Kenton Bar Pyramid - The Icon of Kenton Bar Estate
STOP PRESS!!
If you have any pictures of the Kenton Bar Pyramid or Kenton Bar in general then please contact me here. I will gladly add them to the blog with any attribution you care to desire!
Contact El Patron HERE
If you have any pictures of the Kenton Bar Pyramid or Kenton Bar in general then please contact me here. I will gladly add them to the blog with any attribution you care to desire!
Contact El Patron HERE
Mensfoth:YO YO!
ReplyDeleteAnother duff was to run from beside the north east corner of the pyry parallel to the blue bit and try to leap down all the 10? stairs at once to land safely on the tarmac below..
By the way, what do you thing was the purpose of the metal bit on the blue visible in photo 2? was it to stop kids rolling the boulders off into the concrete lake? If so it was a waste of time cos you could roll them round the sides of it...
Mesforth here again!-One other duff for bodlins was to walk across the top of that metal bit visible in photo 2 without loosing balance and having to put foot down on blue bit. Quite easy I suppose, but hard for littlin's!
ReplyDeleteMonsieur Mensforth here:As a matter of interest I was told by someone that the empty spaces between the concrete pillars under the white flats visible in photo 2down to the left of the area below the ramp on the left had originally been intended for shops like those visible behind the pyry in photo 1.This never materialised if true. We used to have hours of fun playing there under the flats-footy when it was raining and a tuggy game which involved climbing up on the walls/binsheds/pipework underneath to avoid being tugged.On a night there were plenty darkcorners kept nice and dry by the flats above out of the howling winds to snog your girlfriend or smoke a secret fag or drink illegally...You can't get under now as they have errected a meshwork to encase the space...sigh...
ReplyDeleteThe metal bar was for 'elfen safety- to stop kids riding their bikes over the precipice. There was a metal plate that formed a small lip to hold water in the top pool when the pumps were off at night. (On a time clock, I believe).
ReplyDeleteI ingratiated myself with the Clerk of Works and got to look at the many plans in the site office which was in one of the Ryal Walk bungalows. The lower flats were indeed planned to be further shops, but no-one wanted them.
My Mum & Dad ran the Goldfinch Wines Offy for a couple of years, but we had moved up to the Leech Estate by then.
(I used to love the Tudor Crisp man coming when I was in the shop, he used to give me a few bags for helping him).
I was there the night 'one of the lads' bought the chicken, refused to share it, ate it all and ran up the side of the pyry and put the chicken carcass on the top like a gold cap...He was a most horrible person who, if ever he saw you coming out of the chippy with chips would creep up behind you AKA a lion hunting a gazelle and deliberatly hoof the chips out from your hand with his horrible sabog, scattering the contents to the four winds...this gave him great pleasure, as did doing anything which caused pain and upset to his others ha ha ha!
ReplyDeleteomg i use to climb this! memories
ReplyDeleteThere was another pyramid sculpture - outside Norgas House in Killingworth. It wasn't concrete though but some kind of molding
ReplyDeleteI remember when it opened and it has water and the water feature waterfall... Good for paddling.. I never lived on KB but I lived on Quentin Avenue which then became Hazeldene Avenue next to the terminus... before it was built it was part of the farm and cows would escape from the field (Studdon Walk) and come into the bottom of the maisonettes.. sometimes the kids would bring them in deliberately... no health and safety then...and not even a fence really to speak of... we treat the building site like an extension of the park... I fell in a trench on the site and nearly drowned once.... we were always covered in mud from playing on the site... jeesus it was a wonder we werent blinking killed x
ReplyDeleteVery interesting Anonymous thank thou! this was before my time and counts as 'new pieces of the jigsaw' knowledge...well done!
ReplyDeleteI remember paddling in the water (moved to Kenton Bar in 1969 when I was 5) and the momentous day when i got to the top of the 'Pyry'.
ReplyDeleteWe also played 'ice hockey' on the blue tiling in the winter, with a squashed can as a puck!!
Anon, do you remember the cascade actually working?
ReplyDeleteThis is crazy. I live in Las Vegas now and am keeping in touch with friends from Kenton Bar Estate. I remember Goldfinch Wines, me nana Mabs used to get her sherry there on tick sometimes, Marguaret Perez managed the shop back then, but Kathy Loughran and her daughters Susanne and Kim used to work there too. God, talk about momories. I was told they levelled the estate out, no pyramid and the shops are on the level, but I'm trying to figure out how they would do that, cause Hazeldene avenue ran down there, do you have to go up stairs to the main road, and how could they level it out, considering had to come down stairs and the ramp to get to the estate. Amber Chipchase Hayes. I moved to Kenton Bar in 69 as well, and was 6, maybe I knew you.
