Kenton Bar Estate - A Blast from the Past

Here is the unusual plaque aformentioned in the post'St Cuthbert's Green Arch'... it seems to be of a man with 4 arms and 4 legs...anyone any idea what it might be about?... (It is to the left of the beautiful arch...)

There is a wonderful black & white photo taken in an almost identical position to the one I took here in Rutter's Ryder & Yates book of the arch at St Cuthberts Green in Fenham, the 'pilot scheme' estate they built before our beloved Kenton Bar Estate...In the black & white photo there are some notable diffences from the photo of the arch now: a) the T1 houses in the background in the black & white photo( Yes,those houses behind the round bush are T1's! ) were identical to those of Hazeldene Ave on Kenton Bar..by the time of this photo they have added horrible sloping roofs and got rid of the lovely secret stairs to the upper bedroom...( Note also I dont think there could be a downstairs bit to these T1s, so no internal garage and downstairs toilet...Shades might be able to explain the technical bit of this! ) b)There is now a red gate in the arch( In the Rutter book photo there was no gate-incidently the gate is padlocked shut... ) c) The sign'Re...

Here is a photo of some concrete steps leading nowhere(well to a tiny hill) in the ruins of the Kenton Bar Park at the end of Hartburn Walk outside the children's home... In the post(April 2010:'This is a nice one of a Ryder & Yates split level a la Hazeldene Ave') of a slide at St Cuthbert's Green there are similar steps but they are made of wood...when those geniuses Gordon & Peter built our beloved Kenton Bar Estate they changed the stepping stones design from wood to concrete(I wonder why?...) Now as for these concrete ones I cant recall if they led to a slide long gone, as I recall only one slide there which was more towards the YWCA, in the NE section of the park...so the stones in the background(there are 12 of them) must of led to some sort of playground architecture(like a slide, but was it a slide?) and what were the stones in the foreground for?(there are 7 of them) Note also they have demolished and restructured the wall connected to the garages(pres...

Note also the metal casing over the 2 drainpipes to the left & right...next to the right drainpipe is an electricity type substation-anyone elaborate on its function?...In the wonderful book'Ryder & Yates' by Rutter Carroll it seemed 'each house was to have an allocated garage in anticipation of the rise in car ownership'...I am not sure whether this included the flats...the shoe laced curved bit type garages up in the posh blue zone would have been much more suited for the game of garages mentioned elsewhere on the blog than the parallel garages at Reestones, Laverock/Studdon & Thirston/Hazeldene (A side:the game of 'garages' was not played at Thirston/Hazeldene as malchicks from the red zone played not team games but lurked solitarily or in 2's in the dark alleys...) but alas the posh types from the blue zone cared not for football type games preferring sword fighting, fox hunting, rugby & croquet..."Tally Ho!"

I once described the garage blocks as reminding me of giant tied sholaces somewhere on the blog...here they are visible(3 blocks at Hazeldene Ave, Apperley Ave & Byrness Close) in pristine condition when the estate was first built- the beautiful like white curved symmetrical blocks...incidently the shape of the estate reminds me of the handle of a colt 45 gun pointing east...Note only the blue posh tory zone had garage blocks as only the posh had cars in those days...the green(good) zone types were all healthy pedestrians whilst the red(danger) zone types( ruffians & bounders down the bottom) all rode about on horses & carts aka Steptoe & Son but I digress... I had a look at them(the garages) recently and can tell you that they have knocked down a large percentage of the garages due to vandalism(the curved closed in bits meant that the perpetrators commiting the crime were hidden from view no doubt in the darkmans(dead of night) so they made them more open plan to comb...