(taken from http://www.newcastle-arts-centre.co.uk/r-kings_meadows.htm
- copyright unknown)
The steady uninterrupted flow of the River Tyne – both its
general sea-ward course and the ebb and flood of its tidal stretch – has not
always been as stable and balanced. There was a time when its banks angled
gently into relatively shallow depths, its bends choked with silt rendering
passage difficult for all but the smallest of vessels.
As the Industrial Revolution gathered pace in the Victorian
era, though, Tyneside’s industrialists began to worry about access to their
growing network of factories and shipyards. The river needed to be cleared of
all encumbrances … and that meant a major programme of dredging. So, in 1850,
the Tyne Improvement Commission was established.
The TIC improved and maintained the river – and the Port of
Tyne as a whole – for more than a century. Navigation of the waterway for the
industries of Tyneside was made a good deal better and helped make the region
the powerhouse in became in the latter half of the 19th century. Of
the many straightening and clearance works that were carried out in this period
the most famous was perhaps the removal of the river’s most prominent island,
the King’s Meadows.
This long, thin landmass extended some 2,000m in the middle
of the Tyne between the villages of Dunston to
the south and Elswick to the north. It amounted to some 30 acres and even had its
own pub, the Countess of Coventry,
whose landlady grazed cattle on the island which produced milk for the locals.
Occasionally, horse racing meetings and regattas would be held on and around
this little sliver of dry land – all served by a ferry service.
But the march of Victorian industry showed no sentiment
toward the famous landmark, and it was eaten away by one of the new-fangled
steam dredgers in the late 1870s. Nearby Clarence and George Islands
(also known as Annie and Little Annie) were also swept from the riverscape, and
the region lost a little more of its old-fashioned charm. But at least the
businessmen were happy.
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