The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass

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STORIES OF LIFE IN WASHINGTON NEW TOWN

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Tommy Anderson
(Detail from) The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass banner
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ThE BaLLad Of ThE CrOCOdILE aNd ThE UNdErpaSS

L I N K S TO O N L I N E C O N T E N T

Visit ‘The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass ’ online by either scanning this QR code using the camera on your digital device, or by entering the web address below into your browser.

https://www.sunderlandculture.org.uk/arts-centre-washington/ the-ballad-of-the-crocodile-and-the-underpass/

Further online content can be accessed via QR codes throughout the publication, or by entering the web addresses below into your browser Podcasts

https://balladofthecroc.capti vate.fm

Songs

https://soundcloud com/user-551941349/sets/the-ballad-of-the-crocodile Artwork

http://baselineshift.co.uk/artwork andex-pho.html

Historypin

https://www historypin org/en/the-ballad-of-the-crocodile-and-theunderpass/geo/54.897432,-1.517366,12/bounds/54.775734,1.622251,55.018764,-1.412481/paging/1/pin/1196544

The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund Thanks to National Lottery player s, we have been able to deli ver this project and produce this publication.

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Photomontage

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Tommy Anderson
The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

INTrOdUCTION

Project Coordinator and Herit age and Culture Development Coordinator for Washington Herit age Partnership

The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass celebrates six decades since Washington’s foundation as a new town The project incorporates podcasts, songwriting and visual artwork, to celebrate the anni ver sary by sharing, recording and archi ving this time of rapid change

On 24th July 1964 the government designated Washington a “new town” . This was part of a trend: after World War II, there was a determination to rebuild society and to meet the big social and technological changes of the time People wanted decent housing, better infrastructure, and a slice of modern life The local landscape was still dominated by a huge slag heap and a chemical works; and indoor bathrooms were still aspirational for many.

Some new towns grew up out of nowhere, however, here it was different – an “urban new town” , surrounded by other nearby towns and cities, and with lots of smaller settlements in the vicinity. The village of Washington has a long history, including the famous family link to the fir st US president. The area was peppered with farms and coal mines and small villages. Some settlements such as Fatfield were controver sially designated by Durham County Council as Category “D” Villages, in such poor condition that there would be no further investment in infrastructure. Industries were changing creating the need for new accommodation Meanwhile, new roads such as the A1M and the A19 made this an ideal location for the rapidly developing area

And so Washington Development Corporation came into being, with Sir James Steel as Chair, Stephen Holley as General Manager, and Llewellyn-Davies, Weeks and Partner s as consultant architect planner s. A Master Plan for the new town was published on 3rd January 1967 and much of the town, including the thenfuturistic Galleries shopping centre (opened by Princess Anne), was in place by 1974 Each village would have its own distincti ve architecture, village centre, school and pub There was a guiding principle that no child would need to cross a main road in order to attend school – hence the number of aerial walkways and underpasses Perhaps one of the most successful elements of the masterplan was the planning and design that went into the landscaping and planting around villages and roads. That, along with the creation of many parks and green spaces, continues to mak e the town a pleasant and healthy place to li ve, work and visit

In 1988 the Washington Development Corporation was wound up, partly because of political changes but mostly because the work was deemed to be done. Throughout that time and beyond, we’ve seen manufacturing shift from coal mines and chemicals through to electronics and of cour se Nissan We’ve also had our fair share of famous visitor s such as President Jimmy Carter, Queen Elizabeth II, and Muhammed Ali And here we are, sixty year s on, celebrating our transformation into a ‘new town’ – here’s to the next sixty year s.

BaCKgrOUNd, prOjECT parTNErS aNd

The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass project is led by Washington Heritage Partner ship with Sunderland Culture, and working with creati ve partner s; Baseline Shift, We Mak e Culture and Grace Stubbings with podcast support from the Uni ver sity of Sunderland. The project is generously funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund thanks to National Lottery Player s.

Discussions between the Washington Heritage Partner ship and Baseline Shift, We Mak e Culture CIC, the Uni ver sity of Sunderland and Sunderland Culture at Arts Centre Washington demonstrated that all these organisations had been working with groups that were seeking to explore the development of Washington New Town’s unique topography and communities. A series of meetings fuelled by good coffee and even better ideas led to the multi-media and mixed method approach of The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass, and we were fortunate enough to have the support of The National Lottery Heritage Fund to bring these ideas, research and acti vities to fruition.

Washington Heritage Partnership is funded by Sunderland City Council’s Washington Area Neighbourhoods Fund, with the aim of bringing together Washington-based organisations, practitioner s and the wider community, via network building, training, fundraising, and a series of acti vities and events designed to engage communities across Washington in exploring and celebrating their heritage

Sunderland Culture was set up in 2016 to bring together the cultural programmes of Sunderland City Council, Uni ver sity of Sunderland and Sunderland Music, Arts and Culture (MAC) Trust into a single, independent, deli very model Sunderland Culture deli ver s the programme in National Glass Centre and Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens and Arts Centre Washington, as well as cultural

engagement and events in communities across the city. It works to ensure the power of great art, culture and creati vity is harnessed for the benefit of Sunderland, its residents and visitor s Sunderland Culture is a registered charity and an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. Its mission is to improve life for everyone in Sunderland through culture

Baseline Shift was established in 20 02 by North East based graphic designer, visual artist and workshop facilitator, Tommy Ander son. Baseline Shift deli ver s innovati ve design solutions, engaging creati ve projects and progressi ve participatory arts programmes

We Make Culture are a social enterprise based in Sunderland, and deli ver high quality musicmaking programmes across the city and beyond Our mission is to bring people together through music-making, supporting the development of creati ve confidence and increasing people’s capacity to fulfil their potential and be heard.

The University of Sunderland is an internationally recognised centre for research into radio and podcasting through the work of Professor Caroline Mitchell and Dr Richard Berry Their research helps communities under stand new ways of engaging with radio and podcasting through participatory and action research projects and through supporting long term initiati ves to develop access and inclusion for underrepresented groups in society. The awardwinning community radio station Spark FM is based at the David Puttnam Media Centre and is a proven training ground for students and community member s, many of whom now have jobs in BBC, commercial and community. The team deliver a longstanding Masters degree in Radio, Audio and Podcasting and supervise PhDs in specialist areas in radio and podcasting Two Master ’s students have been involved in the podcast ballad project and their work with the Washington Community Podcasting Group has been assessed as part of their studies

Tommy Anderson Industry
Photomontage 80cm x 40cm
The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

Why ThE CrOCOdILE aNd Why ThE UNdErpaSS?

The crocodile and the underpass are icons of the area’s redevelopment. People who grew up in 1970s/80s Washington remember clambering onto concrete crocodile sculptures which were dotted around public areas such as Princess Anne Park and Fatfield ri ver side Some of these areas are now underused and overgrown, and the crocodiles have for the most part disappeared or are unrecognisable Underpasses were planned into the town’s basic infrastructure, in line with the ambition that no child would have to cross a main road to reach their school. This means they are rather different to those in older areas, which were later additions to existing architecture. They are such an abiding feature that we dedicated a whole podcast episode to them, and we created an “Underpass-Overpass” walking tour where we gathered reminiscences and recorded the sounds of the walkways You can read more about these “betwixt-and-between” spaces in Ian Cook’s article

Washington is one of several new towns, but was unique in its placement, design and in the number of pre-existing village communities it incorporated In order to celebrate 60 year s we wanted to look at things from the per specti ve not just of the planner s but also of the people who they planned for

We have been recording people’s experiences of life in Washington New Town – combining new and existing oral histories, music and visuals to explore themes including: urban and road planning; underpasses; Washington’s American connection; iconic new town architecture; ghost stories and myths within the town; mining and other industries; education; nature and the environment; music and arts; and leisure, nightlife and shopping

This has resulted in a series of “radio ballad” style podcasts; songwriting and live performances inspired by the historical themes; and visual art including a large-scale banner which was showcased at the main Washington 60 event on 20th July 2024 This publication brings together some highlights of each of these.

The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass podcasts are inspired by the BBC radio ballads made in the 1950s and 1960s by radio documentary mak er Charles Park er and folk musicians Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl. One of those, The Big Hewer, was recorded in the Durham coalfields and included interviews with the Elliott family of Birtley and one of the family, Doreen Hender son would recount Peggy Seeger ’s initial response to hearing the family’s dialect and stories when she and Ewan MacColl fir st visited the Elliotts at their home: apparently she declared with delight, “It’s lik e Chaucer” . And certainly there have been Chaucerian moments in our recording sessions; one standout was tales of what went on in some of the show houses before they were sold which could have come straight out of the Wife of Bath’s Tale…

Washington community organisations, Washington History Society, Uni ver sity of the Third Age groups (U3As), schools and smaller community groups have work ed alongside the project team including podcast specialist Grace Stubbings, Uni ver sity of Sunderland staff and MA students (Joe Simmons and Ynez Tulsen) from the Uni ver sity of Sunderland, to record oral histories, and to gain an under standing of audio editing and podcast construction.

Charles Park er set great value in recording ‘ordinary’, working class people recounting stories about their working li ves He was a pioneer in getting the microphone close to the

truth of their everyday experiences and for the fir st time people would be able to hear about the working li ves of miner s, trawlermen, boxer s and travelling people Park er work ed closely with musicians Peggy Seeger and Ewan Macoll who composed and performed folk songs based on the themes of each ballad programme, many of them with a radical edge.

Community involvement has been at the heart of this project. We recruited participants and volunteer s via a touring roadshow Our project steering group involves partner s, creati ve artists and volunteer s and this continues to meet monthly to plan and help evaluate research and acti vities. The group meets weekly at Arts Centre Washington and involves a combination of practical skills sharing; editorial discussion (to ensure we can record and collect interesting oral histories and mak e them as accessible as possible); use of sound effects and music. We are also exploring how people access (or experience barrier s to) podcast listening. Watch this space for the “how to” guide which is currently being developed

The group have created 10 themed podcasts and a longer omnibus edition The aim is to tell stories where people hear their own voices and accents reflected back. The podcasts ’ format deliberately echoes the groundbreaking “radio ballads” pioneered in the 1960s by BBC Producer, Charles Park er, with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, which combined interviews, songs, music and sounds.

Following this format means we included at least one specially commissioned song for each episode. We Mak e Culture CIC have engaged two professional songwriter s, David Brewis and Paige Temperley, to write songs inspired by our oral history interviews and stories. In August 2024, they held workshops for young songwriters which have led to several more songs being written The songs have been recorded and edited into the podcasts but also will be available as recordings in their own right.

Tommy Ander son of Baseline Shift helped people to curate historic and modern photographs which hold per sonal meaning to them. He also undertook a series of photowalks to build a bank of present-day shots of Washington Roadshow and workshop participants were encouraged to bring in photographs for scanning, and groups were gi ven the opportunity to explore photomontage techniques, building collages from these images Tommy has incorporated the collected images into powerful large-scale photomontage pieces and a project banner These have been exhibited around the town and are reproduced in this publication. It is good to observe visitor s scanning the artworks for local landmarks lik e a treasure hunt of Washington

The artwork, songs and podcasts are gradually being incorporated into a Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass tour within the Washington Heritage Partner ship digital heritage map hosted by Historypin.

Search Historypin: The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass

rOadShOWS

To start conver sations we set up in a series of community venues and public spaces to prompt peoples ’ memories and stories We held six roadshow events in: the central area of The Galleries Shopping Centre, Washington Wetlands Centre, North Biddick Social Club, Washington MIND, Arts Centre Washington, and The Millennium Centre

Each roadshow was different but all participants were invited to share and discuss stories, photographs, documents and artefacts with per sonal meaning. An example podcast, created in advance, was played to whet appetites for further recording and editing.

At the Galleries Shopping Centre we were able to record some short “vox-pop” interviews. At Washington Wetlands Centre, Millennium Centre and North Biddick Social Club, it was possible to find spaces to record more in-depth interviews

At Washington MIND, the portable scanner was in heavy use as a couple of participants had brought in a large number of fascinating images.

The roadshows at Arts Centre Washington and Washington MIND featured presentations by local historians

The Millennium Centre and North Biddick Social Club proved fruitful ground for participants to try out some new photomontage skills, while chatting about Washington past and present

At all these events, our songwriting team were on hand, listening out for interesting historical nuggets At least two of the resulting songs were inspired by comments overheard during the roadshows

We held a series of workshops on digital recording and deep listening techniques at Biddick Primary School for 80 children from year s 5 and 6 The children heard podcast excerpts and went outdoor s to undertak e deep listening to the “found sounds” in their environment, such as birdsong, footsteps, back ground traffic noise and the sound of a stick dragged across railings They took turns to interview each other about their li ves in Washington and to talk about the elements of local history that interest them Immediate feedback from staff was that the children are k een to do further acti vities on a podcasting theme. “This was a fantastic session for our children. They were engaged, enthusiastic and loved learning a new skill Jude and Grace had a brilliant rapport with the children, acti vities were age appropriate and they talk ed passionately about history, computing etc ”

Roadshow highlights: the opportunity to record stories from former coal miner s; hearing memories of the aviary in The Galleries shopping centre; tales of the many rumour s of escaped wildlife from Lambton Lion Park; as well as the participant who came to the Wetlands Centre roadshow to show and talk about her college dissertation from the 1970s which was about the new town’s development, architecture and social context.

At the roadshows we chatted with over 10 0 people, with lots of stories shared and discussed Some passer s-by who we didn’ t get a chance to talk to directly have subsequently attended other events, particularly to record stories with the podcasting group One piece of feedback from a roadshow participant summed up the experience: “Drop a stone in a pond –watch the ripples spread” .

The Ballad Of The Crocodile
Tommy Anderson
The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass Fabric banner
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The Ballad

The primary aim is that Washington residents and listener s further afield will have a greater awareness and a lasting record of significant moments across 60 year s of the new town

This is what we created and what has developed from the project:

● 10 radio ballad themed podcasts, developed from a wide range of oral history interviews

- The Town of Roundabouts

- The Underpasses

- “Howay Jimmy” – the American connection

- The Curly Wurly Bridge – iconic architecture in the new town

- Ghosts and Witches – some Washington myths and legends

- Mining and Other Industries

- Women’s Education

- Nightlife/Leisure/Shopping

- Music and Arts

- Nature and Green Spaces

- A longer “omnibus” edition of the podcast

● Workshop plans, acti vities and resources about oral history and podcast interviewing, deep listening, sound recording and creati ve approaches to making podcast ballads

● A major legacy of the project is that the community podcasting group intend to continue to meet weekly and work together to produce their own shows They also wish to encourage wider listening to podcasts, especially among older people who may lack the digital skills to access them

● 10 songs which have been specially written by David Brewis and Paige Temperley as well as young songwriter s who attended workshops at Arts Centre Washington in August 2024 Each song has been created in response to the oral history interviews that provided the backbone of each podcast

• Two poems by award-winning poet Nasim Rebecca Asl written in response to the oral histories we collected.

