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Old Dunston
Oliver's "Rambles in Northumberland" published in 1835 says "On the south of the river are the woods which surround Ravensworth Castle, with the beautiful slopes of Dunston and Whickham".
Prior to the late 1800s Dunston clung to the banks of the Tyne and only by the early 1900s had it reached the bottom of the bank bordering Ellison Road. The land to the south of Ellison Road remained farmland attached to Jack's Leazes and Mount Hooley farms.
The council housing which first started to climb the bank was built in the early 1930s and the street names Oak, Cypress, etc., gave the name to the Garden Estate.
The later 1930s saw the development of the private housing on and around Knightside Gardens, an early project by the northern builder, William Leech.
The expansion up the bank was stopped by the war and only re-commenced in the mid-fifties with the building of the Whickham Hill Estate. The last beautiful slopes went in the mid-sixties when the Mount Hooley Estate was built on the site of Mount Hooley Farm.
In 1925 a road was made to join Holmeside Avenue to Ellison Road. During the next ten years Holmeside Avenue was continued and Rochester, Horsley and Elsdon Gardens were built on the fields of Baldwin Flat farm.
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.