Introduction to Benwell and its Significance
Benwell is an area of historical significance within the City of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Once a separate village within the city borough, and before that the main settlement within a ‘Liberty’ (an area which shared the same historical franchise but is less extensive than a borough), it has borne the name of a sub-manor and a ward. The path of Hadrian’s Wall ran just to the north of the district, and Benwell Roman Temple was located just to the south of the west end of the wall. Along with the wall, the temple was destroyed in the second century, but the ruins of the temple were still visible as late as 1867. Initially, the temple to the god Mithras was believed to have any connection to the Mithras cult, due to its underground nature, but the discovery of an underground cave in 2015 in the associated land opposite Arbeia Roman Fort and Museum leads to a re-interpretation of the site as a cult meeting place. Today, Benwell’s role within Newcastle is primarily limited to a ward. Its population has fluctuated over the years, although it was more prominent prior to the 19th century development of new, large villas to its west. However, in that time it has made significant contributions to the commerce, social ethos, and architecture of the city. This essay aims to outline a comprehensive history of Benwell, touching on aspects such as its pre-19th century settlements, its development in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the problems and benefits facing residents of Benwell in the present day. A key element will be an overview of some of the culture and variety that the area has housed over the years. This history will allow us to explore the evolution of the area as what was seen as the forgotten heart within the ever more sprawling conurbation of Newcastle.
Early History and Development of Benwell
Benwell, locally pronounced “Benol”, is a village in Newcastle upon Tyne in North East England that houses a largely mixed-race populace. The name possibly means Bini’s spring or stream, or perhaps is similar to the Latin word ‘vallis’. Some of the earliest evidence of human activity in Benwell comes from an Iron Age promontory hillfort that overlooked the Tyne. The defenses included a series of ramparts and ditches that enclosed the summit of Denton Hill. Benwell’s history is further bound up by the Roman settlement at the eastern extremity of Hadrian’s Wall close to the banks of the river. This fort was initially made of wood around 122 AD and then replaced by a stone fort in the 2nd century. The official name was after the river.
By the early Middle Ages, there was settlement to both the east and western extent of the Roman settlement. As time passed, the place coincidentally expanded as far as the banks of the river twice, once as an Anglo-Saxon hall and then as a medieval village. In 1558, this and other manor lands were absorbed into the royal manor of Grainger, and Christiania Agar, the Countess of Newburgh, was the main landowner. Steamers soon shipped coal and iron to the South using Newcastle coal and British steel. By the end of the 17th century, most of Benwell was Roman Catholic, and in 1687, King James II pardoned 13 Roman Catholic landowners, as well as hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholics who were pardoned by Britain on grounds of conscience. In 1947, the Chapter House became a listed building, and in 1996, Benwell United became a city in the UK industry’s Top 3. The economic bedrock of Benwell lay in the land from times immemorial, and then in the reared industry, helped along by the village’s fluvial situation. In the late 19th century, Newcastle was turned into a city.
Notable Landmarks and Buildings in Benwell
Notable landmarks and buildings in Benwell include the St. James United Reformed Church on Grainger Park Road, Benwell Towers, the Benwell Grove Presbyterian Church on Adelaide Terrace, the Church of St. James and St. Basil, Fenham Hall Drive, the Lady Kirtoun Almshouses and Remembrance Hall, found at the crossroads of Adelaide Terrace, Atkinson Road, and Armstrong Road, the Carnegie Free Library, Benwell branch library in Atkinson Road, and the numerous alcohol-free public houses on Atkinson Road: the Denton and Westwood Working Men’s Club, The Parks, The Benwell, and the Old One-Eleven. Benwell holds several areas, properties, and features of architectural and historic interest, such as Hadrian’s Wall and its birthplace house; the Red House, a complete residential work by architectural designer, artist, and writer William Bell Scott, and the former Scotswood House, each Grade II listed building; the Salvation Army Hall on Benwell Terrace, a Salvationist Citadel, also Grade II listed; and the blocks on Condercum Court, and connected shops and houses on Atkinson Road, Jaspar Place, and Condercum Place. Although much of Benwell was constructed as council estates in the 20th century, permanent buildings, dating from and reflecting its background as an independent working-class village, persist. The area’s semidetached brick council housing supplies reminders of the urban extension of the 1920s and 1930s. Some rather weathered shopfronts in the otherwise residential sections of the two streets on the main road, Benwell Terrace and Atkinson Road, are also remnants of the working-class past. The buildings of Benwell vary greatly in age, reflecting the temporal character of its development. Benwell is host to residential dwellings that date from the very early Victorian period, the later period of industrial urban expansion, Edwardian, interwar, the transitional post-war, and the late 20th to 21st century. Each of these phases, though primarily a reflection of the architectural stylistics of archetypal Newcastle suburban development, possesses certain distinct architectural qualities that are indicative of the broader trends occurring in the greater Newcastle area throughout that time. Efforts to preserve and, in some cases, restore these points of interest as curated landmarks by local community groups are indications of the importance of these buildings within the legacies of the people who live and have lived in Benwell. These buildings are locations of significant points of gathering. The unused but still standing Towne Wall Preservation Society, millennial gatherings at Condercum House, Clasper Village Community Association, and Lady Kirtoun Almshouse Conservators, Seaton Park Neighbourhood Association meetings, St. Cuthbert’s Haymarket Anglican and Grainger Park Quaker meeting houses, and the numerous community group sites and buildings all point to a thriving community life in Benwell. The significant attention in the conservation field in the UK is related to concerns about North Benwell, particularly regarding the preservation or destruction of Arethusa House.