● Li ve performances at Washington 60, at our Series 1 launch, and a showcase performance at Arts Centre Washington in March 2025

• An audio CD of original songs written for the project

● 10 artworks including a large-scale banner displayed at the Washington 60 celebration event on 20th July 2024. These pieces use photomontage techniques, combining images from historic collections and modern day location shots

● A touring exhibition of the artworks at community venues

● A 104 page publication showcasing a selection of highlights from the project

KEy EvENTS

20th July 2024

Washington 60

Northumbria Playing Fields

To mark this landmark anni ver sary, the Washington Area Committee hosted a festi valstyle celebration for Washington residents at the Northern Area Playing Fields. This was a venue resonant with local memories of sports events and the Kite Festi val The festi val featured a di ver sity of exhibitor s, performer s, community and heritage stalls, family acti vities, li ve music, theatre and street performer s.

The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass got its fir st opportunity to share project progress to Washington’s residents, starting with the hugely colourful new banner created by Tommy Ander son using over 10 0 images of Washington, past and present On the stage, David Brewis and Paige Temperley each performed two of their new songs, while the podcast team introduced a demo episode made up of excerpts from the podcasts under development And in the heritage marquee, visitor s were invited to listen to podcasts and oral histories on a variety of vintage audio player s provided by We Mak e Culture CIC

The event was a whole-hearted celebration of the new town and its history, an excellent showcase for this project and a fabulous opportunity to engage and enthuse the wider community, as well as to gather some fascinating interviews with local residents and the festi val’s headline performer, Martin Stephenson Martin shares his recollections of finding his feet as an independent young adult in Fatfield have made their way into the podcast episode “The Curly Wurly Bridge” .

19th November 2024

Washington Heritage Partnership Networking Event

Washington Town Centre Librar y –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

This event attracted participants from across Washington’s cultural and heritage landscape A pack ed programme featured presentations on various developments within Washington’s heritage networks but the major focus was a showcase of The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass.

Guests were able to view a preview exhibition of Tommy Ander son’s wonderful photomontage art, showing the large-scale pieces created to date. Participant comments highlighted that these artworks are not only things of beauty but also something of a visual treasure hunt as visitor s pored through the collaged images to locate specific landmarks and sites of memory

The event was also the official launch of our fir st podcast series and featured playback of the series trailer, and a performance by David Brewis of one of his specially commissioned songs, his tribute to both Washington’s infrastructure and to the style of the great Jak e Thackray: “Underpass”

Feedback was overwhelmingly positi ve, however discussions with participants raised the ongoing need for our community podcasting group to help address technical and perceptual barrier s to podcast listening among many local residents, particularly older people.

13th March 2025

The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass Celebration Event Arts Centre Washington –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

This year-long project concluded at Arts Centre Washington with an exhibition of Tommy Ander son’s photomontage pieces and a li ve performance by David Brewis, Paige Temperley and young songwriter s The event also featured podcast excerpts and mark ed the launch of fi ve new episodes in the Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass series

Additionally, the event launched a CD of the songs and this publication, incorporating artwork, images, transcripts, articles, poetry and song lyrics documenting the entire project It includes material that was not part of the podcasts, exhibition, or performance, as well as articles from special contributor s to this publication

The event was a great occasion for contributor s to celebrate Washington New Town together.

The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass
The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

COmmUNITy ENgagEmENT

Washington Heritage Partner ship and Arts Centre Washington provided a wide range of contacts and groups Excellent links with Washington History Society, the local U3As, the Friends of Washington Old Hall and other heritage and cultural groups meant that we could reach many people already interested in historical topics But the project itself and the local publicity it generated took on a life of its own as people wanted to tell their stories for the podcast and contribute photos for the artworks

Of cour se, the roadshows helped us reach a wider public, and this was bolstered by a series of workshops in schools; talks and hands-on acti vities with local community groups; networking events and our presence at the Washington 60 festi val, Washington Carni val, Springwell 1940s Week end and the lik e

Key to our approach was an awareness that many people believe that their stories are ordinary but in fact they very often are extraordinary We would chat to visitor s and participants on the basis of “Do you remember ?” and usually in the details of the telling, we would find out absolutely fascinating things about that indi vidual’s past and the collecti ve history of the new town

There was the interviewee who talk ed about working on the most intricate of watch parts in the T imex factory, next door to another team working on gyroscopes for the NASA space programme, and who then mentioned in passing that she’d left an abusi ve husband in her 70s. There was the Development Corporation employee who remembered taking the dinghy across the sewage “lagoon” in the early days of the town’s redevelopment. There were the teenager s who wrote their GCSE revision on the walls of an underpass There was the jok er who pretended that Fatfield’s concrete crocodile was actually an escapee from Lambton Lion Park. There were the women who addressed the lack of extended family networks in a new town by setting up new playgroups and educational opportunities. There were ghost stories, and myths to be busted, and gossip about “nook y” in Development Corporation showhomes. There were photographs of people’s ancestor s in the old villages, and aerial images of the new roads under construction. There were images of space-age dining at the Washington Services and memories of the once-futuristic shopping experience that was Savacentre It was evident that most of the participants were quite unaware of how fascinating their memories are. We are proud to have empowered them to tell their stories

NExT STEpS

We hope that this project will have several lasting legacies:

● Our Washington Community Podcasting Group intends to continue to meet weekly, to produce new content and endeavour to develop future projects and obtain funding as necessary.

● The Washington Community Podcasting Group has also identified the need to develop advice and support in how to access and listen to podcasts Older people in particular experience barrier s to this and a ‘how to’ guide plus a podcast listening club are in development.

● The existing podcasts that mak e up The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass will remain online, and be made available on YouTube as the most widely accessible platform.

● We will seek to grow the podcast’s audience by reaching out to networks

- nationally (eg residents in other new towns and groups interested in architecture and town planning)

- worldwide, for example building on existing links with Washington DC and other twinned towns in France and Germany.

● Explore further research and development opportunities that involve older people and intergenerational projects in heritage podcasting

● Explore opportunities to share podcasting skills with other local history and heritage groups

SOmE STaNdOUT mOmENTS

● We were thrilled to be invited into the recording studios at the Uni ver sity of Sunderland (the home of Spark FM) to record continuity pieces for each podcast After months of location recording using digital handsets, it was fascinating to have the opportunity to use professional kit

● We were overwhelmed by conver sations with so many people who shared their stories and enthusiasm for Washington and its history. It has been a pri vilege to help share these stories more widely and to knit them together into coherent podcasts, songs and artworks

● The thrill of sharing interviews with the songwriting team and having these turned into wonderfully evocati ve songs reflecting people’s words and feelings. Even better when they are woven into the podcasts, as well as to hear these songs performed li ve!

● Learning new skills in the digital world

● Attending an intensi ve oral history training and development day at Uni ver sity of Sunderland featuring a guest lecture by Dr Siobhan Stevenson.

● Hearing the fir st podcast series go li ve.

● Seeing the banner holding pride of place at Washington 60

● Seeing the town’s walkways in a different light during the “Underpass-Overpass” tour

● Watching groups of primary school pupils shut their eyes and tune in to their environments as they learned about deep listening and recording for podcasts.

● The sense of community in celebrating memories of life in the new town Our particular experiences may be different, but they all go together to mak e a collecti ve sense of place

Tommy Anderson
Washington 60 Triptych pt 1
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The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

WaShINgTON NEW TOWN

Washington New Town was founded on 24 July 1964. It was the twentieth New Town in Great Britain to be established under the New Towns Act passed by the Labour government of Clement Attlee in 1946.

Many of the early new towns were intended relieve population pressure in London and Glasgow; other s to provide housing for industrial work er s (as at Newton Aycliffe and Peterlee) New towns were intended to be selfcontained communities, built at some distance from major towns and cities. Washington was different Being so close to Tyneside and Wear side, it was intended that people should travel into and out of the new town for work. It was also intended be a stimulus to economic growth in the region, and as a showpiece of modern housing, construction techniques, and “quality of urban development generally”

The town would be planned for a population of 70-80,0 0 0 (around 20,0 0 0 people already li ved in the designated area).

Durham County Council by the early 1960s was pressing the government to create a new town in the Washington area This would, it believed, help stop unplanned sprawl of existing urban areas, provide an economic growth point, and help deal with problems of deindustrialisation The attempt failed, because the proposed new town was seen as being too close to the Tyne and Wear conurbations The council was planning to go ahead with an ‘unofficial’ new town independent of government approval when, in 1963, the situation changed Worried about increasing unemployment in NE England, prime minister Harold Macmillan gave special responsibility for the region to government

minister Lord Hailsham, who made a muchpublicised visit to the north east, and in 1964 published a report which included proposals for the building of the A1(M) motorway, improvements to the A19, and between those two roads the creation of a new town at Washington. Within a short time Washington was designated a New Town under the 1946 Act and a development corporation set up to bring it about.

Plans 1 and 2

The development corporation commissioned Richard Llewelyn-Davies, professor of architecture at Uni ver sity College London, to draw up a master plan for the new town, and an interim plan was produced in 1965. This was very road-dominated: the town was covered by a grid of roads, creating blocks approximately half a mile square, which would contain residential areas or industrial estates The residential areas – or villages – would have a primary school, local shops, pub, community centre and play space, and a network of footpaths around the village and connecting with other areas; through traffic was discouraged The housing was designed in differing styles for each location, to avoid monotony Much was designed by the development corporation’s own architects, but other practices were used: for example, Albany village was designed by Ryder & Yates

The town would be served by a new town centre with shopping centre, bus station, library, sports centre, police station and other ci vic facilities

The thinking behind this initial plan formed the basis of the plan for Milton Keynes However, the plan was greatly revised in Washington as analysis had showed that the originallyproposed grid of roads would cause traffic congestion. Instead, a revised plan –subsequently adopted – created a ‘supergrid’ –two east-west and two north-south expressways, creating large blocks approximately one mile square Secondary roads would serve the eighteen planned villages – often several to a ‘block’ – and the industrial estates In an attempt to mak e the new town more navigable, villages were grouped together into numbered ‘districts ’

Outcomes

When in 1964, Washington still had four working coal mines and a chemical works, and the corporation was able to clean up the derelict land after each of these closed New industries were encouraged, and small starter units provided for rental By 1970 Washington had a wide range of enterprises, in areas including retail distribution, paper and pack aging, watch manufacture, ventilation and refrigeration, electronics, records, switch gear, weighing machinery, machine tools – and motor manufacture The Clan Motor Co produced snazzy, sporty car s, with fibreglass bodies and Hillman engines, but closed in the mid 70s. In 1984 Nissan UK began building its plant on the outskirts of Washington, producing its fir st vehicle, a Nissan Bluebird, in mid 1986

Economic development benefitted from the completion of the A1(M) in 1970, the A194(M) in 1975 and the A19 in 1978. However, the town’s good road connections were not matched by rail links: the area’s two railway stations, at Washington and Usworth, closed in 1963-64, and the Leamside railway line running along the town’s eastern boundary has been closed for several decades

The expressways crossing the new town contributed to its image as a futuristic place This was underlined by the modern architecture of the houses and factories, and the design of the town centre – in particular The Galleries

shopping centre, opened in 1974 and the fir st indoor shopping centre in the north east

The town benefitted from extensi ve landscaping and the laying out of several parks, particularly the Princess Anne Park near the town centre and the Sir James Steel Park along the Ri ver Wear, which is adjacent to the Washington Wetland Centre, established by the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust in 1975 Care was also tak en to preserve important parts of Washington’s built heritage, in the form of the Old Hall and buildings of the Washington F Pit

Review: Washington 60 years on Washington is no longer run by an appointed development corporation The corporation was wound up in 1988, when it was thought that its aims had been largely fulfilled. The local authority, Washington Urban District Council, had been merged with the Borough (now City) of Sunderland in 1974. Washington today is a town with a di ver se economic base It has a population of 51,318 in 2021, somewhat below the target set when the new town was planned However, it is seen by many residents as a good place to li ve.

Washington-raised writer and architect George Clark e wrote “the landscaping was so good throughout the village that we were surrounded by trees and greenery all day long. 60 year s after being planted Washington is now thick with trees and mature greenery Everything about the New Town design was revolutionary All of us could play safely as public spaces were designed to prioritise people and not car s… There were no tall and ugly 1960s tower s, just low rise, beautifully designed and affordable homes. If we took those same houses… into the 21st century and made them efficient and sustainable with heat pumps, high levels of insulation, triple glazing and solar panels you would instantly have a revolutionary eco-town ”

It has become an important industrial and commercial centre for the north east, and could well be described as the hinge of the Tyne-Wear conurbation, linking Tyneside and Wear side

Tommy Anderson
Washington 60 Triptych pt 2
Photography / Photomontage 100cm x 50cm
The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

INSIdE ThE pEdESTrIaN UNdErpaSS

A common feature of many towns and cities in the UK – including Washington – is the pedestrian underpass (or subway as it is otherwise known). A pedestrian underpass is a tunnel beneath a road or railway line that allow pedestrians (and sometimes cyclists) to go from one side to the other The rationale for pedestrian underpasses can vary, but it is usually to increase the safety of pedestrians without slowing down traffic

I am fascinated by pedestrian underpasses, especially those in Washington This is because, as a social scientist working at Northumbria Uni ver sity, I have studied people’s experiences of pedestrian underpasses in Newcastle upon Tyne. When walking through Washington’s pedestrian underpasses, I often compare them to the ones in Newcastle As I am comparing them in my head, I often wonder whether people who work or li ve in Washington have different experiences of, and different feelings about, pedestrian underpasses from people who work or li ve Newcastle I also wonder whether residents of Washington feel differently about the prospect of using pedestrian underpasses in Newcastle – or even Sunderland – than they do about using the ones in Washington

You might think pedestrian underpasses are just tunnels, so their location mak es no difference to people’s experience or feelings about them I suspect location probably mak es a difference, however Even if you consider the

history and design of pedestrian underpasses in Newcastle and Washington, there are notable differences. Pedestrian underpasses were k ey features in the initial design of the Washington new town development Most of Washington’s pedestrian underpasses seem to have been built soon after each other, and the majority have a remark ably similar design In contrast, the pedestrian underpasses in Newcastle were installed, here and there, over many decades (mostly between the 1960s and 1990s) into an existing urban infrastructure, and the design of Newcastle’s pedestrian underpasses varies a lot more than those in Washington. I’m told that none of the underpasses in Washington have been removed, whereas several in Newcastle have been filled in – the latest being one of the tunnels beneath the Swan House roundabout in the city centre The removal of pedestrian underpasses in Newcastle has usually stemmed from concerns about them being infrequently used, repeatedly vandalised, ‘hang outs ’ for male youths, and some being regularly flooding

Being an ‘art fan’, I have also noticed that there is a difference between Newcastle and Washington in the use of commissioned underpass art Newcastle appear s to have had more instances of commissioned art placed appearing in its underpasses than Washington. Most of Newcastle’s underpasses do not have commissioned art in them currently, but many have been the recipient of it at points over the last fi ve decades For instance, in the late 1970s

and early 1980s, an organisation called Town Teacher engaged with Newcastle school children to design and install not only murals in the Swan House roundabout but also mosaics in the Jesmond Road underpass (the former has long since disappeared while the latter is still there, four decades later) You may have walk ed past a mural by Colin Davies featuring six images of Alan Shearer beneath the Swan House roundabout, which disappeared recently Most recently, in West Denton – where there has been concerns about youth anti-social behaviour – two pedestrian underpasses have recently been covered in bright murals. One of these has a music theme and the other has a Newcastle theme, and in both, the artist Mark Shields enlisted local schoolchildren in the design and painting of the murals Engaging local youths in commissioned underpass art is common across the UK, and it is often seen as an inexpensi ve way of generating feelings of pride, owner ship and responsibility – feelings which could deter the participants and other s from vandalising underpasses in the future

At Northumbria Uni ver sity, we conducted a large survey about pedestrian underpasses –filled in by 2,092 people who have either li ved, work ed or studied in Newcastle – and we also interviewed 50 people who have used or look ed after the Newcastle’s pedestrian underpasses. One finding was striking: on average, women were considerably more fearful of using pedestrian underpasses than men In the survey, 69 5% of women stated that they were

usually or always apprehensi ve before entering pedestrian underpasses in comparison to 32 0% of men. Women were far more lik ely to avoid using pedestrian underpasses under certain circumstances – such as when an underpass is poorly lit or unclean, once the sun has set, or when travelling alone – and much more lik ely to use safety strategies when going through underpasses. These safety measures include checking who was in or near the underpass, looking behind them, turning the volume on their headphones down or off, speaking or pretending to speak on the phone, and holding something that can be used as a weapon. Many felt pedestrian underpasses were not safe places for women, and they were concerned about being physically or verbally assaulted inside pedestrian underpasses Would we get a similar response if we did the same survey and ask ed the same interview questions in Washington?

