The foundation stone was laid in 1932 and opened to traffic in 1934 by the Duke of York. The Newport Bridge spans the River Tees, linking Stockton-on-Tees to Middlesbrough.
Photograph and details courtesy of David Thompson
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Thank you David Thompson. Have just realised that the blast furnaces can be just discerned at the left hand of this historic photograph. So we are looking at the western end of the Middlesbrough Iron Masters District, which ran almost to Middlesbrough town centre. About the only vestige of it, is Willian Lanes Foundry, who recently supplied the S&D Railway commemorative plaque at St John’s Crossing
If the bright patches were flames, these were late Victorian or Edwardian blast furnaces. In these when a fresh charge of coke, limestone and iron ore was charged, inflammable blast furnace gas would emerge. A labourer would set light to them to prevent poisoning carbon by carbon monoxide.
The other possibility is that the light areas are smoke from the Cowper Stoves. This contained a lot of alkali.
Sorry! The blast furances were to the east of the bridge.
There was a rough track from the main building down to what might have been old stables, where we were doing our plastic coating experiments. The circles left by the foundations of the blast furnaces could be seen on the track.
The land on the south side of the bridge belonged to Bolkow Vaughn which was taken over by Dorman Long in the 1920s. Dormans built the built Newport Lift Bridge, along with the much more historic all-steel welded bridge on the approach road to the north.
The large building in the right is Dormans Long’s Central Research Laboratories, where I started my career as a metallurgist in 1961. But it may have been Bolkow Vaughn’s offices for running the site in the 19th centrury as there were a number of blast furnaces to the west of the bridge
The embankments on the Tees show that the river was basically canalised to allow ships to get up to Stockton. At the recent talk, up at the Newcastle branch of the Newcomen Society, on “Bridges of the River Tees” the speaker said that Stockton Town Council had a lot of say on what was done to the river, which is why they demanded a lift bridge to built in this location.