Ryton Willows And The Tidal Stone

A Memory of Newburn.

It was about 1957 and before, when the Willows was a place to picnic on a Saturday and Sunday afternoons. It was a very popular place, with the Shuggy boats and the river to play in, and there were houseboats galore tied up on the bank side. Rumour has it that there was a brothel on one of these boats.
In years gone by there were ice games on the pond there, but I can't recall this, but what I do recall was when Tommy Watt and Bryan Nicholson who were both at school, took a houseboat for a joy ride and sailed it down the river. They were nearly at sea before the river bobbies caught them. They were on the front page in the local paper with reports about the two 'pirates' in one way or another and making great fun of the situation.
Do you know of the Tidal Stone which is situated on the Newburn side? Go west past Moor Court, follow the path close to river and at the end of the field just before the wood stands this stone dated 1783. This is where the the river suffered from tidal floods, and still can. The river was much flatter and broader then and there was a place called Ryton Island which was on the north bankside just below Moor Court. Why it was called an Island I don't know as I've looked at old maps and its not encircled by water. Archie Scott who was the ferryman had a house on it which got swept away by one of these floods. The wooden jetty ruins can still be see on both banks. The tidal stone has a canny bit of history besides this. It's where the Mayor came up the river by steamer boat every seven years and would bring a pretty girl to it and give her a kiss and a gold sovereign . This went on for a long time until the locals cottoned on that the pretty girls he chose were all members of his family!
The old derelict timbers structures on the bank opposite the Boathouse pub are almost gone now, but when I was a kid, these were old coal Wherries, maybe three or so roped together that were no longer in use and were brought here to see their days out. We used to try and get on board but there was a small hut on one and it had a little smoking chimney, this is where the watchman stayed, and when he chased us we would go back and hoy a stone at the hut. I do remember seeing someone cover his little chimney with something and him running out choking with a black face. This was a trick learned at the Imperial from one of the cowboy pictures. There was a street of cottages which ran from the bridge to the Boathouse pub called Water Row and there were tidal marks on the stone walls at the front, as there is at the Boathouse. These cottages were very sparse, one room downstairs with stone flagged floors and a sort of hay loft for a bedroom or two - today these are called Mezzanine floors. The toilet area was out the back and away from the cottages and there was no running water to flush these.
Here's a little snip-it of information about Newburn you probably never knew. Some of the streets were named after Spencers steel works bosses Boyd, Davidson, etc. I came across some interesting stuff in the Central Library the other day, in 1800 one thousand six hundred salmon were caught between Newburn and Scotswood Bridge on ONE TIDE, these were sold at the Sandhill Fish Market which was beside the Swing Bridge, (the name is still on the building) for a princely sum of "wait for it" One Penny Farthing a pound. From what I have learned Salmon was a poor mans food in those days but just imagine how clean the river must of been then. Curling was played on a pond on Ryton Willows in 1934. In 1899 there wasn't a bridge, only the Newburn Ford so the water must of been very shallow at that point at until the high tides, there used to be a pub called the Three Horse Shoes below water Row.

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