So, if you li ve or work in Washington and you are reading this, tak e a moment to think about your attitudes towards, and experiences of, Washington’s pedestrian underpasses Do you use them often? Do you ever avoid them or use safety strategies when going through them? Does your gender or age, for instance, influence the way you feel about and use them? How could the pedestrian underpasses in Washington be improved? Should commissioned art be part of the improvements? Should the pedestrian underpasses in Washington be replaced?

Tommy Anderson
Underpass 1
Photography and digital illustration
30cm x 30cm
Tommy Anderson Underpass 2
Photography and digital illustration
30cm x 30cm
The Ballad Of The Crocodile

STaNLEy BONNar: ON ThE OrIgINS Of CONCrETE SpECIES

Throughout this podcast journey, we have tried to uncover who commissioned and created the crocodiles and hippos in our town. While we were unable to obtain information about Washington’s crocodiles, we did manage to contact Stanley Bonnar, who was a new town artist for Glenrothes, East-Kilbride and Stonehouse in the 1970s. His work unquestionably served as the inspiration for our concrete crocodiles.

In the early 1970’s you were a New Town artist. Were there certain principles you had to follow in line with the development corporation?

I studied sculpture at art college, and had become fascinated by the ways that simple forms can relate to each other. I thought it beautiful how the relati ve angles of the forms could seem to energise the space between them. I guess I was just learning to be a sculptor

When you move around a great sculpture, or in among trees in a woodland, you really get a feeling for the space between things, but I wanted somehow to express that movement as a series of moments in a static work – so that time could be brought into it. So, I suspended a long line of 4ft x 2ft rectangles ‘flying’ through a beech woodland I also suspended a curved line of spheres that almost, but not quite touched the ground, and I suspended model aircraft in the most beautiful way I could – all to emphasise space and time.

After leaving college, I was offered the 1 year post graduate position of Assistant Town Artist in Glenrothes New Town, and it was during this period that I made the concrete hippos. As I look back now, in 2025, I realise that the group of hippos were an extension of my interest in placing things carefully in time and space. Ok, I couldn’ t suspend things on a permanent basis as I had done for my diploma show at college; and there were other pressing needs for this newly built environment that people were moving into. I guess these were the ‘principles ’ of your question, that guided my idea for the hippos artwork

• There were only so many house types available for even the most imaginati ve architects and town planner s to work with when building a New Town The idea of employing a Town Artist was to involve a per son who look ed at things differently – someone who was interested in physical and social contexts, and who could mak e artworks drawing on these for inspiration – but in a way that somehow always asks the question, ‘What is this place?’ – inviting people to question and to answer, each in their own way.

• There are many ways to do that You might be interested in the deep history of a place and mak e reference to that in a work You might draw on those things that had always inspired you as a human being, and mak e reference to that in an artwork (knowing that other s would also relate to those things). You might simply and subtly respond to the shapes of the buildings and the natural features – perhaps to ask some question about language (art is language which interrogates language, I do believe ) Or you might want to try and invent an artwork that children would enjoy playing on!

• But the most important requirement was that a sense of place could be inspired for people li ving and working in the New Town, so that when people might say for example, ’Meet You at the Hippos ’ , everybody would know where that was! But a sense of place does not come easy – it usually tak es centuries to develop; and I don’ t know if what we did as artists in New Towns actually helped create a sense of place

What was the experience of working for the New Town Development corporations? How much creative freedom did you have?

My experience of working for Glenrothes Development Corporation was brief but positi ve My experiences working as Town Artist for East Kilbride and Stonehouse Development Corporation (1974-77) were complex. On the one hand, I had discovered that I could mak e concrete animal sculptures, and quickly set to work making the elephant, baboon and crocodile forms – which I hoped would work in the social context of a New Town; but I am a very creati ve per son, and making concrete animals quickly began to do my head in! (In fact, I distinctly remember working on the plaster of paris original for the crocodile, and hating surform-ing all those knobbly bits on the back!) My main interest was to be working with the architects who were designing the New Town of Stonehouse in South Lanarkshire.

I wanted to be involved with them as they considered what were to be the new housing layouts, and they were gracious enough to let me contribute! You see, I had always had that fascination with form and space. And here was the promise of creating a real sense of place

So, if the government of the day had not cancelled the Stonehouse New Town project, I imagine that my career would have been there until I retired, but actually what happened was that I could see no future for me as an artist in the already well-developed East Kilbride New Town, and so I resigned from Town Art in order to be creati ve and to think about the meaning of art in public space. That is how my life has been spent

What inspired you to create groups of African animals ambling through housing estates?

African animals never amble through housing estates. I want to quote a short essay which I wrote in 2020. This is what inspired me to mak e the hippos, although I could not then have put it into words.

If the task of art is to challenge the status quo and to shak e the complacency of language, how is this task accomplished by the hippos? And if the purpose of the challenge is to modify language so that justice might prevail, how is that purpose fulfilled by the hippos? Let us look at the above photograph and imagine that the hippos are not there; we can see that what’s left is perhaps quite unremark able ‘just the corner of a house, some concrete block-work, a wooden fence and a bush’

These words which I’ve just used are so easily said because they belong to the world they describe – which is the same world as I li ve in. For example, if I li ve in the house on the corner, I might say that I li ve in a two-storey house with a roughcast finish, opposite a wooden fence and beside a bush These are the objects with which I mak e sense of my environment and I don’ t necessarily think of them as art. They all fit together to form the world at the corner of the street in which I li ve, and I don’ t normally gi ve them another thought.

The problem is that the words we use to describe our worlds do not sit comfortably with who we are as humane beings They cannot, for worlds are the means by which we advance the human cause at the expense of other s – those unnamed things, awkward and unpredictable but ultimately categorised and subjugated in the dominion of speech We must do this, we have no choice, it is the way of the world, but that it has returned to haunt us in the cloak of so many environmental emergencies, means that we must try to speak more thoughtfully with the awkwardness of things and not about them as the ideal objects of our dominion

And that is surely where the indomitable hippos come in. At least inscrutable, perhaps sullen or even angry, they are not the subjugated objects of our world-at-the-corner, to be made diaphanous and ideal in the breath of speech. They are the avatar s of li ving creatures, and the embodiment of an idea Hippos do not come around corner s in Glenrothes, there is no predicate for this mode of being – the sentence that would contain them has already been destroyed. That these concrete hippos are dislocated from their usual habitat is their strength and meaning. They are the thing, the otherness which demands that we justify our will to dominate them – the Glenrothes hippos stand for linguistic justice. But if all this is true, would one hippo not have done the job just as well as fi ve hippos? Well not really because ‘it’ would more easily become the object (of subjugation) whereas with fi ve, one cannot exactly be sure of where one’s attention is to aim. There is no such thing as ‘a hippo’ – and that is the very point These are reiterations of the moment, and because of that they are not merely sited in an environment but rather they are part of it –the part that creates the work of environmental art. Each has a slightly different under-standing with the house, the fence, the bush and the block-work, and that’s what sets up the artwork to be greater than the sum of its parts.

So what is this art – so important that it has tak en the greater part of my life just to scratch at its surface? It is about the nature of things and about asking the specific question, do things exist in time and space as the objects of language, or are things actually the understanding that creates its own time and space? I think that quantum entanglement shows the latter to be more exact than the former.

Each hippo (or crocodile) is a moment of understanding-with the other s that surround it (including our self) – a moment of justice for the objects of the world The hippos release us to our common thing-hood – now we just have to comprehend what that actually means

However, the crocodiles got to be incorporated into Washington New Town they were undoubtedly descendants of your work as New Town artist in Glenrothes, East Kilbride and Stonehouse. We know residents of Washington hold a lot of affection for concrete crocodiles and hippos Did you imagine (when you created them) that your work would be part of so many childhoods and woven into the memories of the town’s residents?

There is no answer to that Just the overwhelming joy I now feel to be so pri vileged – even although I hated all that sanding! Thank you.

I notice your current practice is environmental. If there was a similar post created now in 2025 what might you create as a town artist?

I have spent my life thinking about people and place, always delving, delving into the greater detail of what that actually means. I was surely pri vileged to do this, to be presented with an infinite conundrum, that I could resolve ultimately only by looking towards science for answer s, and in particular to quantum mechanics

In the practise of Environmental Art (a k a Art in social contexts) there is an axiom which is attributed to the late great John Latham – that ‘the context is half the work’ So it really matter s that what you do has meaning for the people and the place

In later year s I made works in Dundee, Glasgow, Perth and for other places in Scotland, and instincti vely followed Latham’s principle (which I passed on to students as a lecturer in Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art) But with my kind of headspace, it was never going to be enough to follow a principle, I had to delve beneath, to disclose the roots So, what exactly is this ‘context’ that’s going to be half the work?

Well, that’s where quantum mechanics comes in – and there are problems You’ll know that what happens when quantum physicists

measure particles which are extremely small (Planck length) scale, they appear to be entangled; we call that ‘quantum entanglement’, where a particle can appear to have been in two places at once - until it’s measured

So, it gradually dawned on me that if something can appear to be in two places at once, then ‘our existence as different things in time and space’ cannot be our actual state

So, what is this prior state? I call it the singularity of under-standing, for which no thing is actually ‘different’ from the other, but for which the relatedness of things is one of under-standing (I call the singularity of understanding – Haven – because it sounds lik e Heaven!)

So, in my head, ‘things’ are actually environments of Haven And I have a mathematical model which might resolve the so called ‘paradoxes ’ of quantum physics; it’s written in visual and not notational symbols Here’s a couple of moments from decades of thought...

So, in answer to the question, if I were now to be the Town Artist of Washington, I would say to you all, mak e that which is symbolic, not representational Because by using symbols, guided by emotion, you speak of what you actually are, in the moment be coming It is your truth

Ballad

Photomontage

80cm x 40cm

Tommy Anderson Housing
The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

WOrKINg fOr WaShINgTON

I’ve never been lost in Washington Looking at the Washington map with its roads and roundabouts, estate plans and number s, I thought ‘yep that’s how a town should be laid out. I had started my working life at Telford New Town Development Corporation; though larger it was the same age as Washington, and was being built out in a near identical manner, but in 1979 I began in my new role as Research Officer at Washington Development Corporation.

My fir st day was amazing; invited up to boardroom for a meeting with the Chairman Prof Grigor McClelland, and my boss, Commercial Director Norman Batchelor. The Prof drove me to the Arts Centre to meet the leading businesses of Washington at their monthly lunch. Then back to Usworth Hall where consultants from Cooper s and Lybrand were flying up to meet and brief me! Did they have the right blok e? As I walk ed down the stair s with the General Manager, Steve Holley, a graphic artist was coming up with the copy for the Quick er By Quango ad for the Financial T imes; a riposte to the Thatcher government who wanted to close quangos. ‘Wow. Got to work for this guy’

I landed in an instant social life. I played 5-aside at the new all-weather pitch at Biddick School, and then went to the pub afterwards Decades later I drink with same lads every Tuesday night Another bunch I fell in with were junior lecturer s at Sunderland and Newcastle Polys I enjoyed many events at the Arts Centre, especially the Davey Lamp Folk Club

The Corporation had a very acti ve social club with a bar on site with a snook er table, that had been rescued from for the Usworth Colliery Conservati ve Club, and a dartboard There were parties, BBQs (sometimes at the nearby Strang Riding Centre For The Disabled), brewery trips, pie and peas supper s, car treasure hunts, footy tournaments, and sponsored runner s in the GNR

I’ve always tak en part in pub quizzes in and around Washington; indeed, I met my wife Christine at one in a Penshaw pub. Back in 1980 my mates and I entered a team in the Sunderland Echo League, and our home venue was the North Biddick CIU club at Fatfield. I had my fir st car, a Mark 1 Escort, nick ed from there It’s the vehicle I learnt to maintain and repair car s It was yellow with a fetching brown wing After not drinking any alcohol at the Corporation’s Christmas Eve party in the Black Bush, Washington Village, I was turning, at low speed, into my car port at Albany flats when I nick ed a concrete pillar. There was hardly any damage until I touched the wing and it unzipped along a rust line and fell off!

I still have goods I bought from the Phillips staff shop next door to Usworth Hall. Lots of the goods included some that were only available on the continent I had a Vision20 0 0 video recorder on which I recorded the 1985 Li ve Aid concert; incompatible with VHS and Betamax!

As it was I who responded to larger commercial enquiries the fir st Nissan questionnaire landed on my desk However, I was also managing the fir st two word processor s in the Corporation –clunk y metal desk with tiny green screens and single floppy dri ves, and it was decided to use them for the Tyne and Wear bid, the fir st ever in the North East That’s how I ended up as one of the eight, three authority, negotiator s from 1981 to 1984.

Nissan’s fir st visit to Sunderland Airport was on 25 April 1981. Having titi vated the whole town we wok e up to snow! However, as it was their last visit they were demob happy, and I have memories of the regional director of the DTI exchanging snowballs with the Nissan delegation.