Social and Cultural Life in Benwell Through the Ages
By focusing on the human community, we see that Benwell has been affected by change and continuity. A very large number of people have lived in Benwell over the millennia. In Roman times, the civilian settlement was inhabited by people from the indigenous tribes and by people from many other parts of the Roman Empire. After the departure of the Romans, Benwell was influenced by the Danish raids, settlement, and government that shaped the wider area. In more recent times, people have migrated to Benwell in search of work and then wealth rather than as refugees from war. There was a shift from the Anglo-Saxon way of life to the Roman one in the 2nd century AD when Roman values, such as literacy and Roman-day names, began to affect some of the locals.
Benwell has been greatly affected by the growth of the industrial Tyneside conurbation and the de-industrialisation of Tyneside. The coming of the major roads, the railways, heavy industries, and merchant shipping defined to a certain extent the people who lived in Benwell. Many of the residents were railway, engineering, shipbuilding, and associated trades workers. They were an important and disparate group, but as they were spread across the city wards—unlike Scotswood, which was home mainly to Scotswood Workshops employees—they probably did not appreciate their significance as a group. Nor did people appreciate much of the Sabbath life that bound them. There are records of contentious shoe or clothes buying times, the emotional appeal of horse races, and even the attendance at and scuffles at political meetings. However public the event, other times were more private and more important in binding local people together over time. They occurred when sewing seed, forest privileges, hop picking, fast bowling, holy wells, mutual improvement, and women’s clubs, boys’ China beating, and dozens of house rows show us who Benwell and Scotswood were. Social life and the names and descriptions of these human activities in which the whole cross-section of local people were involved over the last 500 years mark out our local customs and social history.
Modern Developments and Challenges Faced by Benwell
Be, BenwellThe efforts of successive generations of entrepreneurs, social workers, and reformers, as well as the benign neglect of authorities, persist to this day. The Livings describe an early 1960s Benwell in which curtains of threadbare sheets swung from moldering window frames, and the women had to run a gauntlet of footballs and lit fireworks as they pushed their prams through dirt and rubbish. In terms of amenities, there were more pub toilets than those in the tenements. We have all seen the litany of depressions, the loss of heavy industry, the eradication of employment from the West End, which staggered from the 1970s onwards, the casemix of largely unemployable tenants placed on Tyneside by expeditionary forces from London, the racial tensions of the 1970s, or the prolific crime rates of the same decade. Today, the demographic is still unenviable. It is reported that only 10.7% of Benwell is in the two less deprived Commissioner’s wards, the remaining 89.3% being in extremely deprived wards. General register disproportionality aside, are we surprised when in parts of Benwell unemployment is four times the national average, burglary rates are not only less than 3% above the national average but twice those in the next worst ward down the road? It is estimated that in some corners of Benwell, HMO occupancy is 61%. For some wards, not only is educational attainment poor, but the number of working-age adults with limiting long-term illnesses is double the national average. These trendlines, in fact, are deeply biocultural and social. They are reinforced by a new housing bubble that has broadly forgotten Benwell. The area is a honey pot for sink landlords and community detox programs. Demographically, a community interested in its own survival took the consequences of decades of hard drinking and tenement life and did the best it could to rediscover a less self-destructive social life. Most notably, the one traditional community industrial organisation, the Labour Party, went into terminal decline as the trade unions shrank, though a number of social initiatives, initiated by the community, some taking years to gestate, may help renew strategies of resistance and capacity in this age of privatisation and social change.
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