Battle Hill, Wallsend From Old To New In Photos

I don’t know if I can join this thread now – am writing on March 27th 2020, and from the distance of New Haven CT USA {I teach at Yale UNiversity in the States] – but I’ll try. My name is Paul Kennedy [or Paul M Kennedy], author of many history books, including THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GREAT POWERS [google], but I was born in Willington Quay in June 1945 and grew up close to Battle Hill [and farm] for many years, went to the St Aidan’s Primary/SEcondary Catholic schools, then St Cuthbert’s Grammar School in Newcastle, then UNiversity of Newcastle [BA History 1966], then south, to a D.Phil/doctorate at Oxford in 1970, then an academic career..

I lived in Ravensworh STreet [going down to Wallsend Slipway] til 11, then Greenside Avenue from 11 til 21, then to the south.. When I was a lad my parents used to take us for walks every Sunday afternoon, up Churchill Street, a cross the [1930s-built] Coast Road, and into the countryside; there was nothing but old [pre-Stephenson] trolleyway-tracks, the Battle Hill Farm, and the water meres.. great for birders [or shooters], or dodgy “pitch-and-toss” gambing groups in an age before betting shops were legalised. Later I went walking and birds-egg-collecting on my own or with another couple of boys. We disappeared for hours at a time, came back all scratched from the hawthorns, and our parents didn’t seem to mind [girls were differently treated..] I say all this because I have a distinct memory of the field in which horses grazed just to the south-east of the Farm [ie towards the top of Churchill Street] having a very distinct mound or hump to it, and being told that that was indeed the “Battle Hill”, though in fact a small hummock, albeit from the top of it you could look a long way south, over the Tyne cranes..and if you were in a fight with the Vikings best to be standing on it, I thought… Later on, when doing an A-level Geography special paper at St Cuthberts, I wrote on the old railway-lines and trolley-ways of the area [using especially Richardson’s marvellous classic HISTORY OF WALLSEND maps… and my memory was that both the 1801 {?] and 1901 [or 1920] updated Ordnance Survey maps of the Battle Hill Farm area had something like “Battle Hill” [site of battle between Northumbrians and Danes, c. 845a.d.]

Is that a total fancy on my part? I still tease my Scandanavian friends today that they owe me some post-imperial reparations monies.. though it’s possible that the locals won. Nobody could defeat those 1970s town planners, though.

Paul.Kennedy@yale.edu

We were the second family to move to battle hill back in 68 my late dad ( Jimmy bryden) worked for bellway homes and bought the house he was working on? Me and my brothers had a fantastic childhood there never far from the “tallers” and the glass tower happy days

Battle hill is lifting !!

Hi the name Battle Hill Estate came from the old mining company when the council bought the land the mining company ask if the name could be kept thats why its called battle Hill Estate and has nothing to do with a Battle or the farm, how do I know this because battle Hill Primary school has done a timeline of the history of Battle Hill and I have seen the actual document which I believe has the sale info of the sale.
People will say know I am wrong but I have seen the evidence to prove that Battle Hill Estate is named after the old mining company that owned the land.