We deck ed out Usworth Hall with Japanese decorations for Nissan, which really impressed a Japanese director of YKK Zips, who turned up unannounced and signed up for a warehouse the same day!

Nissan would turn up at very short notice. However, when they did in February 1984 the two other Washington negotiators were checking them out in Smyrna Tennessee, so I had to host them I was supposed to fly out on a skiing holiday, but it was the days when I could flog it in the pub that night for a couple of hundred quid

When Nissan choose Sunderland Airport I just carried out two more tasks for them One was to log with all the non-car parts enquiries that flooded in The very fir st one was from a local window cleaner wanting the contract for their new offices! As with every other enquiry I ask ed

him to send in contact details and any brochures which would be handed over to Nissan once they were up and running A second task was to find local supplier s for them Their fir st request was to find someone to tak e away the wooden crates the fir st 50,0 0 0 Bluebirds came in

I helped out at Nissan supplier presentations at the George Washington hotel When they set out their open-book policies, no contracts, annual reductions in prices, statistical process control and so on Half the companies there were excited at the certainty of long-term supply and profits, but many were terrified of Nissan crawling all over their operations.

I brought a Sunderland Poly outpost to Washington; fir st in Usworth Hall, then Armstrong House Legally it was still part of Sunderland Council, so I secured a European Social Fund grant three year s running for them – then the biggest ever in the North East Eurocrats in Brussels were easier to deal with than Whitehall ci vil servants. The DoE got me to advise nearby local authorities, but the core advise was fill the forms in!

I had several trips, that lasted weeks, to the Cooper s and Lybrand offices in Washington DC. I made endless calls trying to fix up appointments with US Corporations for colleagues who followed on. It meant explaining Washington’s history to sceptical American executi ves When I made these calls from Usworth Hall it meant staying there until after midnight I was the point man for other business consultants the Corporation hired as it was I who wrote the briefs.

I took a call form an enquirer asking for three factories to produce electronics, clothing and food goods – bit of an odd mix He also ask ed after housing for k ey work er s ‘Sure, for how many?’ Not the 4 or 5 I might have expected but hundreds, all in the same neighbourhood! He was from the Maharishi Foundation, looking to relocate their entire community It caused panic when they called the housing department In recent year s I’ve learnt from someone who was part of the foundation that they had hawked themselves round several new towns and ended up in Sk elmer sdale, where they still have a presence

I managed production of industrial sector reports, and the one on Leisure was the data Brendan Foster needed to per suade Nik e to locate in Washington Another success came from an after-call to a City contact who was merging a US and UK company. I jumped in a plane down to the UK labs in Essex, and that instant response swung the decision for Applied Opticals (now OpSec) to move to Crowther, where they are to this day

Washington had the fir st business library in the Town Centre library where I spent hour s trawling through specialist business directories and reports I fir st went online in about 1985, before the internet started, by dialling into a service called Tell Me to download business and commercial information I no longer needed to buy fat business directories every year.

The Corporation got extensions from 1982 to 1985 and finally to 1988. As the Chair of the trade union in the last 3 year s I represented staff in disciplinary cases and negotiated staff job transfer s, pensions or redundancies as the

staff ran down from 30 0 office staff to zero When I met my opposite number s in other new towns we were all cagey about revealing our local deals They were staggered when they found out Washington had the best.

The Corporation controlled all commercial visits to the town Other bodies such as the North of England Development Company (NEDC) or DTI would deli ver guests to Usworth Hall or to a lay-by for transfer to our own minicoach We recei ved 70% of all enquiries that came to the North East because we could deli ver an instant tour, lunch in our own restaurant, factory, office and company visits, and a documented presentation with a costed deal that might include k ey work er housing We could summon our own planner s, architects and engineer s, and, most often, other from the Job Centre, the Training Agency and utility services. We hosted companies in the somewhat limited venues of the 1980s, including The George Washington Hotel, hotels in Durham and Newcastle, and footy games at Rok er Park Everything Nissan needed we did for other investor s; for example, temporary offices (often in Usworth Hall), a recruitment programme with the Washington Job Centre, paid accountants to prepare financial incenti ve bids, and pre-registration in hotels

The most complete lock, stock and barrel move was Subbuteo, who relocated plant, equipment and people from Kent. But 6 months later they were tak en over by Waddingtons, who closed the plant and moved production to Leeds! They recei ved a hefty bill to repay all the public assistance they had recei ved

Ballad

pOdCaSTINg

Podcast co-production and how we built a community of heritage podcaster s
Caroline Mitchell

The workshops and podcast production sessions were designed and deli vered by a team who had skills and experience in oral history work, musicianship, sound recording, podcasting and community media facilitation and research During the relati vely short life of the project so far, we developed a new approach to interpreting heritage through creati ve and inclusi ve podcasting Week-by-week we explored new ways of production: working between professional and volunteer musicians, radio/podcast producers and local/oral historians. This model of co-production is still evolving and with good communication between all partner s, we have made ballad podcasts to tight deadlines so that they can be heard by people interested in the stories of Washington New Town locally and further afield.

This holistic, creati ve and inclusi ve approach to podcasting is influenced by decades of research and practice in community radio training which promotes tools and resources for people who don’ t usually have access to or ‘a voice’ in the media People are supported to learn about, and easily access, digital skills and media platforms on a regular basis This approach is influenced by ‘action oriented’ approaches to media education which has a central ethos of learning whilst making media in informal and inclusi ve community settings, through peer and intergenerational support, through working in social partner ships – including with local history and heritage organizations and working on real projects with feedback from peer s and listener s

“a very efficient way to connect with the present and past as a resident of Washington. a process of refreshing the memories and associations of for mer days. What next?
“It was a nice experience ...lots of potential to archive people’s stories.”
“By end of session I had downloaded necessary software and was able to carry out basic functions”

As we work towards new models of podcasting practice where indi viduals have editorial and creati ve control of their stories there have been li vely and fruitful discussions in the community podcasting group about the content and themes for each episode, ethical interviewing and consent practices, authenticity and accents, collecti ve and indi vidual stories and how editing and other narrati ve and creati ve techniques can shape, layer, change and add to stories There is no doubt from the feedback and evaluations of our workshops that a wide range of people have voiced their stories of Washington’s New Town development The sessions have served an important media education purpose about podcasting, particularly for older member s of the group People feel these experiences have led to people having a stronger media voice acquiring new confidence in production and technical skills through the support of facilitator s.

One important realization, voiced by one of the regular participants was “the ongoing need for digital inclusion” The group identified some real barrier s for over-60s to digital inclusion including under standing exactly what a podcast is, where to locate them; how to use podcast apps on mobile phones and tablets and how to mak e podcasts accessible for those who were hard of hearing

Ballad Of
“(The) walk was an absolute delight every step of the way. pleasure shared.”
“It felt really good to share our podcast with people and hear their responses. ”
The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass
“Excellent day at the University hearing about various projects that bring the voice of people to a wider audience. Stories of communities and individuals archived for future generations.”

The Washington community podcasting group brought together local residents who had deep knowledge of people li ving, working and connected to Washington New Town at different stages of its development. There were experts in social, local and town planning history, member s of faith and U3A groups, people interested in oral history, natural history, feminist history and the arts We are learning more about how the podcasting group itself is building a community of podcasting practice This happens in stages – people join the group out of curiosity to find out more about heritage podcasts or come to record a specific story Then they may stay to develop their own skills and interests and to contribute specialist knowledge and li ved experiences and to enjoy the convi vial and focused discussions about Washington past present and future

Older member s of the group have been interested to learn more about the benefits of listening to and making podcasts. They are compiling a guide for senior s so that they can access podcasts more easily Podcast inclusion became a theme to be addressed through combining promotion and playback of the podcasts with a step by step ‘how to listen and produce’ guide with groups around Washington and beyond The plans for the podcast group to meet beyond the funded period of the project, to listen to more podcasts and continue to produce podcasts of relevance to their li ves in and around Washington is a testament to the model of co-production and community building developed in the Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass podcasts.

The Ballad Of The Crocodile
“as someone who is passionate about social history I found the content very interesting . The session was also very interactive.”
“(It) has given me significant knowledge to produce stories on my own ”

Further reading

Charles Park er Trust archi ve about the BBC producer and the making of the radio ballads series: www cpatrust org uk/charlespark er

Günnel, T. (20 06) Action Oriented Media Pedagogy: Theory and Practice” , in Peter M. Lewis and Susan Jones (eds ) From the Margins to the Cutting Edge: Community Media and Empowerment, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc. pp. 41-65.

Heritage Lottery Fund Oral history good practice guidance: https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/funding/goodpractice-guidance/oral-history

Mitchell, C. and Baxter, A. (20 06). Organic Radio: The Role of Social Partner ships in Creating Community Voices” in Peter M. Lewis and Susan Jones (eds ) From the Margins to the Cutting Edge: Community Media and Empowerment, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc. pp. 69-10 0.

Mitchell, C (2012) ‘Praxis and participation in community radio training in Europe’. In Janey Gordon (ed.) Community Radio in the 21st Century Peter Lang, Bern n

Murphy, J.A. (20 07) PhD Thesis Folk on Tyne: Tyneside Culture and the Second Folk Revi val, Northumbria Uni ver sity

The Ballad Of The Crocodile

SONgWrITINg

Songwriting and music inspired by people’s memories

of Washington

Laura Brewis We Make Culture

Using the BBC Radio Ballads as our guiding concept, Paige Temperley and I set about creating songs inspired by the stories collected by Grace and the podcasting team. Unsurprisingly, we found a wealth of material The recorded interviews were by turns funny and powerful, shot through with poignancy and insight On top of that, the people we met at roadshows and workshops and the plethora of books, pamphlets and photos we saw there provided yet more inspiration

As each podcast episode began to tak e shape, Paige and I work ed furiously to compose a fitting piece of music, poring through the interview audio, scribbling down words and phrases, trawling through the notebooks we’d been filling at every workshop, and generally trying to capture the mix of humour, grit, pride and nostalgia which ran through so much of the material And so we ended up with Jimmy Carter adopted whole-heartedly as NorthEasterner, and David Bowie lamenting that what starts off as new can’ t stay new We have ghosts of a long-past romance traipsing the halls of Biddick House and an earthlier romantic rendez-vous in one of the secluded underpasses Washington is (in)famous for.

We may not have written quite in the ballad tradition epitomised by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, but we hope that, in our own way, we’ve captured some of the knotty magic of Washington’s 60 year s as a new town.

“I didn’t know anything about the history of Washington, so it was interesting to know more about the place I am from.”

In the summer of 2024, We Mak e Culture brought a team of songwriter s – myself, Paige Temperley and Beccy Young – to work with groups of young musicians at Arts Centre Washington. We wanted to hear their impressions of Washington and to show them what the Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass project was all about We hoped that they might find inspiration in this collection of stories in the same way that we had.

We edited together a fifteen minute compilation of audio from the various interviews that the podcasting team had collected and played this to the young people at the start of the session. Some began taking notes immediately. Other s waited until the end and we started talking about it together: What did the interviewees talk about? What common themes came up? How did their own experiences compare to what they’d just listened to?

Unsurprisingly, the young people were full of ideas and set about writing songs inspired by what they’d heard immediately Some latched on to small details from the interviews – a log cabin playhouse or the creak of a floorboard in an empty house – and other s focussed on the emotional pull of the stories. For the two days, we had teenager s crouched in every corner of the Arts Centre, with guitar s and sheets of paper strewn about, and we heard everything from metal riffing to delicate ballads By the end of the sessions we had demo ver sions of half a dozen songs

Ballad Of
“I really enjoyed this way of working –writing songs from other peoples memories and stories. It was a new approach to songwriting for me. ”
The Ballad Of The Crocodile
Tommy Anderson (Detail from) Washington 60 Triptych pt 3
Photography / Photomontage 100cm x 50cm
The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

arTWOrK

Exploring the visual landscape of Washington communities past and present

I’ve been creating photomontage artworks exploring the visual landscape and li ving narrati ve of North East communities for over 20 year s. ‘The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass ’ was a great opportunity to capture a visual record of life in both present day and bygone Washington – celebrating it’s urban and natural landscapes, it’s culture and social heritage

Over several months I photographed the architecture, monuments, signage, public art and other structures/objects around each village in Washington to gather source material for the artworks The ‘present day’ artworks are a visual snapshot in time – an intricate artistic document of Washington celebrating it’s 60th year of being designated a new town From the stunning Old Hall and F-Pit, to the local shops and allotments, the artworks explore the prominent, every day and hidden local gems. As part of my initial research I visited other cultural venues around the area including NELSAM (North East Land, Sea and Air Museum), Bowes Railway Museum and Washington Wetland Centre, to meet with local experts and photograph the many fascinating collections and places of interest in Washington

As well as creating a series of artworks representing present day Washington, I also used archi ve photographs to produce another series of artworks illustrating the history of the area, from the coal mining industry, to the construction of a new town and the communities that called it home

“I’ve really enjoyed having a go at that (photomontage)... I didn’t think I could be so creative!”

I’m passionate about projects that focus on bringing a community together, that celebrate community, and encourage participants to explore and interact with their communities, so an important part of this project was taking these present day and archi ve images out into Washington as part of a workshop programme

Workshops took place at community spaces across Washington during the ‘The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass ’ roadshows, as well as at local schools and other venues such as Washington Mind. Workshop participants were invited to choose a from a selection of photograph resources, and guided how to cut out, arrange and create their own photomontage artwork Photomontage is a particularly successful acti vity for engaging people of all ages and ability – it is a fun, inclusi ve and accessible artform

I find that when using images people might be familiar with it encourages conver sation and discussion, sparking memories and stories about the community, and this even led to participants pointing out other things of local interest that could be photographed for inclusion in the artwork

There were also people who didn’ t tak e part in a workshop, but were interested in looking through the many boxes of photographs –reminiscing and sharing their own stories and recollections of life in Washington.

