Michael Batson

Byker is a suburb of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the northeast of England which is not to be confused with Newcastle-under-Lyme which is much further south in Staffordshire near to Stoke-on-Trent in the area of England known as the Potteries. The northern Newcastle, much larger than the southern namesake, was once famous for its heavy industry, most notably ship building and coal mining, hence the term “coals to Newcastle” used in reference to the supply of something to a place where it is already abundant or to mean doing something that is obviously superfluous.

The coal mines have all gone as have most of the shipbuilders, swallowed up by globalisation in a world where a good many other countries can, for a bunch of reasons, do things cheaper. Of the many shipyards that once lined the River Tyne, England’s coldest river, only Swan Hunter at Wallsend survives. These days they build oilrigs but, in the past, built a good many Royal Navy vessels and other vessels including the Liverpool Bridge later renamed the MV Derbyshire, which at almost 300m in length became the largest British merchant ship lost at sea when she vanished without a trace, before her wreck was discovered 14 years later.

Byker lies southeast of the city centre its southern boundary on the river. The name is derived from the Old Norse “kiarr” meaning “marsh” and Norse “byr” meaning “farmstead” or alternatively Old English “bi” meaning, well “by” or “near”. Byker is bordered to the northeast by Shieldfield, which is largely a housing estate dominated the high-rise towers on Shield Street surrounded by the few remaining Victorian terrace-houses. To the north is Heaton, divided into High Heaton and the rest of Heaton, sometimes referred to as South Heaton. Heaton is a mix of middle-class and working class, whereas Shieldfield and Byker are working class.

Byker isn’t all housing and urban. In the southeast corner lies St. Anthony’s Park, 19 acres for walking, family activities and for football. Not far is Walker Park and Heaton Park. Never far from Byker is the River Tyne formed by the South Tyne in Cand the North Tyne on the Scottish border their confluence is near Hexham and divides Newcastle for 13 miles. The river is crossed by numerous bridges and ferries. Twelve bridges are in Newcastle itself dating from the 19th century (in the countryside there are bridges over 300 years old) including the unique Swing Bridge and the iconic Tyne Bridge; and the ferries date back to the 14th century. Bridges have existed in Newcastle since Roman times.

Byker has a legendary place in football in Newcastle, the area being the origins of Newcastle United whose fanatical fans go by the name the Toon Army. Stanley Cricket Club formed a football team in 1881 in South Byker. They won their first match 5-0. The following season the name was changed from Staley FC to Newcastle East End FC to avoid confusion with Stanley in nearby County Durham. Shortly after this, another Byker side, Rosewood FC, merged with East End to form an even stronger side. Originally East End played their games at Stanley Street in Byker but moved a short distance to Chillingham Road, on the border between Byker and Heaton during 1884, near to a railway network. The club became founding members of the Northern League. Founded in 1889, it is the second-oldest football league in the world still in existence after the English Football League. As well as Newcastle United, Middlesbrough and Darlington also once played in the Northern League.

Byker-based East End became the first club in Newcastle to turn fully professional. After three seasons in the Northern League, they applied to English Division One and Division Two but were rejected by both. In 1892 East End merged with bitter cross-town rivals Newcastle West End. East End then had more money and acquired St James Park at Gallowgate as it had better facilities than at their home ground at Chillingham Road. The name Newcastle United was accepted by the Football League in 1895. East End originally played in predominantly in Byker’s red, ironically the colours of their greatest rivals, nearby Sunderland, before adopting their distinctive black and white shirts in the late 1890s.

St James Park has been refurbished since I stood on the terraces. In keeping with regulations, it’s an all seater some is supported seating meaning you can stand with safety rails to prevent crowd crush. The capacity increased to over 50,000 spectators and the stadium towers over the cityscape like a true sporting cathedral. Following years of strife, the club was controversially purchased by Middle Eastern backers, making them on paper the richest club in the world.

When I was in Newcastle, I came across a photography book about Byker (Bloodaxe Books originally published 1983) by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. All the photos are in black and white making Byker look like a bleak, gritty Victorian urban landscape which in many ways it had not moved on from. She came from a small papermill town in Finland via a short stay at Helsinki University, and a film school in London. In her own words she was ‘out to acquire skills on a meagre bank loan and to learn about life.’ An obstinate dreamer anxious about life passing her by and ‘longed to leave the commonplace’. She arrived in Byker in 1969 and first saw the suburb from Byker Hill; ‘steep cobbled streets with row upon row of terraced flats, in the town, over the river and the bridges and beyond. The streets of Byker, serene in the morning sun with smoking chimney pots, offered me no Paradise but I was looking for a home.’

