Handyman Benwell

Historical Significance of Benwell in Urban Development

Benwell is a historically rich area located in the west end of Newcastle upon Tyne. It began life as a small Anglo-Saxon settlement dating to the early medieval or late Saxon period. A map produced in the early 17th century shows the street plan of this original settlement, with houses arranged between the Stonegate to the north and the west fort wall near the Gregory Pit or well.

Over the following centuries, it expanded substantially, spreading south and west from its original boundaries. The rapid expansion during Victorian times left Benwell sliced in two by a central railway line running into Newcastle and facing the further expansion of industrial Newcastle. This expansion was slowed by the opening of the City of Newcastle Golf Course to the west of the railway in 1907. This opened up further development primarily as houses for the affluent, with substantial new houses on Atkinson Road and Blackett Road, which ran through the course, becoming the preferred location of some of the heads of industry, professionals, doctors, and businessmen who moved into the area. Benwell would see farming communities and naval connections abiding next to the hustle of hand-loom weavers and traders until the gentry and professionals moved out further from the towns. By 1861, the area was established as a well-to-do residential suburb with retail and commercial centres and gentlemen's villas in Elswick.

The 1890s saw the export boom of coal, coke, pig iron, and canvas, leading to rapid industrial expansion needing labour, with the city of Newcastle, where almost half worked in manufacturing, needing somewhere for this rapidly expanding workforce and now needing cheap, quick housing to be built next to where the people were working. This would usher the Victorian lower classes into Benwell, temporarily followed by the artisans and then the up-and-coming perennially aspirational families of the lower middle and working class, who stayed as the new prosperous residents of the town in the mid-20th century. Geographically, the slope down from Benwell to the Tyne may also hold significant relevance to the settlement pattern, as the gentry and then the industrialists and miners who made up the community relied on the big industries along Kuipershill to earn their existence in Benwell. Workersustry would re-house in the most convenient Benwell location, which is understandable. Role in Urban Development Throughout History

As a small rural village in the prehistoric period, Benwell's transition to a Roman vicus in the 2nd century AD signalled the beginning of urban life on the site. Thriving as an agricultural community in the Middle Ages, its redevelopment as Scotswood in the 19th century marked another critical phase in Benwell's role in urban development as an industrial suburb of Newcastle. The subsequent extension of the city in 1893 led to rapid population growth and a period of significant urban change, which also involved the demolition of critical historical features, such as the medieval village green and the Roman farmhouse of Condercum. Benwell's changing role in each phase is best understood in the context of Newcastle's regional and national development and the changing social and economic fortunes associated with each. The village's rise from a farmstead to a small urban settlement coincides with the development of the Roman fort of Condercum on Benwell's western edge, which influenced its function and form for the next 330 years. Its importance was inherited by a cluster of medieval manors that sustained the village until its absorption by industrial Scotswood in 1837. As a backdrop to this social development, governmental changes significantly changed Newcastle's urban governance and the planning framework associated with its local townships. Managed by Parliament, the fire-hit ex-monastic estate was rebuilt, first as a Georgian estate and subsequently as a more industrial suburb of Tyneside in the later 19th century, following a spate of housing development in the early part of the 19th century on the eastern edge of Denton Township.

Growth was slow in Benwell in the early 19th century and gathered pace by 1851; however, it was as Scotswood's principal avenue that Benwell became the building estate of the Duke of Northumberland. The provision of utility services remained divided until the end of the century. The communal activity of partnership at public expense in better housing developments was drawing close by the turn of the 20th century due to political and economic attrition. Properties had been built, primarily to rent, in an increasingly less favourable environment, exacerbated by the impending construction of the Scotswood Bridge. Since 1715, Benwell had evolved from a medieval estate at arm's length from Newcastle into a principal residential and industrial extension of the city, though only in its early years did it retain its separate identity. With a population and built form of each phase, it was a new iteration drawn together from fields, farms, and roads within the landscape of the previous growth phase. Always socially volatile, diverse, and undervalued, Benwell would have served as the city's front door and the site of its industry and hinterland, as well as hosting the residential hotspots as the urban community further adapted to its larger setting. The city expanded, the population exploded, the places developed, and the people changed rapidly. All shaped each other.