The ‘Washington 60 Triptych’ created using Tommy’s photography of present day Washington
The Ballad Of The Crocodile And
“It’s lovely to see the place (Washington) brought together in a big artwork ...there is so much detail. also great fun trying to spot all the places near me!”
“I’d never really thought about the houses in Washington before... they do look unique... this (workshop) has definitely encouraged me to look more closely.”
The initial series of 4 photomontage artworks created using archive images of Washington
The Ballad Of The Crocodile
“It’s interesting to see how some of the shops and buildings have changed over the years. ”
Examples of photomontage artwork created during the workshop programme
The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass
Tommy Anderson Community
Photomontage 80cm x 40cm
The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

ExCErpTS frOm ThE BaLLadS

The oral history interviews which have been used in the podcasts have collected a di ver sity of people’s stories and recollections We can only accommodate a selection of highlights in this print edition

Some of our interviews were undertak en as conventional “life-story” oral histories – several of which can be heard on our YouTube channel (search ‘Washington Oral Histories ’ Other s were shorter and targeted to a particular theme

The excerpts are as transcribed from the oral histories, with elisions mark ed with “ ”

Many of these excerpts can be heard in our edited podcasts, some may be additional as they work better in print We hope they provok e interest, memories, and a smile

Ballad

ThE TOWN Of rOUNdaBOUTS

Verse 1

Photographs I took

So many shades of colour

Stapled in a book

Suppose I never look ed around The corner s of this town

Until I wrote it down

Verse 2

Amenities and folk

Shops and village pubs

Don’ t fix what isn’ t brok en

They were right there on the door

And now we long for more Reminiscent of before

Chorus

60 Year s we’ve seen of this new town

But it feels lik e it’s always been around

Through these roads we’ve been lost and we’ve been found

In the town of roundabouts

The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

Verse 3

Districts they stood tall

Set apart by number s

Wasn’ t long before they’d fall

People just wanted a name

A village they could claim

A place to call home

Chorus

60 Year s we’ve seen of this new town

But it feels lik e it’s always been around

Through these roads we’ve been lost and we’ve been found

In the town of roundabouts

Middle 8

Fields of grass

Pictures tak en on a Kodak

Memories to last Rumoured Crocodiles

Beautiful wildlife

T ime it goes so fast

Chorus

60 Year s we’ve seen of this new town

But it feels lik e it’s always been around

Through these roads we’ve been lost and we’ve been found

In the town of roundabouts

In the town of roundabouts

In the town of roundabouts

The Ballad Of The Crocodile

Numbered

districts

“I think they dropped a clanger: it was a very controver sial thing when they were establishing the highways They work ed on this American sort of system of districts. So your signs had numbered districts up there – it’s I think the forerunner of the postcode really. … At the interchanges they thought of putting some sort of symbol lik e fruit, lik e a pineapple or an apple or an orange. So when you were directing somebody you’d say “well when you get to the pineapple ” Because there’s no landmarks, you see, in a new town there’s no traditional landmarks, it’s all new and each interchange looks exactly the same as the other ... It was featureless, there was no trees or anything, there was just highway So they thought of doing something lik e that – it never came off, lik e

But they did go ahead with this district thing, and I remember Ken Gee, he actually made television with it because it was such a controver sial thing. … And it was a hopeless argument because nobody really wanted it, you know. So in terms of where there was mistak es made, I think that was a mistak e ”

Ettie the caretaker of Usworth Hall, the HQ of Washington Development Corporation

Bob Hope

“Mr s Wilkinson, Ettie she was fondly remembered as, had a flat within the Hall itself. And she’d work ed for the NCB and they’d k ept her on with the building And she was quite a character was Ettie. She look ed after us and she called us her bairns She had a room adjacent to her flat which had a sort of Aga cook er, which she k ept stok ed up so it would heat soup and things lik e that

She was a widow … and her son was a merchant seaman And he bought her this monk ey, so she was stuck with it … She talk ed with a burr, she belonged Ashington [imitates accent “Er shington”] You know, she had the Ashington twang. And I remember standing in the gents having a wee and the door bur st open: “Di vvent mind me son, I’m just shown the meeern [man] where the electric meter is”

Sewage lagoons

Bob Hope

[I had to visit] “the sewage works at Barmston. And that was an experience going down there, I’ll tell you, because I used to tak e notes down there – it wasn’ t a pleasant place to work I tell you Aye, happy days! I remember they had these … euphemistically referred to as lagoons, and I’ll not go into detail about them The lagoons came up to there [chest height] and you walk ed in between these lagoons and all this effluent and stuff was floating on the top And would you believe they had a little dinghy? [laughs] They had a dinghy, and then you’d go to the site cabin – an office, it was a prefabricated thing, fella called Dave … he was the sewage man And he had these two fellas at work with him, they would say “Do you want a cup of tea, Bob?” … [grimaces] “Oh, no, no.”

Ferryman’s granddaughter

“My family are the Frosts – my mam’s dad’s side of the family So the Frosts ran the ferry: there was two brother s – John who was the elder one and Cornelius who was my granddad. So, John ran the ferry and owned it but Cornelius [Corney as he was called] would do some of the ferrying across the ri ver Corney also work ed in the Newall’s chemical factory so during the war he was never called up and he operated part of the Home Guard so part of it was around there

It was quite nice for us as a family li ving down there initially because housing was tight at the time My parents were luck y to get that property

We moved to 372 Coach Road Estate and then we moved to 371 Coach Road Estate so we moved from a two-bedroomed to a three bedroomed initially so it was really nice to have those links but to have your family provide a home for you is really good It was fabulous and me little claim to fame is being a ferryman’s Granddaughter” .

Leaving an abusive husband

“I came to Gentoo when my husband became extremely abusi ve and I was 74

We’d been married 44 year s. But he’d always put me down, you know, and, we’d had problems, whatever. And I’d just had it, “I’m, not doing this with you I don’ t deserve it And this is not how I’m going to end my few year s, whatever I’ve got left.”

a frESh STarT

New wooden floor s in an empty house

Stack us in, don’ t kick us out

Three-storey house with a bath inside

On a different path to a quiet life

Hit seventy-four at the start of the year

Left everything that I thought was dear

It doesn’ t matter now, I’m starting my new life

I can call this my fresh start

To my quiet life

Whimsical and new

Where to begin?

Log cabin house in a little park

Leave the bairns to play in the neighbour ’s yard

Walk through the underpass down to the village hall

Problem families started moving in

Joining the districts that we li ve in

Trying to mak e a life, win neighbour s of the year

I can call this my fresh start

To my quiet life

Whimsical and new

Where to begin?

I can call this my fresh start

To my quiet life

Whimsical and new

Where to begin?

The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

Working at Timex

“I was working at T imex and of cour se we were li ving with my mum And then we got a house from Washington Development in Sulgrave And that was when I used to walk to T imex, past Usworth Colliery, where the miner s would be on their hunk er s [haunches], sitting down and they’d always say, “Yer aalreet bonny lass?” You know how things were then And when I worked at Timex, we would go to the pit canteen for our lunch or even just go up and get a lovely scone or something, and I bought all my towels in the pit canteen because they sold towels and soap, really good prices And at T imex, they were making gyroscopes for the Apollo space mission

… I was on Final Inspection … where all the watch parts have been made, they’ve gone through various inspections under a microscope You know, they’re checking for flaws or whatever. And then, I would work off a draughtsman’s plan … I work ed in thousand-microns … we used shadow graphs a lot to measure. You know, you put this little tiny thing up and it would project its image … So I would work to a tolerance and everything I found that was, lik e in the top spec or just over in my sample, I would put into little envelopes. Now, when I’d completed all the checks, I would go to my supervisor and he would have tolerances beyond mine. So he would sign my pack ets that he’d accepted those tolerances And then they would go to … Dundee...

I can remember one day I let myself be put under pressure and I shouldn’ t have done. An “Expedite” I had a plane waiting at Usworth Airport to fly these parts up to Dundee. And it’s “will you be long, Brenda? I’ve got this ” Anyway, there was something wrong in in the parts. I was allowed three mistak es and you were sack ed But you knew that, you were told that ”

Peter Murray Timex
Pencil on paper 20cm x 32cm
The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass
Peter Murray Crocodiles
Pencil on paper
20cm x 32cm

Crocodiles and being a councillor

Linda W illiams

“I represented Washington Central at that point so when we got the funding for the new Leisure Centre, part of it was myself and Diane Snowden were lik e, “the crocodile park; we need to have crocodiles in the Leisure Centre” So when you look at the soft play there are crocodiles in there and there’s also some artwork crocodiles if you look where the swimming area is We did some work with local schools to get them to come forward with it I did the Lambton one and I got children to put their thumb prints on everything.”

Arts Centre

David Robson Architect for Washington Development Corporation

We were ask ed to just gi ve ideas and you see, the astonishing thing is it’s very hard to put across this, that this was a time when everything you did just went ahead and got built And if you had an idea, if it was accepted, everybody ran with it You can’ t imagine how immediate it all was And of cour se we just took that for granted. We don’ t realise, I mean, today it just isn’ t lik e that

So we sort of moseyed around these old farm buildings and I think between us we said, “well, this would mak e a great arts centre” . And we look ed inside these old buildings and here was this big barn in the middle and we said [I did some sk etches] this would mak e a fantastic little theatre, you know So, the way it work ed was you went back and at one of the weekly meetings you reported to the Chief Architect that this is what he was suggesting And he would tak e it to the Board and I mean, you know, that thing, it just went straight away. Everybody said, “Oh yes”

a mINEr’S TOWN

Rattle of the cage on the ropes

Just a young apprentice full of hope

In a town where everything was coal

Mother waits at home

A fiery furnace now awaits

Noise that no-one can escape

Boys lean on each other or you’ll break

When darkness calls

If I’d known then what I know now

I’m not so sure that I’d go down

Bound together underground

A Miner ’s town

Man Rider leads you to the pit

For another dark day in the abyss

Morale’s for k eeping up remember kids

‘T il we reach the surface

Heat it hits you in the face

Whatever was up there has been replaced

Danger becomes just another day

A constant service

If I’d known then what I know now

I’m not so sure that I’d go down

Bound together underground

A Miner ’s town

Dash through the shower s lads

There’s a pint to be had Last order s half ten

Home, bed and go again

Maybe soon we’ll see the light

Until then we’ll sell our time

Same risks k eep us tight

Think we’re due another strik e

If I’d known then what I know now

I’m not so sure that I’d go down

Bound together underground

A Miner ’s town

The Ballad Of The Crocodile

Local residents thoughts on the new developments

I remember early on, so this would have been ‘74, ‘75, one summer ’s day, going across this field with one of my colleagues and in the corner of the field were three old men sitting on the ground and they all had handk erchiefs in knots and they were sitting in the sun and they yelled out, one of them says, “what are you doing here?” So we said, we’re from the Corporation and “what are you doing here then?” And we said “well, we’re starting to work on the next village” , And I said, “I suppose you’re probably not in favour of that” He said, “of cour se we’re in favour of it. He said, it’s wonderful” . He said, “you know, when I was 15, my father said to me, you’ve got a week to get a job and if you haven’ t got a job, you’re going down the pit.” And he said, “I went to the bank I’d heard they were looking for people at the bank And the bank manager said to me, you’re a fit and healthy young man, I’m not taking you in the bank. Get your self down the pit.” And that’s what I mean, men had only two job possibilities One was the coal mining and the other was Newall’s chemical works.

The FA cup story

Mike Laws

“Sunderland won the FA cup in 1973. And we had a connection because we [Washington Development Corporation] allowed their player s to use our canteen. So … they would train in the Northumbria Centre, and after they would come and have lunch in our staff canteen I was a Sunderland fan, so it was just exciting seeing all the player s Before they won the cup, Jim Montgomery, who was basically one of the Sunderland heroes, he wanted to tak e his plate back [because you had to tak e your plates back and put them on the table] And he dropped his plate and I thought, “Well, that’s a great omen. He’s our goalkeeper!” So anyway, Sunderland won the cup and obviously basically they had to use the Northumbria Centre and that football pitch. And Ken Armstrong rang me and he said, “Mik e, I’ve got a job for you” And I said, no problem. He said, “I want you to go down to Rok er Park and I want you to pick up the FA Cup and tak e it to be engraved” . I was 21 at the time.

… I went down with Dick y Robinson who was the caretak er at the time, he had a mini-van We went down to Rok er Park. I ask ed for the cup – I must go to the boardroom I knock ed on the door, they didn’ t ask for any ID I just said, “I’m from the Development Corporation, I’m here to pick up the FA Cup ” “Howay in, son” So I went in and it was k ept in an old cupboard They opened the cupboard, it wasn’ t lock ed. And in a brown box was the FA Cup And he said, “There you are. Just bring it back when you’re finished” So, we took the box, put it in the back of the van and it was actually engraved in Newcastle, which I couldn’ t believe, but I will tell you why it was engraved there

Anyway, on the journey back from Rok er Park, [as I said, we li ved in Wharfedale Avenue, which is in between]. So we’ve got Sunderland, Washington, and then Newcastle So I drove and I said to Dick y Robinson, “Shh! Tell you what, look, hopefully my dad will be here, we’ll show him the cup” So we drove and park ed on the side of the street I said, “Dad, I’ve got something to show you” , because he said, “What are you doing? I thought you were at work” . I said, “No, I’m at work, yeah, I’m just doing a job I want to show you something” Came down the path, opened up the back of the mini van, opened up the box and said, “There, what do you think of that?” Got the cup out He nearly collapsed

We took it through to a place called Tyne Engraving in Newgate Street in Newcastle I couldn’ t believe it – I mean, our arch enemy. So took it in, walk ed up the steps [they knew it was coming] and opened the door – full of Newcastle fans. They had black and white scarfs, flags and so on And they spent the fir st hour getting their photograph tak en with Sunderland’s FA Cup. …But I was looking at it and I thought, “Well, you might as well tak e a chance because you’ll never win the cup. You’ll never get this” . And then the man got the cup and he just put it between his knees and he just went [mimes engraving] 10 seconds and it was all over.”

Inspiration behind the houses at Fatfield

“There were going to be, on the master plan, 18 villages. And one of the sort of underlying principles, which was never really written down, but which we all followed and agreed to, was that each village should be gi ven its own different character If the idea of villages was going to work, the villages had to be separate entities, but they also had to have their own character Immediately we decided that Fatfield was the most southerly village and the slopes were down to the ri ver And so that made us think that we were talking about a hilltop village, and then what we had to do as architects and submitting it through the Chief Architect. We had to come up with a whole proposal for the master plan, but also for the character of the village and the sort of materials and so on. And the way we did that was to create a presentation which was lik e a collage

This Spanish hacienda has absolutely bugger all to do with it, ok ay? – I’d spent a lot of my holidays as a child in a place called Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire And the idea for Fatfield came from Robin Hood’s Bay – how would you deal with housing on a steep hillside? And then there were several elements that emerged from that idea Fir st was the pantile roof, … pantiles were a very common roof across the whole of the north east of England. You get them in Gateshead, they were used in ballast, they came on ships from Belgium and Holland, you know So there was the pantile roof and then there was the idea of using render And the render came mainly from the houses on the main road in Fatfield As you went down the road in Fatfield, there were these houses from the ‘20s and they had been rendered, So we said, right, we’ll use render. Ok ay?