ReplyDeleteHello, my parents were talking about your family the other night Amber. They were telling stories about living there and were very fond of your mum and nana. There names are John and Dolores. I told mum i would try and find you or your mum on the internet.We are in Australia now and they said your family had moved to hawaii. I know you posted this a while ago but if you read this please reply as i would love to make the connection for my parents. Roisin Maitland
DeleteHello there anonymous!Welcome to the master's blog
ReplyDelete(I am his humble servant Mensforth)
It may be of interest to you to discover we have talked of your nana Mabs before!!!-check out the post 'The house that is a pub' sept 2009(if you type the house that is a pub in the search bar it will take you right there)
Incidently I also remember Kathy who ran the offy-she also had a son also called Johnny Loughran :)
Anon, the shops are the same, but the upper and lower squares were turned into a sloping garden.
ReplyDeleteThe pyramid, cascade and lower pool were demolished, as well as the ramp and stairs. The only thing remaining is the retaining wall next to the stairs.
Click through to see it on Google maps.
What they did was an outrage...how horrible...thank thou Shades for showing this dastardly deed to Anon...
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it is Margaret Perez's son who is the unidentified member of the kenton bar school team photo (I think he had a sister called Maria)!!!
ReplyDeleteUnidentified member does have a spanish look...Perez is a spanish name maybe, and if his sister is called Maria, also spanish sounding maybe he is her son, son maybe we can conclude that at least his surname was Perez!
ReplyDeleteMaybe thats why he buggered off in what they now call year 6(4th year) maybe he went back to spain...but I dont recal him being spanish...hmmm...
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ReplyDeleteLenny Harbottle
I can vaguely remember it as all us scallies from North Kenton went up for a paddle! At the base of the waterfall there was a paddling pool either side of the ramp. I don't think it was operational for very long, there was a few accidents, broken glass in the pool etc. I remember that you could actually get inside the Pyramid by crawling in from ... See morethe front. This kid, who's name escapes me, I think it was same guy who set light to Norman Lough and the others. he crawled in and then fell into the water cistern inside, stupid fecker could have drowned!!
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ReplyDeleteIan V Bright
We moved into the top street on Kenton Bar,Hazeldene Ave in April 1967,we were only the third family to move into the street at that time....
Hi Ian
DeleteI knew you at KBJS. You lived in the same street as one of my earliest friends at Kentton Comp school, Phillip Patterson. Do you remember him as he lived at the very end of Hazeldene Avenue if I remember right.
Do you recall the Pearson family and Wendy Dixon who I think married Ian Cuthbertson?
my god, the riff-raff stated moving in even then?...
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ReplyDeleteAlison Avery
I remember that it did fill up with water, but think that was from the rain!, I remember walking along the top of the "glass wall" bits half way down the ramp, very sensible eh!
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ReplyDeleteAlison Avery
I remember when it rained heavily, the "paddling pool" things used to overflow and cause a canny little flood down the side near the school and it would stop just beside the bungalows and the kids would have no choice but to wade through it to get to school.
The waterfall was fully operational when i moved onto KBE as a 12 yr old in 1969. Didnt last too many years though as it became a bit of a safety issue with broken glass and dogs peeing in the paddling pool area below.
ReplyDeleteAnother point of (probably little) interest is that when we initially moved into the Bungalows it was then called Broomlee Walk which was subsequently changed to Studdon Walk as there was already a Broomlee Walk in Red House Farm also NE3
I remember you AmberJane Chipchase!!!! I lived in the bunglaows round the corner from you and your Nanna (God Bless her)xx
Yvonne, thanks for that, mystery solved. I remember Studdon Walk was called something else but I couldn't remember what it was. I remember seeing the letter from the GPO saying they were going to rename it for the reasons you state.
ReplyDeleteThe bottom waterway was certainly not intended to be a paddling pool, hence the cobbles on the bottom.
Lenny, I'm pretty sur ethat the builders fitted a guard rail to stop you crawling inside the pyramid itself before it was actually filled and started. You had to be very skinny to squeeze through before then. I did in once, but only enough to take a look rather than go all the way in. You then had to climb over a small wall & the sparge pipes to get into the chamber itself and then there was about a 7' drop into the pitch black (or a 13' drop if you fell into the sump as it was a 6' deep sump!)
we used to lift the cover of the man hole at the side of the yramid and clmb down the metal steps, where lots of pipes could be located. no one was ever brave enought to switch the water supply on tho. can remember someone called jane broome and recall she wasnt someone to cross. there were also twins called tait who lived in the flats but cant remember their first names.