Konttinen lived in an upstairs flat in Mason Street in central Byker. Locals thought her a bit mad. “She comes from Finland, such a beautiful place, nice and clean, and she chooses to live in Byker.” Her first visit to the local pub, the Hare and Hounds she was taken under the collective wing of the regulars; “the drinks arrived with but a smile and a nod from an assortment of kindly faces round the room.” She made friends around the area. She was a founding member of Amber Associates, a group of filmmakers and photographers who were struggling to establish a creative relationship with working-class communities in the North East. While piecing together a living from freelance and educational work she began to photograph Byker in earnest.

She received a grant from Northern Arts to set up a portrait studio in an empty hair salon in Raby Street, near to where she lived; “raided by scrapmen, past recovery, and boarded up.” At first, she roamed the streets taking photos and then after, families at home, her ambition was to photograph every household in her street knocking on doors explaining her mission. Her work became known, accepted, and then assisted. Being a foreigner gave her an advantage; “I could be nosy and be forgiven” so doors were often open to her that might be closed to another photographer. She was an oddball, hurled into a peculiar net of relationships, shortcutting into friendship and unquestioned loyalty while pining to be a native on equal ground. Her relationships in the community grew. Her studio attracted many visitors. She became a regular at the Hare and Hounds, her local where mothers and daughters, and granddaughters gathered in the evening for a chat, a song, and dominoes until the latter was banned after a brawl!

But demolition was catching up with Byker. Door after door received the “stamp of death” and were boarded up and bricked off. Konttinen noted that the countdown on streets, and houses and friends began. Businesses closed down and melancholia set in. Death and demolition clung together in the collective consciousness. The talk was of who’s going and when and who’s died. Some houses had been under demolition order for 20 years. There were no new houses and some bemoaned “no bath and no hot water”.

Finally, her own house was bowled by the wrecking ball. She stood and watched it happen. One way or another she’d grown up on the street, her first own home and a real home for her. Her neighbour pointed out that when she first came to the street, she couldn’t tell hello from goodbye but now speaks Finnish with a Geordie accent. Not only did she immortalise Byker but they said she was one of them.

Part of the “refurbishment” of Byker came in the form of an inner-city architectural oddity – the Byker Wall – one long unbroken block of 620 maisonettes constructed in the 1970s. The Wall is visible from the Metro as the train pulls into Byker Station, across what is now the A193, the road that circles Byker heading towards Tynemouth and the North Sea. The Wall is just one part of a housing estate covering 80 hectares. To build the Wall 1200 Victorian terrace houses, condemned as far back as 1953 as being unfit for human habitation, were demolished. Construction took 13 years and was only completed in 1982, four years before I laid eyes on it. The building materials were relatively cheap; concrete, brick and timber, and the different levels were given a multicoloured finish of plastic, wood, and brick.

Architecturally, it is classified as Functionalist Romantic and represented a major break with the Brutalist high-rise architectural orthodoxy of the time – the tower blocks, which also were built in and around Byker. In the late 2000s, the Wall was itself refurbished, the process taking two years to complete after which the work won awards from trusts, academia, and government agencies, but not community groups and probably not from anyone living there.

Demographically, Byker today has one-third of residents under age 24, just over half of working age, and 12 percent are pensioners. Single parent households are common, and many people have health and disability issues. One in three people own a car. Because rents are cheaper in Byker you sometimes find students living there from the city’s two universities (one of which when I was there was a polytechnic), who have spilled over from neighbouring suburbs like Heaton and Shieldfield. More recently these days Byker is home to immigrants notably from Poland and some from parts of Africa though the city remains overwhelmingly white with few black people and a small Asian minority largely from South Asia.

After her book about Byker, Konttinen’s next project was a study of girls attending dance schools in North Shields, their mothers, and the schools. The book Step by Step came from this. The book was an influence for the film Billy Elliot. She returned to Byker and to Newcastle many times. She produced other works about Newcastle and the North East and in 2009 came another book, Byker Revisited.

In 1980 she became the first photographer since the Cultural Revolution to have her work exhibited by the British Council in China. Her work is held in the collections of museums and galleries in the US and in the UK including the Tate Gallery. These days she photographs Byker in colour.

You can buy her work here: https://www.artsy.net/artist/sirkka-liisa-konttinen