And then the thing about Robin Hood’s Bay, on the hillside was that there were alleyways that went around the contour s and the houses were all on split levels So in order to deal with this very steep contour, the idea was that we would have these roads that went in and finger s of car parking that went down, and they would feed alleyways that went along the contour s. And that when you saw it from the other side of the ri ver, you would see a cascade of roofs which And that’s what in fact was built. And the thing is, that was presented to the board and there was a woman on the board and I’ve forgotten her name [probably Dilys Palmer], Her family owned shipyards in Sunderland or in Newcastle, ... And I did this presentation and she apparently said afterwards, after we’d gone, this was this “vision of joy” or something or other, and that was what we should go for. And Eric Watson [Chief Architect] wasn’ t very happy about this And he … came out and he said to me, I mean, I can’ t repeat some of the words that he used, but he more or less said, you know, “well, there you are, you’ve buggered us up now, we’ve got to build it ”

Podcast group member Roger Morris undertook a straw poll regarding how the new village at Fatfield is known. This was posted on the Facebook group for Fatfield Residents and represent quite a deviation from the intentions of the architect

6xSpanish houses

4x White Houses

1x Bethlehem

1x Legoland

1x ----hole

1x Jerusalem

a SpaNISh vILLagE / ITS OWN KINd Of paradISE

Out of the dust

A garden will grow

Vines intertwined

Kept safe from the roads

By the road

The children can play

Away from the smok e

And wait for the sun

Square pegs in round holes

So beautiful

Ah, who needs the sun?

The hills will do us right

The sea breeze can reach

Right along the ri ver

Its own kind of paradise

The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

Lambton Village Centre

The fir st project I work ed on that I can recall in detail was Albany, which had been designed previously I was allowed to be supervising architect on site. I had signed certification, I got money sorted out and all the rest of it That one all happened. And then later in the mid-70s, ‘76 or maybe early ‘77, I found myself working on Lambton village

I briefly work ed on the housing element leading up to creating a focus for the village centre

To this day I have no idea where the clock tower came from No idea I came up with the idea of a very formal square... If you under stood how the cost index work ed, you could get away with certain things It’s a very expensi ve walkway wrapping around the square, expensi ve materials in the car park areas And we work ed under a spatial control system called Park er Morris. And all the units had to be certain sizes internally There had to be a thing called a pram space because everybody was percei ved to possibly have a Silver Cross pram, I kid you not, that was vetted by a man from London So somehow I generated enough volume in both vertical and horizontal to create this tower How I got away with the clock, which apparently just about works even after 50 year s, I don’ t know where that came from

The demise of new town planning

When Thatcher got in, the whole process of the new towns movement seemed to lose momentum The rules changed Oh, I was going to mention, I mentioned Park er Morris … in 1980/81 that went overnight One day it was there, the next day, no. And all the space standards right down

Long time Washington resident (Blackfell)

We weren’ t in a very good place for to bring the family up We were on a fairly busy road I was finding it very hard to get a house there [Felling]. As I say, … we applied for the house one week and we had the k eys very next week to come and see the house.

They were very, very community minded, I can remember. We used to look after each other ’s children’s, tak e them to school and Iris ’s washing machine got pushed along the street to everybody’s house. Anyone who had their washing machine brok en down we used to borrow it. It wasn’ t an automatic. But it was good Everybody in the street borrowed it at one time or another

But if it was snowing and somebody wanted to go to the shop rather than tak e their kids there, we all used to just drop wa’ [our] kids off with one of the other s And when there was power cuts, I had a gas oven and people used to come and sit round in the kitchen. We used to put blank ets down on the floor for everybody We used to put the oven on. But it was very community minded, you know

The Ballad Of

and digital illustration

Tommy Anderson
Overpass 1
Photography
30cm x 30cm
Tommy Anderson Overpass 2
Photography and digital illustration
30cm x 30cm
The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

Visit to the White House

“I can’ t remember the exact day February 1982 would have seen the 250th anni ver sary of George Washington … They had a competition for local schools to design a birthday card for George’s birthday. ... the idea had been to gi ve the winner a bik e or something as a prize In my boldness I thought it better if you actually took the birthday card to America and gave it to the White House I made enquiries and the people in America wouldn’ t talk to me unless I was in America on their soil. So, cap in hand, I went to see my boss first I told him the situation I said, they’ll help, but only if I go over to see them We then went to see the Managing Director, and, after some consideration, he says, “well, if that’s the case, I think you’d better go.”

So in January 1982, for the fir st time in my life, I visited the United States of America, Washington, DC. By the time I got there, I’d been in touch with the executi ve staff of the White House, a lovely lady called Patricia Hoffman. And we met in the old Executi ve building, which was the headquarter s of the US government during the American Ci vil War… I’ll never forget, it was lik e something out of a spy movie I met the lady from the White House, Patricia, over dinner in a rather nice restaurant in Georgetown in the suburbs of Washington And once we’d ordered our meal, there was a large yellow envelope passed across the table, which I immediately hid underneath my seat. And she said, “If you look at that there’s a breakdown that we at the White House can help you with ”

So by the time I boarded my British Airways flight back to the UK, I had virtually an itinerary for a whole week’s visit to the United States for the boy who won the competition, a chap called Gary, with his mum … and his father. …

While we’re flying across the Atlantic in the morning, I got a call from the pur ser of the aircraft, would Mister Warden please indicate where he’s sitting? So I waved my hand and he ask ed if Gary and I would lik e to go to the flight deck So we went out flying over Nova Scotia in the early morning, seeing the snow covered hills and everything. It was breathtaking.

When we got to America, we were virtually treated lik e VIP’s When we got to the White House, we were met by a group of children, and the press secretary for the president, who was Ronald Reagan at the time. And we were also, the following day, gi ven lunch in a senior staff dining room in the White House, which was unbelievable. To this day, I do remember that Gary had a knick erbock er glory for his dessert I didn’ t, but I did have a damn good steak When we went to the Smithsonian Institute, we were interviewed by a reporter for the Washington T imes

We went to the Monument at the end of the Mall, and there was a ceremony going on to celebrate George’s birthday by veterans of the American forces And we were, you would have thought we were royalty. When we got to the door, they took us up to the very top of the tower They were even going to take the windows out so we could get better photographs. We said, “no, better leave them in ”

Chorus

Hoaway Jimmy come on down

And look at our new town

The streets are lined

And soon you’ll find

There’re full of roaring crowds

Hoaway Jimmy come on down

And gi ve our hands a shak e

We’re dressed up to the nines

And we’ve ask ed the band to play

‘Cause things lik e this don’ t happen every day

Verse 1

Flags at the ready

Lets wave those star s and stripes

A striking combination of red, blue, and white

Hello Mr President

With one we share a name

And here you are on your fir st trip of Presidential fame

Bridge

Pedal to the floor he arri ves on our door step

Lik e that of those before and so the story goes

Chorus

Hoaway Jimmy come on down

And look at our new town

The streets are lined

And soon you’ll find

There’re full of roaring crowds

Hoaway Jimmy come on down

And gi ve our hands a shak e

We’re dressed up to the nines

And we’ve ask ed the band to play

‘Cause things lik e this don’ t happen every day…

Verse 2

Green thumbs at the ready

Let’s head down to the green

We all know what happened to that poor tulip tree

Hello Mr President

For you we have a gift

A miner s flame safety lamp used in colliery F

Bridge

Pedal to the floor he arri ves on our door step Lik e that of those before and so the story goes

Chorus

Hoaway Jimmy come on down

And look at our new town

The streets are lined

And soon you’ll find

There’re full of roaring crowds

Hoaway Jimmy come on down

And gi ve our hands a shak e

We’re dressed up to the nines

And we’ve ask ed the band to play

‘Cause things lik e this don’ t happen every day

Middle 8

Hoaway Jimmy, Hoaway Jimmy, Hoaway Jimmy, Hoaway Jimmy x2 (whoas in back ground)

Chorus

Hoaway Jimmy come on down

And look at our new town

The streets are lined

And soon you’ll find

There’re full of roaring crowds

Hoaway Jimmy come on down

And gi ve our hands a shak e

We’re dressed up to the nines

And we’ve ask ed the band to play

‘Cause things lik e this don’ t happen every day

‘Cause things lik e this don’ t happen round our way

‘Cause things lik e this don’ t happen Mmmmm…

The Ballad Of The Crocodile

Lifelong Fatfield resident

“I appreciate the Washington Highway had to be completed and proceed up to link up with Penshaw and Shiney Row But about half the village need not have been demolished. Having said that, it’s recorded that the buildings were damp old stone buildings. A lot of them were demolished in 1934 by Chester-Le-Street Rural District as part of their slum clearance I’ve got photographs of the buildings before they were demolished But an enthusiast could’ve restored the houses and a modern injection system for damp cour se could have improved them, but again, they had no toilets indoor s And leak y pantile roofs. A total rebuilding would be necessary for most of the houses, frankly Sad but it would have been a huge effort to restore. The book “Quick er by Quango” which is about the Development Corporation acti vities – that was appropriate for the time … They had the power s to just wipe out the village and they did so”

Long term Washington resident

I can’t say anything wrong about the Washington Development Corporation it’s been a good bit of planning for the area A positi ve outcome of the Washington Development Corporation has been the return of the wildlife to the area …I mean, I’ve seen kingfisher s down on the ri ver, I’ve seen the swans on the ri ver And the greatest pleasure recently, when Covid was on, when I was doing the daily walks up to Fatfield Bridge and back, was to see the otter s in the ri ver And, actually, occasionally I think I know where they are, and I don’ t really want to say where they are, but sometimes you’d just be able to [from Fatfield Bridge] watch this fish suddenly jumping out of the water, which was implying that something was chasing them But there’s been sparrowhawks … even seen seals swimming up the ri ver as far as Fatfield Bridge And in some of the little ponds, there’s various ducks and swans and geese all around there, and the little sparrows and finches and, blue tits and other things lik e that. There has been an awful lot of wildlife that had left the area and has come back ”

Graphics at the Development Corporation

Well, I left the College of Art in 1967, and I almost got a job in London It fell through So I returned back to Sunderland I used to be in the dole queue and thinking, “what am I doing in a dole queue after spending so long at college?”

Anyway, I wrote a letter to Edward Thompson’s asking if there are any jobs for a graphic designer And I was invited in and I was gi ven a job as graphic designer and I work ed there for six months Didn’ t enjoy it, really, but it was a start I was on the ladder of a career, and then six months after that, in March of ‘68, the job for Washington came up. I applied for it and got the job Interviewed by John Bishop [he was a really lovely man] and set to work as a graphic designer for Washington, designing all the brochures, all the exhibition work, and various other jobs that came along

I used to produce a monthly newsletter, about things that were happening in Washington. … one of the big things was there were about seven industrial estates and I was ask ed to design monuments, if you lik e, for each industrial estate And at the time, I decided to mak e the theme scientific or medical, and as you go into the estate, I designed the plinths and on them – I think in Crowther it was tick er tape. … another one was the shape of waves for Wear industrial estate and various themes lik e that. And these are one-off jobs, very expensi ve jobs. And I had to go to an engineer in South Shields I think it was, and organised these things being built. And at the time these were very expensi ve but there was a budget for this kind of thing So I was really able to experiment … with all kinds of ideas.

And I used to come up with advertising and promotional things. One of the things was in Heathrow airport I flew down to Heathrow airport and designed a big glass showcase of the world – and obviously England and Washington – with the logo of coming out of where Washington is. And called that “a new world in the northeast ”

STEp INTO aNOThEr WOrLd

Step into another world

A square world, oh so clean

Coq au vin served by machine

Through the walls of the galleries Peer beady eyes from the aviary

Step into another world

Such convenience, so fancy free

Grab a greenhouse, or a cup of tea

The conveyor brings a bite to eat

And the motorway brings a white heat

And a new age

Oh, a new way to be Decanted from Or built upon Or ferried in

On a Bluebird’s wing

Step into another world

The Ballad Of The Crocodile

Innovation in Washington

Right from the master plan in 1966, planner s were aware that because it was Britain’s only urban new town, i e very close to existing urban areas that it would be very fluid. Half the people li ving in the town would commute out and roughly half the jobs in the town would be tak en by people coming across the boundary So that is true to this day when you look at census records since then. So it’s an integral part of the North East economy It’s not different or special and it li ves or dies as the whole regional economy performs.

The shopping centre, started in 1973 and formally opened in 1974 with the furthest north Sainsbury’s in the country It was the fir st covered shopping centre in the North East and drew a customer base from about 30 miles Now that’s all reduced because everywhere has got a Sainsbury’s and similar centres.

Washington was a place of innovation It had been gi ven a specific task to be different from elsewhere in terms of housing design and quality. It was the fir st town in Britain to get cable TV, though a very different system to the one we have today The F Pit and Arts Centre opened at the same time that Beamish opened, the fir st local projects of those types It was the fir st place that had shared owner ship housing There were serviced plots for self-build, meaning all the services were already there on plots for you just to get to your architect and build your own place.

None of this had happened in the North East before to any significant degree, but it all happened in the new town year s

Tommy Anderson
Curly Wurly
Photography and digital illustration
30cm x 30cm The Ballad

ThIrTEEN yEarS

David Brewis

Thirteen year s, thirteen year s

From Armstrong’s future vision eyes

The modernist’s flyby archetype

To a victim of changing styles

‘T il Presley’s on sale again

Thirteen year s, thirteen year s

Truly different from anywhere

Neatly laid in mile-wide squares

From the A19 to the A1(M)

So mediterranean

We’ve got thirteen year s, thirteen year s

To stay up to the minute

To say new town new

Thirteen year s, thirteen year s

A million square feet of factories

How many more of welded steel?

Black PVC needle-ready

But the king’s already left

We had thirteen year s, thirteen year s

To stay up to the minute

To stay new town new

To stay up to the minute

To stay new town new

The Ballad Of The Crocodile

The Bridge women ’ s educational project

“A lot of women here in Washington, in the new town, that didn’ t have confidence, were stuck at home because they had children, couldn’ t do anything, couldn’ t go anywhere, couldn’ t afford the bus fares to go anywhere, to do anything. And there wasn’ t that many childcare facilities out then, wasn’ t that many nur series around. There was the odd ones in schools, but not that many pri vate nur series and they couldn’ t afford them anyway.

So in 1985, there was a group of women got together at The Elms, and came up with the thought of a confidence-building cour se for women. And they applied for and got European Social Fund money So this was to last three year s So in September of 1986, the fir st cour se started in Sulgrave. [I don’ t know what that building was Was it the community centre?] We put on a confidence building cour se with non-traditional skills. And that was for 20 women I think it was fi ve days a week, over ten weeks. And, at the end of that, these women would leave us and then we would have more people coming in Of cour se it didn’ t happen lik e that. Because we’d gi ven them the confidence that they wanted to go on to do other things

So in our original confidence-building cour se, we did … woodwork classes where we would bring in a woman joiner and mak e anything Shelves to I mean, one girl I remember, she made, a cross for her father ’s grave in hardwood I made a table to go on the end of my dining room table that had a gate leg So I was very proud of that. Anyway, there was that sort of thing

So once the cour se finished the women said, “we can’ t stop there” . The idea was that we would start another cour se and do the same things, which, because of the European Social Fund money, we had to do that anyway. But then we had to find something else for the other women, the fir st lot of women, to do And that’s when we contacted Monkwearmouth College and we got tutor s to actually come out into the community and start to teach GCEs, as they were then. We did Maths and English and Psychology I remember the fir st people going on the cour se for the Psychology and there was that advert on the television, Maureen Lipman doing the telephone line saying, “I’m doing an ‘ology” . And they were over the moon that they were doing it as well Languages, French, Spanish, that sort of thing, and then of cour se they wanted to go on to do other things. So we then had to start ferrying people into the college and they did bricklaying and painting and decorating, engineering, car mechanics, the electricians ’ cour se, lots of things one of our fir st people on the cour ses, Liz Bannon, she went on to the college and did the electrics cour se and she loved it so much that she actually became a qualified electrician. And year s later, once she was qualified, she came back and she taught on the cour ses and look ed after her children in the creche.

