Road
Roads in Dunston
Road making in Dunston In 1925 a road was made to join Holmeside Avenue to Ellison Road. Mrs. Hilda Thompson moved into her house in 1924. Beyond these houses lay the fields of Baldwin Flat farm. During the next ten years Holmeside Avenue was continued and Rochester, Horsley and Elsdon Gardens were built on this farmland.
Holmeside Avenue was known as Soap Works Avenue because so many C.W.S. Soap Works employees lived there. The decades from the twenties to the seventies saw the farm land behind Holmeside Avenue to Whickham Highway gradually disappear.
What did they do to our Street? They turned it into the Western By-pass.
Westway had a footpath, a wide grass verge, the road, then the same on the other side. Our end was a cricket pitch, a football pitch and a rounders park. We played cannon, relievo and hide-and-seek in the hedge at the end and round the corner of the end house where the occupant used to chase us away. Our Street was a cycle track, a roller skating rink and a river, where we enacted Tarzan swimming away from the alligators and then swinging on the lamp posts with the aid of our mams' washing lines, also used for mass skip-ins.
At the other end of our street were allotments and a railway line while we had a hedge with a large field and allotments behind it. There was also a short cut through to Wilson Street and the main road. The other cut through went behind the Masonic Hall and out onto Holmeside Avenue.
They pulled down the other side - all our playmates' (grown up now and moved on) parents moved away leaving our side, parents missing their friends and neighbours. They had shared their joys and sorrows, two Victory teas - with the dining tables down the middle of the street and the wind-up gramophone - the wartime air-raid shelters, dried fruit for special occasion cakes - everything was shared.
Some of us went to our weddings - there were babies born and there were funerals - all shared.
In May 1968 the then County Council had a meeting with the public.
November 1968. A Public Enquiry and compulsory purchase orders.
It was found that the conditions of those still living next to boarded up houses on Westway, Rochester Gardens and Dunston Road were becoming intolerable.
In 1971 Ellison Road was temporarily closed - the By-pass would go under Ellison and Dunston Roads to lessen the noise.
In 1972 the new link up from the new Redheugh Bridge, past Askew Road to link up with the Western By-pass near Westway was to commence with traffic diversion at Wood Street.
November/December 1973. Wood Street back to normal - that's what they said in the Focus. Sadly there would be no going back to normal for our street - Westway.
Winifred Robson, (née Britton)
Western Bypass under construction
Roads in Whickham
In the early centuries roads were made up of stone quarried locally, quite an ancient custom, even from the times of the Romans.
19th and 20th century cobbled stones or granite blocks 9x4x4" were placed to help traffic, mainly horse and cart, also to fill between tram lines, in some suitable places wooden blocks were used.
In villages such as Whickham roads were penned with local stone, eg. about 1ft. foundation of penned stone laid by hand, nearby a load of stone would be tipped, where a workman sitting on his cracket using a knapping hammer, knapping stones into crumbles, approx. 2" these crumbles would be used as a top dressing crushed by a steam roller then flushed with water.
Winter roads through inclement weather, also by horse and vehicles with iron wheels, were more or less clarty lanes through the village.
In summer by comparison, dust from horse traffic and iron wheels, grinding the road surface. It was a continuous blizzard of dust on rough windy days, unbearable at times.
Whickham Council owned a water cart approx. 250 gl. Tank with sprayers at the rear, pulled by one horse, this water cart travelled at regular intervals, from Broom Lane to the top of Whickham Bank, spraying one half of the road plus footpath.