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Daughter Acacia. Residing in the Old Dart, sent me a message asking whether I knew that Newcastle, theirs, not ours, had a bridge similar to our Sydney Harbour Bridge and that it was the model for ours. It is called the Tyne Bridge.
Today’s Bytes is about the Tyne Bridge and Sydney Harbour Bridge.
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By the way, the expression Old Dart, meaning England in the sense of ‘the Old Country’, is used affectionately in Australia and New Zealand but apparently not in he UK.
It dates back a while, an inscription on a slate in the roof of a church in Hunters Hill in New South Wales, dated to the 1860s, records a master slater named Hart, “born in the Old Dart, 1796”.
The origins of the expression are unknown.
One explanation is that it possibly comes from the river Dart in Devonshire which enters the sea at Dartmouth, location of a Royal Navy College. Royal Navy officers who were returning to England at the end of a foreign tour of duty referred to going back to the "Old Dart" for further training.
Another explanation offered is that it realtes to the word ‘dirt’. The Australian National Dictionary has an example from 1859 showing that ‘dirt’ was specifically applied to pay dirt in gold diggings. By the 1880s it had been extended in Sydney slang to refer to an object of attraction, some enticing thing or event, or some set purpose. The usage in the expression ‘Old Dart’ seems to look back to the original sense of dirt, albeit figuratively, and the idea behind it seems to be close to the Irish ‘Old Sod’ for one’s native district or country.
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The Sydney Harbour Bridge, affectionately locally known as The Coathanger, is one of the iconic symbols of Sydney and its harbour, the other being the Sydney Opera House:
One can even buy coathangers using the Bridge design:
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Some pics:
The Tyne Bridge in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, viewed from the Newcastle side. The Sage is the building behind the bridge. The ship beneath the bridge is the permanently moored Tuxedo Princess floating nightclub (the former car ferry TSS Caledonian Princess). The central pier of the Swing Bridge is also visible in the river, to the right.
Tyne Bridge viewed from Quayside
The Tyne Bridge is a through arch bridge over the River Tyne in North East England, linking Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead. The bridge was designed by the engineering firm Mott, Hay and Anderson,[2] who later designed the Forth Road Bridge, and was built by Dorman Long and Co. of Middlesbrough.[3] The bridge was officially opened on 10 October 1928 by King George V and has since become a defining symbol of Tyneside. It is ranked as the tenth tallest structure in Newcastle.
The Tyne Bridge, in green, seen from the Gateshead Millennium Bridge
The Olympic rings on the bridge
Looks similar to . . .
A night view of the Tyne Bridge taken from the northern embankment, looking west.
Looks similar to . . .
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Some facts:
The Tyne Bridge is an arch bridge over the River Tyne in North East England, linking Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead.
The bridge was designed by the engineering firm Mott, Hay and Anderson and was built by Dorman Long and Co. of Middlesbrough, the firm which also built the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The bridge was officially opened on 10 October 1928 by King George V and has since become a defining symbol of Tyneside.
It is ranked as the tenth tallest structure in Newcastle.
The earliest bridge across the Tyne was built by the Romans around 122.
A series of wooden bridges were lost to fire or flood, and plans for a stone bridge were begun in about 1250 with support from local landowners, and the Bishops of Durham, York and Caithness. The stone bridge was constructed but then damaged by flood in 1339. Repairs proved costly and took place in sections: it was not fully repaired, as a part stone and part wooden bridge, until the 16th century and was part destroyed by a great flood in November 1771.
Following this, new stone bridge was begun after the city council petitioned Parliament. Works were completed by 13 September 1779, at an estimated cost of between £30,000 and £60,000.
The 1781 stone bridge, with the High Level Bridge in the background, from an 1861 illustration
Work on a modern bridge started in August 1925, with Dorman Long acting as the building contractors. Despite the dangers of the building work, only one worker, Nathaniel Collins, a father of four and a local scaffolder from South Shields, died in the building of this structure.
The Tyne Bridge was designed by Mott, Hay and Anderson, comparable to their Sydney Harbour Bridge version. These bridges derived their design from the Hell Gate Bridge in New York City.
Hell Gate Bridge and the East River, viewed from the RFK bridge.
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Hell Gate Bridge as seen from a cricket field on Wards Island
Hell Gate Bridge as seen from Queens
The Dorman Long team was also notable for including Dorothy Buchanan, the first female member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, joining in 1927. In addition to her contribution to the Tyne Bridge, she served as part of the team for the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Lambeth Bridge in London.
The bridge was completed on 25 February 1928, and officially opened on 10 October that year by King George V and Queen Mary, who were the first to use the roadway, travelling in their Ascot Landau. The opening ceremony was attended by 20,000 schoolchildren who had been given the day off.
The royal opening of the Tyne Bridge in 1928. White horses pull a carriage
The Tyne Bridge's towers were built of Cornish granite and were designed as warehouses with five storeys. However the inner floors of the warehouses in the bridge's towers were not completed and, as a result, the storage areas were never used.
The bridge was originally painted green with special paint. The same colours were used to paint the bridge in 2000.
In June 2022 it was announced that the bridge will be refurbished, involving improvements to the structure and a full repainting. Funding will come from the Department for Transport and the councils of Newcastle and Gateshead.
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Part 2 to come: Sydney Harbour Bridge
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