ReplyDeleteWe worked out that if we removed a door handle from our house (generally the downstairs loo) it could be used to turn the square section that locked the trapdoor. Eventually though, the killjoys from the Council fitted a big bastard of a padlock as well after which our exploring days were over.
ReplyDeleteThe Pyramid in 1967
ReplyDeleteI moved to 26 Apperley Avenue in 1967. I was 9 years old. Some of the families I remember who lived near my street were named Alexander, Aynsley, Emerson and Robson. I remember others but not their family names like Andrew, Stephanie, Jackie, Billy, Alex..
ReplyDeleteSome of us used to play on the building sites behind Apperley Avenue. It was interesting to see the estate evolving from the ground up. The photographs of the realised architectural model of the estate actually looks like an electronic computer board - something like a mother board I guess, and in a way this kind of thinking would have been ahead of its time in the late 1960's when computers were just beginning to evolve in commerce. I was part of the family named Slater and we were the first to live in number 26. I remember the house as being full of stairs, very tall, lots of hallway and pretty frightening for a 9 year old. I also remember the streets to be full of young people and I was one of them. The pyramid was beautiful with cascading water over its tiny marble tiles into a moat that secured it from the rest of the world - not. Within a few years the water had gone and the moat had been filled in with concrete. I have been inside of the pyramid and it did have water running on its floor. It wasn't deep enough to anyone any damage. It was more a flow of water from one place to the next. The word on the street was that this water flow helped the sewage system somewhat. It was good to speculate on the reason for the pyramid. It seemed to attract all youth from all over the Estate. Within a few years the pyramid had become a meeting place battleground for the local gangs of skinheads who would test the metal pressings in their Dr. Martin boots and Brogue shoes against eachother to see who could wound the "enemy' the most. These gangs would honour the night with chains that they'd use to belt eachother with. It was the gangs who turned the dream of the pyramid into a nightmare. A beautiful landmark of water over sunshined marble became a place to avoid when the sun went down.
I don't remember the estate being separated into the rough heads and the smooth heads. Everyone who lived on the estate wanted a peaceful homelife. It was the crombie wearing gangs who patronised the estate in the early 1970's, attracted by the pyramid as a symbol of war, that changed the nature of Kenton Bar from architectural hope into disfigurement. I guess the fact that the pyramid is now gone illustrates how the home owners on the estate feel about the evolvement of the pyramid as a symbol of war as opposed to a symbol of beauty as it was originally intended. I think the pyramid was designed to offer the community a meeting place where they could sit and enjoy the local produce from the shops, while keeping good company beside a beautiful fountain. I remember how gorgeous it looked and I remember how dark it became because of the gangs. The pyramid was a symbol of youth. It represented a new way of living. I was there in 2008 and I have to admit that I felt sad that the pyramid was gone. It was such a totem of late 1960's and 1970's youth that I guess its cool that its not there anymore. I feel this way because seeing the pyramid in such a delapidated state would only remind our senior citizens of today of how they stuffed it up, should they remember wiht shame the role that they played in bringing the vision of architectual beauty to its knees through the senseless gang warfare they indulged in as teenagers.
The ruins was a pig sty...i used to walk past it regularly along the black path when i was out blackberry picking with my grandad
ReplyDeleteA pig sty? - wow - it would be nice to verify this from an old map of the area if only I could find one........
ReplyDeleteanonymous, when you say'the ruins was a pig sty' do you mean it was 'a pig sty' or that it was like a pig sty?...there is a post here on the blog
ReplyDelete'The ruins'(September 2009) with photos...we have speculated on what the ruins were originally before on the blog...I suggested a farmhouse but then in the post'The E's at the ruins'(September 2009) Shades, Bosno & anonymous explained that E's we 'transformer laminations' which would suggest the ruins might have been a like workshop...
There was another pyramid sculpture - outside Norgas House in Killingworth. It wasn't concrete though but some kind of molding
ReplyDeleteI roamed KB as a young teenager in 1971 but I lived on Quentin Ave. Please let me know if you roamed KB at this time and are in your early 50's now
ReplyDeletehello mate, and welcome aboard!