I mean, the creches were all free and that’s why you found that a lot of women would do one cour se and then they would do another cour se and then they would do another cour se because they could get their children into the creche And sometimes you’d say, I’m sure they’re just doing these cour ses to get free childcare. But we then had people who went on to be qualified social work er s, went on to uni ver sity. It was lovely to see people coming through uni ver sity, with a degree, who came on with the fir st confidence cour se.”

Playgroup memories

“We set our playgroup up really, supported by the Washington Development officer s because they were really k een to get some help for new families that were moving into Washington because these new families were very young new families and very different to the population that was in Washington before We tended to be middle aged and older people A lot of these young families came and they were dropped in to the new village and didn’ t have their mams and their aunties and their grandmas and their friends to help them. And so the playgroup became their lifeline and that was what the development work er s were hoping would happen and it did Some of the young people also were single parent families There was a lot of work in Washington New Town, so a lot of the young men were out working Some ladies, although not technically a single parent, were single because there was nobody there at all to help them during the day or a night shift ”

Longterm Washington resident drove minilink Tracey Mallan

I was a minibus dri ver in Washington. Funny enough, it was for a bet You won’ t believe the story I was in college doing my A levels and I was working for Tracy’s Pet Shop in the dog grooming place and they wanted dri ver s Now, I’m the world’s wor st dri ver and then when we talk ed about it one day, “Little minibuses” , and I was lik e, “I could do that” And they were lik e, “no, you couldn’ t. You’re the wor st dri ver ever.” And I’m lik e, “right, I’m going to go do it ” And I went for a bet and I got the job And I was lik e, “I’ll just put my studies on hold and I’ll come back” Ended up being a dri ver for four year s

I absolutely loved it I absolutely loved it I had loads of people at the time I don’ t know if you’ve heard of “bus groupies” , who would just get on your bus and dri ve around with you on a night So I would pull up somewhere and they would go the shop for you and get you cans of pop and, lik e, if you didn’ t know any routes, these people would know all the routes and they would just stand at the front of your bus and tell you where to go? They just had bus passes, so that they never paid. Anyway, looking back, it probably helped them as well

Lady Of ThE BIddICK hOUSE Paige Temperley

Lady of the Biddick House had her little heart ripped out Love forbidden, so profound, she was upstair s he was down

You see, it can’ t be, if there status in-between

But believe, she’d a need for a man with thumbs of green

Lady of the Biddick House, slow and surely she snuck out Love forbidden, so profound, only rose bushes surrounded Them as they fell, deeper under true loves spell

In society’s cell he was the Beast and she was Belle

A story she knew all too well Wouldn’ t let it die with them

Lady of the Biddick House decided to stick around

Holding onto love once found, she would show them ‘not allowed’ Obsess and digress, trapped in a lifetime’s distress

Many centuries guest, draws a spirit of unrest

Lady of the Biddick House learned her home would be knock ed down

Mr Ferry’s garden now, must mak e way for a new town

The roses he grew, with his hands he would remove

But the Lady refused, threw them back to what she knew

Lady of the Biddick House, heart forever bleeding out…

The Ballad Of The Crocodile

Memories of Cook’s Hall, which was demolished in the early years of the new town

Tony and Roseanna Erskine (former Washington Development Corporation Graphic Designer and his wife)

“It was the most beautiful, beautiful manor house And there were a family from Joseph Cook’s family, who … owned at one time Cook’s Steelworks, which was just a little way away from the Arts Centre, Washington And the ladies who li ved there, there was Miss Enid, Miss Josephine, Miss Mary You had to call them that And their nephew, who was Joseph It was a beautiful place with stables and … fields and tack rooms And he loved hor ses, but he couldn’ t ride. And myself and my brother and a friend could ride, but couldn’ t afford a hor se So he bought a hor se for us And we chose the hor se and everything and we rode for him.

So, we cleaned out the stables, which were filthy And we unveiled these beautiful buildings which had been full of chick ens And chick ens mak e a lot of dirt, you can imagine. So it was up to the ceiling with chick en dirt And we shovelled it out one summer holidays, smelling awful, and unveiled these beautiful [lik e in Beamish] –lovely stalls And also there was outbuildings and there was a double door. And my brother said, “what’s behind this double door?” And he opened up the double door and there was, I think it was a 1921 Fiat Torpedo car, which was in immaculate condition, but not quite working My brother got it working, obviously, very basic mechanics involved and he got it working And my mother and my brother used to ride around Washington in this. My mother with a little chiffon scarf around her hat And, they would go around Washington It was fabulous. We had such fun. Such fun.”

graNdma, I’m SOrry fOr ThE day

WE SpENT aT ThE WETLaNd CENTrE

When after hour s of pointing through drizzle at moorhens, flamingos, Canada goose, mallards, cygnets and pigeons; when after hour s of you herding us three youngest ducklings for miles around muddy paths; when after hour s collecting anoraks we shed lik e bright yellow feather s, then swaddling us again when the sk y next paled; when after hour s of standing guard as we clambered up rough hewn planks and threw our selves down the gleaming silver tongue of a too-high slide; when catching your breath at the sight of us in flight, the three of us sk eining through air as one dark-haired mass of innocence; when after helping our gaggling limbs off the ground despite your tremoring hands; when after wiping wood chips from the back of our legs; when, as you tried to steer us through a final panelled room and home, I’m sorry that I chose to hide.

I’m sorry that as you hunted me in the flock of other children, I stayed vanished, silent, as your fading eyes scanned blondes and browns I’m sorry that as your voice trilled and crack ed, cawing my name, again, again, that even with grandpa newly gone and mam in hospital for weeks, I’m sorry that I stayed curled lik e an embryo, crammed lik e a comma, inside the giant eggshell sculpture in the middle of the room T iny knees folded to my chin, denim dungarees scratching the button of my nose, bird feed seeping from my pock ets and pooling beneath me, the tiny pellets pressing themselves lik e love in my skin I’m sorry for waiting while your shouts quavered (for what did I know then of loss, or fear, or grief?) and for grinning as I heard you I’m sorry for waiting until your cotton-wool hair appeared before me, for waiting until your curving back was turned, for costing you that small eternity, before I bur st from the shell with a screech, a boo, lik e I was your salvation, my own rescuer, the very beginning of your world.

The Ballad Of The Crocodile And The Underpass

Washington Music Collective

I moved into Washington around about 1979 … for any sort of entertainment or for shows or whatever, you had to travel either into Sunderland or to Newcastle or further afield … Then one day, at the back of 1984, I got a phone call off one of my friends. … “Have you seen the advert in the Sunderland Network tonight?” asking for musicians li ving in Washington who were interested in putting together a musical project So, I gave them a ring and spok e to them at the Arts Centre and they were looking to start a music collecti ve. …

It had always been a passion of mine, having been in band since I was 15, to work with other bands So, I contacted the Arts Centre and found out that I was the fir st one to call them. So, from that they got me to organise the fir st meeting so anybody else who phoned up from the advert got put in touch with me. We had John Kirtley, who work ed at the Arts Centre at the time … he took over as chairman. I was made vice chairman. ...

We put our fir st gig on. I think it was in the April of 1985 we hadn’ t really much experience of what we were doing There was my band, which was called Hall of Mirror s. A young band from Washington called MacArthur Park And it was fun putting their name correctly spelled on the poster s and programmes.

We had bands lik e The Smoking Bagels came up from Hull. There was The Dubious Brother s who came down from the Scottish Border s, but then we had the more named bands … Featured gigs from Simon Nicol and Rick Sander s from Fairport Convention Martin Stephenson was already a big supporter of the of the Collecti ve.

There was a guy who came along and did the lighting for us [Because we use all the Arts Centre’s facilities, and for that I’ll be eternally grateful]. … He was called Keith. And the remark able thing was he was a milkman and he had to up at ridiculous-o’clock in the morning to work on his round We had Dave Hills, who eventually became our PA man, and he went on to run the Trillians rock bar in Newcastle and does the sound there and it’s still going strong

The Black Bush Folk Club and Dave Stewart the stowaway

Tony and Roseanna Erskine

“We ran the Black Bush folk club, which is on Village Lane We had some big artists coming along. … It used to be on a Thur sday night. And a lot of people got paid on a Thur sday And sometimes it was a bit of a madhouse on a Thur sday So, we made the decision to run it on a Sunday and it went lik e clockwork We had no problems, … no violence, nothing. It was just a real good folk club Sometimes we bump into people and they say, “I remember you at the folk club” .

Roseanna: Quite a few marriages came out of it, I think But there was nowhere else to go There was just nothing else in Washington for young people. Unless they wanted to go to the pubs. But they’d come out of church, they’d queue up to get in because they knew if they didn’ t queue up, they wouldn’ t get in. And the queue would be right down Village Lane And then there’d be a time when we’d have to say, “sorry, you can’ t come in.”

Tony: One band that played was The Amazing Blondel And at that show, Dave Stewart, the famous Dave Stewart was there, ... he was only 15, 16 Sang a couple of songs And then, the next day we heard that he’d smuggled into the van of The Amazing Blondel. And when he got down to Scunthorpe, they found him and they had to ring home and his dad had to come down and collect him.

Roseanna: And he used to say, “how do you get a gig? How do you get a gig?” to the lads. I mean, he’s just Bob Dylan’s mate, you know, now.”

Growing up as one of The Elliotts of Birtley –singing and mining in Harraton

Bill Elliot

The house was always full of people And of cour se some very important people later on, in 1961, when we had Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger, not quite resident there, but spending hour s there recording not just the immediate family – relati ves And they recorded hour s and hour s and hour s of stories, songs, about all kinds of aspects of mining life, street songs, school songs, you name it It just reflected all the experiences of the close family and the wider network And that became the Elliotts of Birtley LP I mean, the journey into that kind of folk world had already begun, and because of the links with the folk music, movement in the North East, that LP came about.

The k ey per son was Johnny Handle, who was obviously a founder member of the Bridge Folk Club, which my grandfather and uncle Peter used to go to The link was then made with the BBC, who did the radio ballads, several of which were made late ‘50s early ‘60s And the one that, my grandfather and uncle Reece got involved in was obviously “The Big Hewer” . But the link was Johnny Handle And because the link had been made with the BBC – Charles Park er, the producer of the radio ballads – the link was made with Ewan McColl and Peggy And then the LP got made because they obviously became friends They lik ed each other And so that’s how it came about

UNdErpaSS (afTEr jaKE)

When I was just a bairn

Barely bar-stool high

I’d nestle in the club

To see what stories might pass by

And every now and then

I’d hear the most alluring lass

Tell a handsome washy chap

She’d show him round her underpass

Underpass

Tak e a tour around my underpass

A three-dimensional, architectural

Oh, so peculiar wonder

It’s my underpass

It could be your underpass

And though it may sound crass

I love you so

I’d cycled through a few

On my evening paper round

I’d never thought to wonder

What enchantments might abound

Within their lustrous concrete walls

Such prefabricated class

No troglodyte could tarnish

Her exemplary underpass

Underpass

Tak e a tour around my underpass

A three-dimensional, architectural

Oh, so peculiar wonder

It’s my underpass

It could be your underpass

And though it may sound crass

I’d ask you, dear, to dash

The romance may not last

I love you now

The Ballad Of The Crocodile

aBOUT ThE TEam

Dr

Jude Murphy

Steering Group

Dr Jude Murphy’s academic research involves the social history of North Eastern folk music revi vals and cultural identity, including a deep di ve into the making of the radio ballad “The Big Hewer” and stories of its contributor s such as the Elliott Family of Birtley

She has been deeply involved over several decades in community arts and heritage projects, and as Heritage and Culture Development Coordinator for Washington Heritage Partner ship, she helped develop celebrations of Washington 60, as well as collecting oral histories and building the story of Washington before and after the new town As a musician, recorded sound has long held a fascination, particularly when it can be harnessed to tell a compelling story

She was born in the same year as Washington New Town and grew up in a nearby village, where the new town equalled new horizons – her family would visit Washington Services for a futuristic dinner, and Savacentre to catch up with the latest shopping trends This project has been particularly exciting as she is fascinated to hear the stories of people who may percei ve their li ves as ordinary but who can collaborati vely build an extraordinary picture of the recent past.

Dr. Caroline Mitchell

Steering Group

Dr Caroline Mitchell is Professor of Radio and Participation at the Uni ver sity of Sunderland and her research and practice is centred on community media, specializing in mapping and participatory action research methods as well as how programme mak er s in community radio stations connect transnationally across the world.

She was co-founder of Fem FM, the first women’s radio station in the UK (1992), and co-curated a digital archive of the station in 2014 She first worked in Washington in 1999 where she ran an EC funded cour se in women’s radio skills which resulted in Bridge FM, a women’s radio station promoting the acti vities at the Bridge Women’s Training project She has published widely about women and radio, including the edited volume ‘Women and Radio: Airing Differences ’ , (Routledge, 20 0 0).

Her current research focuses on how community podcasts can be made and consumed by groups who have little access to mainstream media. She is developing training and techniques particularly aimed at older podcaster s and audiences She is executi ve producer of the Rebel Women of Sunderland podcast Doing research and production on the Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass podcasts with the Washington Community Podcasting group has been a rich and stimulating experience.

Grace Stubbings

Podcast Creative Lead / Steering Group

Grace is a multidisciplinary artist from Hartlepool, spanning roles as a musician, producer, sound artist, and workshop facilitator She has embraced an interdisciplinary approach to nationwide projects, rooted in improvisation, deep listening, community engagement, and a strong connection to the local environment.

