About Shields Harbour the seagulls pursue each other in play. They come all the way from the Farne Islands, and when the sun has gone down, and the western sky is still full of crimson and orange light, they may be seen circling ever higher, and gathering in bands, and finally setting off in a straight line northwards, calling to each other meanwhile with their shrill, baby-like cries. There is a space of a quarter of a mile or so between the twin but rival towns of North and South Shields. They divide, somewhat unevenly, a population of something over a hundred thousand persons between them. South Shields is of more rapid and most recent growth, but both the towns originated in the erection of a few fishermen’s sheds, or shielings, which existed so long ago at least as the reign of Edward I. There were then, and for very long afterwards, two mouths to the Tyne, one of which ran parallel with the present main street of South Shields, and made an island of the Roman station which was founded here.
The whole aspect of the land round about has been changed by the deposit of ballast from ships. At many points of the Tyne there are artificial hills and embankments. Some of these are made by the refuse of chemical works; a more numerous and more lofty class are composed entirely of sand and shingle which was brought over-sea as ships’ ballast. One of the earlier employments of George Stephenson was the minding of an engine that was employed in building up these huge ballast-heaps, which give a very singular appearance to some of the towns on the banks of the Tyne. South Shields was a spot greatly favoured for the discharging of this refuse, and it therefore happens that what was low and, for the most part, level ground, is now absurdly uneven, some of the streets being built upon the ballast, whilst others are far overtopped by mountains of sand and shingle that it would cost large sums of money to remove.
At North Shields there are terrifying flights of innumerable stairs. The lower quarters, both of North and South Shields—those, that is to say, which are nearest to the river—are incomparable as examples of old maritime towns. Something there is at Greenwich of the same character, and something more at Wapping; but nowhere is there such a salt-sea savour about the whole aspect of things.
JARROW CHURCH: THE SAXON TOWER.
The sailors, it should be observed, seem to have exercised their own discretion in the naming of streets. There is “Wapping,” and “Holborn,” and “Thames Street,” and what not. These places are narrow thoroughfares running parallel with the river, and are accessible therefrom by means of wooden stairs and cramped passages between high blocks of buildings. The houses facing the Tyne, more particularly on the north side, seem less to have been built than to have been cobbled together. They are made indifferently of brick and wood and stone; they have platforms standing on wooden piles; they are kept out of the river by stout timbers that the tide washes, and that are green with salt-water moss or white with clustering limpets. There is all manner of variety among them, and nothing could be more quaint, ramshackle, or interesting as a reminiscence of an older world. It is the sailors’ quarter now, as formerly, this odd assemblage of narrow streets and strange houses. Now, as in freer days,
“Up to the wooden bridge and back,
To the Low Light shore down in a crack,
Rambling, swaggering, away goes Jack,
When there’s liberty for the sailors.”