Ponteland is a largish village in Northumberland, just northwest of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Beside the A 696 road into the town from the northwest lies an Art Deco style church building, St Michael’s Catholic Church.

Curved wall, rule of three in nearer windows, styling of cross:-

Curved exterior, canopy and roof line, styling of cross:-

Newcastle’s Northumberland Street does still have a couple of deco frontages. This is a Peacock’s now. Was it once a Woolies? Again the photo is a stitch.

I had thought this one might have been a Burton’s:-

I think now, due to the clock, it was once a Marks and Spencer but it may have been something else. In any case I searched flickr and the picture below is what came up for Burton’s. It looked like one of the art deco buildings I had seen in the book of old Newcastle (see first link in this post):-

I saw no sign of this building on present day Northumberland Street. The Marks and Spencer’s shop is now located in the Eldon Square shopping centre. We went in and browsed but there was nothing worth buying.

The photograph below (from flickr via a postcard) was exactly the same as the other art deco building I had seen in the book of old Newcastle:-

I did notice a newer Bhs further along Northumberland Street. The building in the postcard was apparently demolished to make Monument Mall. I doubt that’s as aesthetically pleasing as the former Bhs was.

Right at the end of Northumberland Street we came upon this very tall monument.

It was erected in memory of the dead of the “South African War” as the inscription has it. This is more often known as the Boer War but more accurately was the Second Boer War.

There are quite a few such memorials around. One is on the parapet of Edinburgh’s North Bridge. I have a piece of crested china which is a reproduction of the memorial in Hull to the dead of the same war and I have seen another similarly patterned piece with a different town’s crest. The next day (in Durham) we encountered another tall memorial to the South African War.

On the way back to the car we passed Newcastle’s civic centre. It’s a much more modern building with a tower surmounted by a circular top with horses’ heads and a finial showing the three castle symbol that also appears on silver objects assayed in Newcastle when the city still had an assay office.

The castle motif also appeared on the railings surrounding the civic centre.

*Edited to add:- for some idea of the memorial’s scale see this link. Its surroundings have changed somewhat since the postcard photos in the link were taken.

After leaving the riverside we climbed the hill from the Tyne towards the shops and (eventually) found them.

We went into one of those North of England town extensive inside markets where we browsed a second hand bookshop and I flicked through a book on old Newcastle and discovered Northumberland Street had had some Art Deco buildings on it but my knowledge of Newcastle’s street geography was minimal.

We moseyed around for a while and came upon this unexpectedly on rounding a corner where Debenham’s is (ie not on Northumberland Street.) I couldn’t get the whole thing in one shot so this is a stitch which is why there’s a black strip at the top and it looks bendy.

It’s the Cooperative building; deco in that monumental almost Stalinist way.

Here’s a detail.

There’s a close up on one of the towers on flickr which shows up the trianguloid windows. Plus another of the side of one of the clocks where you can see COOPERATIVE written round the face.

Just off Eldon Square there is this building:-

I found this different angle on flickr:-

Just on a bit we got to Northumberland Street. The Fenwick’s frontage there predates Art Deco. Again this is a stitch as I couldn’t get back far enough to frame it all in one shot.

Halfway across the Millenium Bridge I took the shot below of the other four bridges which span the Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead.

The four bridges are respectively;-

The Tyne Bridge – the iconic one arched like Sydney Harbour Bridge,

the Swing Bridge low down on the river,

Stephenson’s High Level Bridge which carries both road and rail traffic,

the Queen Elizabeth II Metro Bridge whose structure you can just make out behind the High Level Bridge.

Zoom of the left hand tower of The Tyne Bridge.

Also on the Gateshead waterfront is the Sage Gateshead, a performance and conference venue, one of those bulbous constructions seemingly in vogue at the moment.

This photo is from the Baltic Gallery.

This is from the Newcastle side of the river.

It looks a bit like a slug from this angle.

Last week the good lady and I took ourselves off to North East England for a couple of days.

We’d meant to make the trip a couple of weeks ago but a certain news event there gave us pause.

We actually passed through Ponteland – which has a brick Art Deco town hall but there wasn’t an easy place to stop to photograph it – and saw signs for Rothbury. I can’t say I’d ever heard of either until early last month.

First stop was Newcastle (upon Tyne.)

Well, it was actually Gateshead where we parked adjacent to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. This is the view from the west side of the building.

And this is from the Millenium Bridge.

The interior of the gallery is impressive – they’ve done a good job of converting the original flour mill but the contents left me cold.

One of the exhibits was art work by John Cage, more famous for musical compositions (or more accurately for 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence.) His pictures consisted of muddy daubs, streaks and circles. The good lady opined that he must be a genius; he can take the piss in two disciplines, music and art.

The Tomas Saraceno spider web left me cold (as did the fish tanks with spiders in them.) Cornelia Parker’s circle of squashed brass/silver instruments was quite effective – especially when viewed from the floor above.

I’ve enjoyed visits to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art on Belford Road, Edinburgh and its companion the Dean Gallery over the road so I’m not a complete philistine but this was distinctly underwhelming.

Then it was over the Millenium Bridge to Newcastle. The first picture is from the walkway just by the Gallery.

The second is from the Newcastle side further up the river.

I quite like modern bridges like this. The Clyde Arc (or Squinty Bridge) in Glasgow is another in similar vein.