Foundation Certificate in Urban Design Day 2 site information

The Foundry Lane site is located on the east bank of the Ouseburn, about half a mile east of Newcastle City Centre. It lies within the Lower Ouseburn Valley Conservation Area, which was designated by Newcastle City Council in October 2000. The conservation area is within the World Heritage Site of Hadrian’s Wall.

The site itself is relatively flat, with the levels sloping sharply up the valley side immediately to the east of Foundry Lane. Currently occupying the site are 19 single storey, light industrial units, the Off Quay building – containing music studios and rehearsal spaces – this two storey brick structure with flat roof is the only historic building to remain on the site. Adjoining the Off Quay is the popular Cook House restaurant.

Notable buildings and structures in the immediate vicinity of the site include Seven Stories Children’s literature museum, built in 1865 as a Flax Mill and later owned by Vanessa Redgrave and used as the printworks for the Workers’ Revolutionary Party in the 1980s. The Cluny, originally a Flour Mill from 1884 by John Dobson (architect of Newcastle Central Station), and later used in the 1930s by Cluny Whiskey as a bonded warehouse. In 1983 it was purchased by Mike Mole of Brothers Theatre, he later opened the Cluny music venue and Lime Street studios – 40 makers studios. The Cluny is often regarded as the catalyst for the cultural regeneration of the valley. The third of three buildings overlooking the site from the opposite bank is the Lowes building – once bespoke furniture makers – the building is now leased to small tech companies.

The village green was created when three Victorian tenement blocks on the site were demolished in slum clearance works. The brick chimney is part of the old mill complex. Ouseburn Farm – on the site of a former lead works – was founded in 1978 as a community farm, and refurbished in 2002.

The Ship Inn (1832) is one of only a handful of surviving pubs from the over 30 or so found on the Lower Valley floor at its industrial peak. The Ship Inn was on the end of a terrace row of houses that ran up Stepney Bank – the houses were cleared in the 1970s leaving the pub standing alone.

The impressive composition of bridges spanning the lower valley include the Railway bridge – an 1830s wooden structure replaced with iron in 1868, the road bridge which was constructed in 1878 as a pedestrian toll bridge, and later used for trams, and the Metro bridge built in 1981.

Site history

The Ouseburn Works, or Foundry, appears to have been started around 1851/52 by an engineer named Robert Morrison. Morrison improved upon the recent invention of a steam hammer used in forging and in 1854 applied and attained a patent for the steam hammer and started to manufacture the new design on the site. Morrison died unexpectedly in 1869.

In 1871 the factory was restarted as an industrial co-partnership, headed up by John Hunter Rutherford (1826 – 1890). He was a well-known man in Newcastle, and had established Bath Lane School on the 29th June 1870, and would establish the School of Science and Art in 1877. A Memorial Fountain was built in his honour in 1894 and stands to this day in the middle of the Bigg Market, Newcastle.

Following bankruptcy in 1875 the works were rescued by several co-operative societies and it continued to trade under the name Tyne Engine Works Company before closing finally in 1881. The map below shows the site ‘Ouseburn Works’ in 1896.

Local history

The Lower Ouseburn Valley was the seat of the industrial revolution in the North East – nuisance industries such as lead works, paintworks, abattoirs and foundries would use the steep valley sides to discharge into the watercourse. Wherry boats would bring in raw materials from the larger docks on the river Tyne and take out manufactured goods to be distributed by ships across the world. Around one-hundred years ago over 9,000 people lived in the lower valley. In the 1970s most of the terraces and tenement housing was cleared from the valley floor.

Significant nearby features of the conservation area include: The former Ouseburn School (now the Business Development Centre). It is grade II* listed. It was built in 1893, by FW Rich, and has very distinctive Dutch gables and even more-extraordinary pagoda-type turrets reminiscent of Nepalese or Burmese prototypes. Adjacent to the school is Ballast Hills, which was laid out as a park in the 1930s. It is sometimes also known as Plaguey Fields after plague victims buried there in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Across the River Ouseburn is the former Maynards Toffee Factory, its tall chimney once serving a molasses boiler. The Factory was burnt out in the 1990s, later restored and converted into a creative business centre it was one of the first projects in the cultural regeneration of the valley. Above the Toffee Factory is Allan House, a red brick warehouse which has become the Hotel du Vin. Alongside it, on Ouse Street is one of the entrances to the 1839 Victoria Tunnel, listed grade 2, built to transport coal from the colliery at Spital Tongue on the other side of Newcastle.

The grey steel and concrete Ouseburn Barrage has recently been built under the red brick Roman-scale arches of Glasshouse Bridge, dating from 1878. The barrage was designed to keep the Ouseburn constantly at high water level, masking the low tide mud and thereby intended to beautify the valley and encourage development, however it is invariably in the elevated position allowing the levels in the Ouseburn to rise and fall with the tide.

The Tyne Bar is an 1850s building, seemingly a cottage dwarfed by the imposing arches of Glasshouse Bridge. It is one of the key live music venues in the Valley. The Ince Building, on a sliver of land between Ford Street and Hume Street is immediately adjacent to the Malings, a strong yet modest building of pink fletton brick. Shepherd’s scrap metal site’s giant yellow crane in the background of many views provides an unmistakable reminder of the area’s industrial past.

The Valley’s character has been defined as ‘perpetually evolving’. Its history from rural settlement on the edge of Byker township, to early industrial development, to heavy industry, to an emphasis on arts and crafts industries, to post-industrial decline to, currently, a vibrant range of creative industries, centred around live music.

Meanwhile Ouseburn’s traditional layout and street pattern is largely retained, as are a palette of materials including brick with stone dressings, slate roofs and stone boundary walls. Views up, down and across the valley are important aspects of its character, and of wayfinding through a complex topography.