The Green Bridge
The green bridge connected kenton bar with the ultra posh Leeches estate. It was demolished to allow for the development of the western bypass. It has been replaced by the grey bridge, built further south. As aformentioned in the article'The chip shop' you had to have a monocle to even set foot on that estate on the oither side of the green bridge. However,I am not here to wax lyrical about Leeches estate, but rather the green bridge. I remember many times going up on the top part to do a traffic survey for a badge(me beeing a cubscout) in the summer, and once I was up there noticing that the bushes betwixt kenton bar and that estate to the west,(was it Newbiggin Hall?) were all ablaze, set on fire by what I would only describe as gangs of hooligans, chasing each other back and forth alongthat path behind the hedge...... I also remember silhouettes of people rushing back and forth going 'ARGHHHH'! and 'WHARRRRRRGHHHHH!' with what looked like sticks, etc...I was frightened... anyone know what that was all about?...
I remember the day they fitted the green bridge, it arrived on a massive low loader followed by a crane. They must have briefly closed the road I imagine but they were making the road dual carriageway , with the old road becoming a lay-by in front of the farmer's house. It opened a day or two later after they had fitted all the bolts and put mastic in the gap.
ReplyDeleteThe brave thing to do was to lean across to the lamp post which was only a few feet away to the south of the bridge then wrap your legs round and slide down. (I wasn't stupid or hard enough to try!)
Crop burning was a spectator sport every autumn.
Something else near the bridge was the gas sub-station which was built for north sea gas, replacing a much smaller building that presumably just had valves in. The new one had air intakes on the roof, hissed a lot... and smelt of gas.
I remember pipes being laid in the fields near Fawdon school, it was a kid's playground for weeks.
Shades, dont you mean Hillsview school?...
ReplyDeleteMensforth - get yourself a dictionary - your spelling is atrocious.
ReplyDeleteNow - this bridge. 2 recollections:-
1. I always used to run past the gas station building as I was afraid it might explode at any time - the stink of gas was truly amazing
2. The abutments at each end of the bridge had a kind of "cubby hole" in the earth and we found out that the stones in the soil there had some fossils in them. There was then a period where the soil under the bridge abutments was feverishly excavated in order to get the best fossils. Thankfully we ran out of steam before undermining the whole structure.
That would have been quite a sight - seeing the bridge collapse 'kashtoomph' onto the dual carriageway below
Also - I did traverse the bridge on the "outside" i.e. clinging to the fence and edging along the little bit of the bridge platform that protruded out but like Shades I never had the bottle to jump to the lamppost - truly a silly thing to do.