the red hills
The red hills were indeed strange red hills that were located to the north of Kenton Bar Estate, as far as I recall maybe 3/4 miles away and were clearly visible from everywhere on the estate...when we were kids we used to cycle up there because they were great for off road bike scrambling on...(is that why we went?...is my recollection correct?)they looked a bit like this...alas they seem to have gone(I went back to Kenton Bar Estate to see if I could see them), maybe erased and buried beneath the western bypass or the Great North Park development beyond/to the north west of Red House Farm Estate(aside:wonder if the name of that estate and the hills are linked?...maybe there was once a red house farm so named due to its proximity to the red hills?)...incidently I distinctly remember that there was a blacksmiths on the way up to there...ps:why were they red?...
I really like this painting I found on google images...to me it is very like a lot of Peter Yates's wonderful work which I first came across in Rutter's Ryder & Yates book.
ReplyDelete'“One of the pleasures in reading Rutter Carroll’s ‘Ryder and Yates’ was discovering Peter Yates’ paintings...One thinks of Nash and Bawden; Peter Yates shares something of their graphic strength, eye for detail, and sheer fondness of what he finds in the British landscape.”
Margaret Howell
"FAWDON dates back to 1242 when the Old English spelling was "Fag‑Dun", meaning a multicoloured hill. Originally Fawdon was part of the Barony of Whalton, but it later passed to the ownership of the Haselrigg family, eventually to form part of Gosforth parish."
ReplyDeleteCould this multicoloured hillbe the Red Hills?
Someone once told me that the red hills were old mine tippings. Not sure about that...I do know they were a great and very frightening place to ride your chopper or racing bike. This was in the day before BMX as common.
ReplyDeleteI remember going down there 1982/3 ish???
ReplyDeleteI lot of kids used to go there and a load of us built a huge dam over the burn.
Great memories
Thanks for comment Alex, and welcome to the blog!
ReplyDelete