The Swing Bridge is a triumph of Victorian engineering although there appears to be a flaw in its design, one of the four pillars at the southern end is a third of the width of its neighbours. But this was no mistake. The bridge follows the same line across the river as the mediaeval Tyne Bridge and its Georgian successor, the pillar was built like this to accommodate a house that stood at the end of all three bridges for almost two centuries.
An even older house had stood at the same spot on Bridge Street in Gateshead next to the medieval Tyne Bridge, whose last occupant was a candle maker called Joseph Walton. His basement workshop caught fire in the early hours of January 6th, 1739, the flames spreading quickly through the house. Joseph woke his family and they ran out onto the street without having time to get dressed. The fire brigade was unable to save his house so their priority became saving Joseph and his family from being lynched by their neighbours, whose houses also burned down.
The scorched land was cleared and acquired by Thomas Maddison, who lived in one of the houses on the old Tyne Bridge. In 1741 he put up a new building on the site of Joseph Walton’s, which an advert in the Newcastle Courant describes as “a Shop and handsome Dwelling House, consisting of seven good fire rooms with sash windows and large closets in every room”. Warehouses and cellars extended down to the river and it was rented to Elizabeth Birket, another candle maker.
The Great Flood of 1771 destroyed the old Tyne Bridge and it was replaced with a more sturdy stone one, with the Maddison house standing at the end of it on Bridge Street. A second catastrophe struck in 1854 when the Great Fire broke out a couple of hundred metres behind the house at Hillgate, devastating the neighbourhood and much of Newcastle’s Quayside. The house survived but lost its roof in the blaze.
An Act of Parliament was passed the following year to redevelop the decimated land on Gateshead side of the river, beginning with a new quay at Hillgate. The cellars and warehouses of the Maddison house were on the riverfront and therefore included in the Act of Parliament. The low stone arches of the second Tyne Bridge were considered a hindrance to shipping, so it was decided to replace it with the Swing Bridge. Its architects had to work around the Maddison house, the lower floors of which were now part of the Hillgate Quay.
It took a long time to construct the Swing Bridge, much to the annoyance of a draper called John Horsley, who occupied the house at that time. In 1866 he made a claim for compensation for loss of business caused by the closure of the footpath outside his premises while the bridge was being built, asking unsuccessfully for thirty pounds a year. The Swing Bridge was eventually completed in 1876, by which time the Maddison house had stood at the end of three bridges.
The new bridge provided passing trade for a variety of businesses that occupied the house over the following decades, but this dried up when the current Tyne Bridge opened to the east of it in 1928. The house was demolished in 1935 but you can still see traces of Thomas Maddison’s 1741 brickwork in the half-pillar on the south side of the Swing Bridge.
