfway decent sub Aaron Copland piece conduct by Joseph Eger , and recorded at the Fairfield Hall (which I believe is dahn saaf) and is only marred by some awful lyrics and worse vocals by Lee Jackson who should have stuck to his excellent bass playing. The album is available on low price CD (about 6 GBP on Virgin) should you wish to investigate it. Obviously since then we’ve had two more built. They all are impressive in their own way and make a great sight as you draw into Newcastle on the train or by bus.

So this is a list of the bridges going from west to east:

~~The Redheugh Road Bridge:

This is a concrete structure that carries the main bulk of road traffic into Newcastle, along with the Tyne Bridge.

~~The King Edward VII Bridge:

This bridge was built in 1906, by Cleveland Bridge of Darlington, to provide more capacity for the expanding railway system. It is an Iron structure built on concrete pillars.

~~The Queen Elizabeth II Bridge

This carries the Metro Line over the Tyne and is constructed from steel.

~~The High Level Bridge

Built in 1849 in conjunction with the opening of the Central Station in Newcastle, by Robert Stephenson and for the first time linked Newcastle with London by rail (previously, trains stopped at Gateshead). In addition to the railway, the lower deck of this bridge carries a roadway - another innovation of its day.

~~ The Swing Bridge

The lowest of the bridges is the Swing Bridge of 1876, which leads directly into the heart of the Newcastle Quayside below the Castle Keep. Designed by the famous Tyneside engineer William Armstrong (1810-1900), it is located on the site of the Roman and medieval bridge. During the construction of this swing bridge, two Roman altars were dredged from the river dedicated to the gods Neptune and Oceanus. They would have belonged to a shrine built to protect the Roman bridge of Pons Aelius from the tidal Tyne.

The hydraulically-operated swivel mechanism allowed taller fixed-mast vessels to reach further upstream than hitherto.

~~ The Tyne Bridge

The Tyne bridge is the most outstanding of the six and is by far the best known feature of Tyneside. Opened in 1929 by King George V and built by Dorman Long of Middlesborough, it served as a model for the similar, but very much larger Sydney Harbour Bridge which was also built at Middlesborough, and shipped out to Australia in separate parts.

The BBC webcam for Newcastle is normally focussed on the bridges , and this one in particular you you can check it out live here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/webcams/regional/newcastle/

~~The Millennium Foot Bridge
This is a pedestrian and cycle bridge providing access from Newcastle to the site of the Baltic Arts Centre. Cyclists will use the outer deck of the bridge which is slightly lower than the inner pedestrian walkway and will made of aluminium, with gaps to view the river below. Pedestrians will be able to stop at several points along the bridge to sit on built-in benches, taking in the impressive up-stream views of the six existing bridges.

Being at river level, the Millennium Bridge will sometimes need to be opened to allow ships to sail up and down the Tyne. The opening mechanism raises the bridge in an arc, in a similar movement to that of an eye-lid opening, and uses and extremely efficient mechanism which that each raising and lowering of the bridge will cost less than 4 GBP. The 130ft long structure has been partially funded by money raised by the National Lottery for the Millennium Commission

Further information on this bridge can be found here:

http://www.gateshead.gov.uk/bridge/bridged.htm

The following links contain photographs of the bridges:

http://members4.clubphoto.com/andy291069/tyne_bridges/icons.phtml
http://www.theviewfinder.co.uk/imagegallery.html

And if you visit Walking World , there is walk on there that you can download baased on the Newcastle Bridges. (A bit of self publicity here, I wrote it). Note: this is the complete url , you need all of in the Address line of your browser to find it:

http://www.walkingworld.com/results/walksummary.asp?id=123&method=eResRan&direction=position