Grace plays synthesizer in the alternati ve rock band Venus Grrrls, touring nationally and collaborating with renowned acts. Beyond her artistic pur suits, Grace is deeply committed to the music community She serves on the Musicians ’ Union Education Board, Tees Music Alliance, Generator ’s Music Industry Advisory Group, and several school governance boards. In 2021, her work was recognised with the Sound and Music Composer Award As the director of We Mak e Sound, Grace over sees free, high-quality music workshops for 11-18 year olds in Hartlepool These workshops, which focus on improvisation, composition, and outdoor recording, are designed to foster creati vity, promote inclusi vity, and empower young people, bridging gaps in musical back grounds

Joe Simmons

Podcast Support / Steering Group

Joseph is a highly skilled sound engineer with four year s of experience in audio production, specialising in li ve sound, studio recording and post-production Known for a keen ear and attention to detail, Joseph has work ed with a di ver se range of artists and clients deli vering high-quality sound for concerts, film and multimedia projects

Proficient in operating advanced audio equipment and mastering software such as Pro Tools, Audacity and Adobe Audition, Joseph ensures that every project meets the highest technical standards Passionate about creating immer si ve audio experiences, Joseph combines technical expertise with creati ve vision to bring sound to life

Tommy Anderson

Visual Art Project Creative Lead / Steering Group

As a visual artist, Tommy Ander son combines photography, collage, typography, aerosol art and illustration – celebrating beauty in the everyday and overlook ed He has an established track record of producing site-specific artworks and curating exhibitions in galleries and public spaces

As a graphic designer he deli ver s innovati ve and exciting design and print solutions for public, pri vate and voluntary sector clients

Tommy is an experienced arts facilitator and mentor, developing, managing and deli vering progressi ve participatory and educational arts programmes inspired by his practice. He is committed and passionate about providing creati ve opportunities for those who wouldn’ t usually have access to the arts – working with groups and indi viduals of all ages, ability and back grounds to try new things and develop creati ve skills, “I aim to provide the tools for people to express themselves creati vely, explore issues important to them, and realise their creati ve ambitions in a safe, relaxed and inspiring environment.”

As a musician Tommy has released a number of studio recordings and remixes on international labels, performed across the UK, and produced soundtracks for film, animation and television

Songwriting Project Creative Lead / Steering Group

For the past 25 year s, David Brewis has been writing songs and producing records, often with his brother Peter, at our studio space in Sunderland As Field Music, he has released a dozen albums, alongside solo projects and collaborations In recent year s, writing based on historical research has become a fertile creative strand and resulted in

album-length works on the social and technological consequences of the Fir st World War (“Making a New World” , commissioned by the Imperial War Museum) and the birth of the Durham Miner s Association (“Binding T ime” , commissioned by Durham Brass and Redhills).

Washington’s history as a new town is somewhat closer to home for him David’s parents li ved in Washington up until his brother was born, and his dad’s job in quantity surveying was secured due to Washington’s large number of construction projects As a child, he remember s “the week was not complete without a visit to the Galleries (but would we eat in the Savacentre cafe or downstair s in the Red Balloon restaurant?)” David say’s “it’s been a privilege to dig so deeply into these 60 years of Washington’s history and to try to under stand the ups and downs of the place and the people who call it home” .

Paige Temperley

Songwriting Project Creative Lead / Steering Group

Paige Temperley is a musician from the North East of England. She’s a performer, writer and music facilitator with a passion for storytelling Last year, she wrote, performed and produced music for BBC 4 Radio Drama ‘Williams Castle’; as well as co-writing and performing in children’s musical ‘Sweet Caroline and the Football Boots ’ in partner ship with We Mak e Culture and funded by the Cultural Spring Currently she is furthering her work in the audio drama field writing for Jay Syk es ’ ‘Tyler ’ set for release later this year You can find Paige performing regularly in many venues across the North East and listen to both, her solo music, and duo project ‘Tall Shaves ’ across streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play

Laura Brewis

Songwriting Project / Steering Group

Laura Brewis is the Director and founder of We Mak e Culture CIC and manages the day-to-day running of the organisation

Previously, Laura has work ed at Sunderland Culture as Artist Development and Creati ve Industries Producer and was the Young People’s Programme Manager at New Writing North,

developing their work with young people She has work ed as a consultant at ARC Stockton, Pop Recs and TOWN and she is a trustee of Southwick Reach. In 2021, Laura won a Local Hero Award from Association of Independent Musicians and in 2024 was named as one of the Big Issue’s Top Positi ve Changemak er s 2024

Matthew Blyth Steering Group

Matthew Blyth is Culture and Heritage Officer at Arts Centre Washington, he manages the creative programme at the centre as well as working on city-wide cultural and heritage projects and events for Sunderland City Council and Sunderland Culture

Community is at the heart of everything that Arts Centre Washington does; from events such as the Craft and Mak er ’s Fair, Spotlight Washington Open Exhibition and the Bright Lights Youth Arts Festi val to over 40 weekly groups who meet, create and have fun at Arts Centre Washington

Providing a warm, welcoming, safe space for people to be creati ve is Matthew’s passion

Arts Centre Washington is a multifunctional arts centre located in a converted 18th century farm, it houses a 120 capacity theatre, three gallery spaces, a recording studio and practice rooms, artists ’ studios and workshops, function rooms and a bar The arts centre’s cultural programme is managed by Sunderland Culture and the building is owned and operated by Sunderland City Council

For more information on Arts Centre Washington visit www artscentrewashington co uk

Sarah Murray

Washington Communit y Podcast Group / Steering Group

Sarah Murray is a freelance community, heritage and arts practitioner who has work ed in cultural/heritage in a community setting for over 25 year s In various roles, for the National Trust, Arts Centre Washington and Flabagast Arts she has developed and deli vered many heritage and arts-based projects within Washington She is moti vated to practice ways of breaking down barrier s to arts and heritage in her work

Comments on The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass “The radio ballad” has been a joyful way to celebrate so many stories and experiences of Washington. I feel encouraged by the possibilities of podcasting as it allows participants to share and curate their stories in their own voice. The whole project has been a real collaboration and inspiring partner ship work”

I have li ved in Washington since my parents

moved to Thirlmoor, Blackfell in 1975, when I was only two year s old I went to Blackfell Infants and Junior school then to Oxclose Comp. I have work ed in heritage and arts in Washington since 1997. So many of my memories are of people, places and events in Washington

Being part of this Podcasting group has been great fun, particularly chatting to people about their favourite places and the idiosyncrasies of Washington.

Capturing memories and stories on audio has been fascinating Gaining interviewing and editing skills has spurred an interest in podcasting and exciting ways to record and share stories I will continue to use these skills in the future

Ged Parker

Washington Communit y Podcast Group / Steering Group

Originally from Manchester, I came to work for Washington Development Corporation in 1979 to set up their international mark eting programme and later worked for public and private organisations in commercial property management, business support and telecommunications I’m the Chair of Washington History Society and Treasurer of the Friends of Washington Old Hall, with a k een interest in all aspects of Washington’s history

I’ve greatly enjoyed the podcasting group capturing those intimate memories of the huge changes in the town in the last 60 year s and will encourage the spread of the technique among other heritage groups

Liz Greener

Washington Communit y Podcast Group

My name is Liz Greener, I li ve in Stanley. My connection to Washington was through my job as a Welfare Benefits Officer for Sunderland Social Services many year s ago

I have been involved with the Washington Heritage Podcast Group. During that time I have had the opportunity to be involved in the production of a number of podcasts based on the li ves of people li ving and working in Washington New Town and surrounding villages

It is quite interesting learning how a podcast is produced and all the relevant elements which go to mak e it up It has been a very enjoyable experience working with a group of lik e minded people to produce something which promotes some of the heritage of Washington. Because of my interest in the history of ordinary people, I’m sure that this provides me with an opportunity to produce podcasts documenting the history and heritage of my local area

George Kimber

Washington Communit y Podcast Group

I have li ved in Washington for 53 year s Started in Barmston, moved on to Blackfell, Donwell and finally Usworth I’m married with three Sons I ran a Gents and Ladies Hairdressing business for 47 year s

I enjoy travel, music, golf, computer s, family history and my main hobby of slot car racing which has tak en me around the world including USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe I was twice world champion, runner-up in European championships, and have 17 UK national titles.

Attended a talk at the U3A by Jude Murphy and after brief discussion with her, became aware of a Podcast group at Washington Arts Centre. Very interested in learning more and accessing the platform.

Roger Morris

Washington Communit y Podcast Group

Washington has been my home since 1982 It’s been a paradox, as much of this time it has been a place to get away from The town’s initial attraction was a place within easy distance of work with good access to the rest of the North East. On the domestic front, The Galleries Shopping Centre is always handy, if a soulless experience Since retirement and on the door step, Washington Arts Centre has excellent acti vities and events Above all, I’m a pioneer on the Shepherd’s Way allotments and over time this has hefted me

The Podcasting Group Has been a wonderful experience. Never knowing from one week to the next who will turn up with a story to tell of Washington life. It’s lik e having a place around the table to a weekly radio show Li vely discussion with expert contributions from the Podcast team The process, thanks to Jude, has opened door s and revealed insights otherwise hidden and made Washington a more interesting place than meets the eye It’s been a pri vileged position to have had this experience I hope to continue podcasting as this is an alternati ve to the written word. I can see scope to do more As much as anything it is a means to k eep abreast of the technology.

Nasim Rebecca Asl

Songwriting Group

Nasim Rebecca Asl is a Glasgow based poet and journalist, originally from Washington She’s had her poetry published widely in magazines such as New Writing Scotland, Poetry Wales and Modern Poetry in Translation. She was shortlisted for the 2024 Forward Prize for Poetry (Best Single

Poem – Performed), and is a former winner of a Scottish Book Trust New Writer s Award Nasim is an event chair and workshop facilitator, and has work ed on projects with the lik es of The Poetry Translation Centre, The Poetry Business and the Rugby League World Cup Her debut pamphlet Nemidoonam was published by Verve Poetry Press in February 2023.

Lydia Harvey

Songwriting Group

Lydia Harvey is 16 and is an emerging songwriter and singer from Sunderland. She attends Newcastle College studying Level 3 Music Performance and has performed at Pop Recs and the Future Collaborations Festi val held at Gosforth Ci vic Theatre Lydia also regularly attends open mic events at various venues.

Leighton Hepburn

Songwriting Group

Leighton Hepburn is a 15 year old emerging musician from Sunderland who plays guitar and has a keen interest in music production He attends The Future Collaborations project at Pop Recs which is funded by Youth Music. Leighton regularly performs at Open Mic nights as part of a duo with Lydia Harvey.

John Griffiths

Academic

John Griffiths is a historian and adult education lecturer Born in London, he has lived in Newcastle upon Tyne since 1990 and recei ved a PhD in 2020 for his thesis on the career of the regional politician T Dan Smith. He has an interest in the history of British towns and cities, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and including the New Towns of the post-1945 period. This interest includes the economic, social and ideological reasons behind town development, the advent of town planning, and aspects of urban life as varied as the history of cafes, restaurants and shops, the impact of street lighting and other utilities, and the interpretation of street names

Ian Cook

Academic

Dr Ian Cook is an Assistant Professor at Northumbria University He grew up in Portsmouth, works in Newcastle and li ves in Gateshead –all places with plenty of pedestrian underpasses! In his teaching and research, he lik es to bring together geography with criminology.

CrEdITS aNd aCKNOWLEdgEmENTS

Project Coordination: Dr Jude Murphy (Washington Heritage Partnership), Matt Blyth (Arts Centre Washington / Sunderland Culture), Suzanne Davies (Sunderland Culture)

Project Steering Group: Tommy Ander son (Baseline Shift), Matt Blyth (Arts Centre Washington / Sunderland Culture), David Brewis (We Make Culture CIC), Laura Brewis (We Make Culture CIC), Professor Caroline Mitchell (Universit y of Sunderland), Dr Jude Murphy (Washington Herit age Partnership), Sarah Murray (freelance communit y, herit age and arts practitioner and volunteer steering group member), Ged Park er (Washington Histor y Societ y and volunteer steering group member), Joe Simmons (Universit y of Sunderland postgraduate student and volunteer steering group member), Grace Stubbings (freelance podcaster and sound artist), Paige Temperley (We Make Culture CIC)

Project Support: Community Opportunities and North East BIC

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Podcast Creative Lead: Grace Stubbings

Podcast Support: Uni ver sity of Sunderland –Dr Richard Berry, Joe Simmons, Ynez Tulsen

Podcast Executive Producers: Caroline Mitchell and Jude Murphy

C o m m u n i t y Po d c a s t i n g G r o u p : M i k e C l a y, L i z Greener, Shaun Hair, Andrea Hender son, George K i m b e r, C a r o l i n e M i t ch e l l , R o g e r M o r r i s , J u d e Murphy, Sarah Murray, Ged Park er, Elvira Pirozzi, David James Taylor, Joe Simmons, Grace Stubbings, Doug Walk er.

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Songwriting Project Creative Lead and Team: We Mak e Culture CIC, Laura Brewis with David Brewis, Paige Temperley, and the young songwriter s group who met at Arts Centre Washington in August 2024

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Visual Art Project Creative Lead: Tommy Anderson

Publication design: Tommy Anderson (Baseline Shift)

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Specialist support: Dr Ian Cook (Northumbria University), Dr. John Griffiths (freelance urban development researcher), Tim Murphy (Courage Creative - logo and marketing graphics)

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Interviewees/Recorded for podcast: Not all the names here have yet been edited into podcasts or oral histories, however, we wish to acknowledge all c o n

l p

d

l d s u ch a r i ch picture of life in Washington over the past six decades

Alice Ander son, Tommy Ander son, April, William Barker, David Barrett, Stanley Bonnar, Joe Borrowdale, David Brewis (songs), Joan Briton, Brodie, Graham B

Chapman, Charlie (song), Marilyn Charlton, Chloe (song), City Swing, Annie Clark e, Mik e Clay, Dr Ian Cook, Linda Daly, Elaine Davidson, Joan Day, Dean, Bill Elliott, Isabell Emmison, Roseanna Er skine, Tony E

G

a Finnigan, Thomas Finnigan, Jen Ford, Michael Frain, Margaret Graham, Liz Greener, Shaun Hair, Daniel Hall, Eron Hall, Keith Hodgson, Bob Hope, Maureen Hope, Kim Hunter, Imogen (song), Jamie (song), Nick Jobson, Jonah, Joneau, George Kimber, Claire Kingston, Lauren (song), Linda Laws, Mik e Laws, Leighton (song), Lydia (song), Irene McAdam, Peter M c A d a m , M a n d y M a c D o n a l d , Tr a c e y M a l l a m , Maureen Mar sden, David Matthews, Jim Metcalfe, O l i v e M e t c a l f e , C a r o l i n e M i t ch e l l , R o g e r M o rr i s , Rosemary Muncaster, Jude Murphy, Ian Murray, Jackie Murray, John Murray, Jamie Murray, Sarah Murray, Chris Moreland, Brenda Naisby, Lily Nicod, S u e O l i v e r, L a u r i e O l s e n , R e

Christine Park er, Ged Park er, Elvira Pirozzi, Poppy, L

Simmons, Kathy Simmons, Anne Staines, Lesley Stephenson, Mac Stephenson, Martin Stephenson, David James Taylor, Marion Taylor, Paige Temperley (

Urwin, Doug Walk er, David Warden, Linda Williams and David Young.

“After hearing several episodes of the podcast ‘The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass’, I couldn’ t resist bringing up ‘Washington New Town’ on the internet. I became a cyber tourist, surveying this old (1964) new town from the air, map and ground. A melding together of adjoining villages.

It is worth celebrating in this song-and-story series, the narrati ves from its residents and the original music by songwriter s and instrumentalists.

If only all of the new housing developments were communities, moving artists and media to sing and tell them into cultural existence as entities of their own. A must-listen.”

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