Wrekenton

infobox UK place
country = England
static_

static_image_caption=
latitude= 54.929430
longitude= -1.572395
official_name=Wrekenton
population =
metropolitan_borough=Gateshead
metropolitan_county=Tyne & Wear
region=North East England
constituency_westminster=Gateshead East and Washington West
post_town=GATESHEAD
postcode_district=NE9
postcode_area=NE
dial_code=0191
os_grid_reference= NZ275595

Wrekenton is a suburb of Gateshead, England.

Wrekenton is probably best known to passers by as the location of a large branch of the Co-op supermarket. It is served by the B1296 which used to be a route of the Great North Road.

It is bordered to the North by Beacon Lough to the West by Harlow Green and to the South by Eighton Banks. A large part of Wrekenton is a large council estate known as Springwell Estate. This is distinct from Springwell village which is located a few hundred metres across the border into Sunderland.

Name

The antiquarian, the Rev. John Hodgson, claimed to have named the village. He wrote, "After the enclosure of the common (in 1822), Mr Watson, of Warburton Place, Carrhill, founded a considerable village at this place, which, at my suggestion, he called Wrekenton." This name was chosen because Wrekenton and Eighton Banks were divided by the remains of the Wrekendyke Roman road.

Roman Roads

Wrekenton is believed to have been the meeting point of two Roman roads, Cade's Road, which ran all the way from the Humber, via York to Newcastle and the Wrekendyke which branched away to the north-east passing close to Jarrow and ending at the Roman fort and harbour of Arbeia, at South Shields. It has even been conjectured that a Roman fort existed on the local golf course at Wrekenton but no evidence for this has been found.

Old Durham Road

Old Durham Road was the main route between Durham and Newcastle until 1827, when a better road was built to the west of it on lower ground and called Durham Road. Old Durham Road climbed the steep bank, known as Long Bank to Wrekenton and from there headed north to Beacon Lough before dropping down the steep bank into Gateshead. The mail coach used to pass along this road and one of the stopping places for the coach was the ’Coach and Horses’, an inn that still exists today. Other equally old public houses in Wrekenton, dating from the nineteenth century, are the ’Seven Stars’ and the ’Ship’.

Nineteenth-century Wrekenton

In the 1860s, Wrekenton was still a very small village with about two hundred dwellings. It remained so for a further seventy years until slum clearance in Gateshead resulted in many new houses being built in Wrekenton to accommodate the previous slum-dwellers. The main industries of the area surrounding the village during the nineteenth century were coalmining, quarrying, brickmaking and agriculture.

References

* [http://www.asaplive.com/Local/Histories.cfm?ccs=529&cs=1993&highlight=wrekenton Gateshead Local Studies site]

* [http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DUR/GatesheadHistory/Ch9.html History of Gateshead site]

*http://www.tomorrows-history.com/CommunityProjects/PE0100010001/Wrekenton%20index.htm