ReplyDeleteme and the master are not yet in the 50+ age yet thank god, but Sheriff Shades may be...maybe he can help you?...regardless we welcome you to our blog and hope it gives you happiness and fond memories of slim youth...
what is Sheriff Shades real name? Did he grow-up in North Kenton?
ReplyDeleteHi - Ian Grey is the Sherriff Shade real name and his profile is here - http://www.blogger.com/profile/07777836927500400430
ReplyDeleteHe has his own website here - http://iangrey.org/
A valued contributor to the blog!
Did you go to Kenton School Ian. How old are you now.
ReplyDeleteI remember Margurite was married to a man named Chuse Perez, yes Maria was her daughter, she had a sister called Michelle I think!
ReplyDeleteAmber Chipchase Hayes
Anon, yes, I went to Kenton School in 1969, I'm 53 now
ReplyDeleteI'm the same age. What forms were you in at Kenton School. I was in 1 CE 2 CE 3E & 4X
ReplyDelete1LN, 2LS, 3D, 4D, 5D, L6, U6. Our paths probably didn't cross very much!
ReplyDeletename some of your friends. I might have known them,
ReplyDeleteIf I'm not mistooken that first photo is of Hazeldene Avenue and I lived in that end house (nr. 50) for 5 or so years during the early 80's!
ReplyDeleteMy parents were some of the first people to live on the estate when it opened (after an interview to get a house there!). They had a flat on Reestones, just down the ramp from the shops. It suffered damp so they moved into Hazeley Grove then we also lived in Fourstones Close and Laverock Place.
I moved back with my family into Hazeledene Avenue about 10 years ago, mainly due to such good memories of life here.
I also went to Kenton School - was in 1K, 2K, 3K, 4GU(?)
Following on from the above I remember the pyramid well, along with the blue mosaic tiles in the drainage channel. I don't remember it working at all but used to paddle around in the pools at the bottom (they always had a certain type of wriggly red worm in them!). This would have been around 1975 onwards. Must admit I was one of those kids who covered their trainers in tar and ran up the side of the pyramid to the top (my mother used to kill me for the state of my shoes!)
DeleteThe estate was great for kids - lots of big metal 'monkeybars' for us to play on - would be considered totally unsafe today. Also reinforced concrete 'seats' were in a lot of the streets that we used to play on also. Sadly now more or less all gone. A couple of the little stools and tables are still there though.
My wife was querying the little concrete 'hatches' a while ago and I recalled they were water taps for people to wash their cars. Used to have bright blue wooden doors and I think we had a key to open them. These are pretty much abandoned now though but I have good memories of all us kids (and there were lots of kids) opening them up on hot days and spraying water all over each other.
A lot of the houses that backed onto each other (Hazeley Grove and Studdon Walk included) used to have footpaths running then lengths of the street between the gardens at the back and us kids were always in there running up and down them and playing in each others gardens. Happy days!
Dear Anonymous - you seem to have a good knowledge of the estate - I probably know you as I lived in KBE for almost 20 years and my family was also one of the first "in". Now only were there wriggly red worms but also wriggly black worms too. I think there were the larvae of daddy long legs and some other insects. Anyway thanks for yous contribution to the blog and welcome - please post more!!!!
DeleteHi all
DeleteI have just discovered this blog site and am fascinated by all of the
contributors recounting their experiences of life on KBE. I lived in
Thirston Way, which apparently was in the 'Red Zone' where the 'ruffians,
cads and bounders' lived, according to ghost of mensforth if 'the Lambsies'
he refers to in other blogs were the ones I lived next door to.
Take exception to that ,as my family certainly weren't any of those
things! I had friends all over the estate and we didn't look upon any part
of the estate being especially socially superior to the other.
Nice to read Suzanne's blog, as Steven was one of my closest friends at
KBJS and early days at Kenton Comp. I attribute Steven as being the one who introduced me to the music of Queen, a life long love affair which
continues to this day!
A few names I remember apart from the Burke family are Amber Chipchase,
Ian Bright, Peter Embelton, Philip Leaver. Does anyone remember Steve Smith
who lived in Ryal Walk flats? The Pyramid was great fun but I didn't
realise the affection it held for people until I started reading this
blog site. I hope to see contributions from more of the people I remember!
I was a great friend of Brit and al the gang. Jackie, gunner , decka, fin ,snappy Dan (Adrian irons) spud , egg , terry and Tony all the lads from the top. Friendships that lasted years and into great night out in toon
DeleteWe should start a Red Zone Club then -
ReplyDelete